Climate Change Saves More Lives Than You’d Think

The concept of trade-offs has become unfashionable. Politicians around the world like to pretend that their choices will bring us nothing but superlative benefits.

Nowhere is this whitewashing more pervasive or accepted than in climate change. There is a prevalent, comforting notion that we can have our cake and eat it too: that cutting carbon need not involve financial sacrifice.

COPENHAGEN – The world has generally become a much better place during the last half-century. Skeptics will scoff at the idea of overall improvement, but the numbers don’t lie. The task we face now is to make the world even better.

2011 Sept Psychologies

Bjorn Lomborg, academic and author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, for shaking up the climate change debate without ever denying the reality of man-made global warming. Nominated by Julian Baggini, philosopher and author of The Ego Trick.