Dutch farmers protest 'phenomenally costly' emission laws, expert calls for 'balance' in climate policies

Intelligence Squared US debate series: Tuesday, January 13, 2009 Major reductions in carbon emissions are not worth the money Moderator: John Donvan Speaking for the motion: Bjorn Lomborg, Philip Stott and Peter Huber Speaking against the motion: L. Hunter Lovins, Oliver Tickell and Adam Werbach THIS EVENT WILL BE RECORDED FOR BBC WORLD NEWS. Panelists for the motion Bjorn Lomborg is the author of the bestsellers Cool It and The Skeptical Environmentalist.

As George W. Bush and Tony Blair learned the hard way, the public does not take kindly to being misled about the nature of potential threats. A similar shift in global public opinion is occurring with respect to climate change, owing to a stream of revelations about climate scientists' sloppy, if not tendentious, practice. 

Speaking at the United Nations, 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg said that if humanity really understands the science of climate change and still fails to act, we’re “evil.” This is because climate change means “people are dying.” Helpfully, she also told us what we must do to act correctly: In a bit more than eight years, we will have exhausted our remaining allowance for carbon emissions, so we must shut down everything running on fossil fuels by 2028.