G20 leaders reach climate agreement, set carbon neutral goal for 'around mid-century’

Current climate action is more costly than inaction, even if politicians were smart. Bjorn Lomborg recently gave testimony to the US Senate in regard to the economic and budgetary consequences of climate change.The cost of climate action is likely to cost at least twice as much as climate inaction in this century. Lomborg presented how green energy research could show a way out of this dilemma.

The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris later this month is being billed as an opportunity to save the planet. It is no such thing. As I show in a new peer-reviewed paper, even if successful, the agreement reached in Paris would cut temperatures in 2100 by just 0.05° Celsius. The rise in sea level would be reduced by only 1.3 centimeters.

Though the images of abandoned cars in waterlogged East Coast streets might make you think otherwise, the relative toll that floods take on the U.S.—in property and lives—has decreased over time. Flooding costs as a share of gross domestic product declined almost 10-fold since 1903 to 0.05% of GDP, while annual flood death risk—fatalities per million—dropped almost threefold. World-wide data are sparser, but flood research shows costs relative to GDP and deaths relative to population have decreased globally from 1980 to 2010.