Climate Course Correction

The World Bank’s self-proclaimed “new course” towards focusing on global warming over poverty reduction is an alarming development for the planet’s poorest.

The planet’s biggest provider of non-private financing to developing countries will increase climate-related aid by one-third, meaning that by 2020 these efforts will amount to about $US29 billion ($38bn) a year. Every single dollar that the World Bank spends will “take account of climate change”.

Marine cloud whitening, and other ideas. We have precious little to show for nearly 20 years of efforts to prevent global warming. Promises in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 to cut carbon emissions went unfulfilled. Stronger pledges in Kyoto five years later failed to keep emissions in check. The only possible lesson is that agreements to reduce carbon emissions are costly, politically arduous and ultimately ineffective. But this is a lesson many are hell-bent on ignoring, as politicians plan to gather again—this time in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December—to negotiate a new carbon-emissions treaty.

Are electric cars greener than conventional gasoline cars? If so, how much greener? What about the CO2 emissions produced during electric cars' production? And where does the electricity that powers electric cars come from? Environmental economist Bjorn Lomborg, director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, examines how environmentally friendly electric cars really are.