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

Is man-made climate change our biggest problem? Are the wildfires, droughts and hurricanes we see on the news an omen of even worse things to come? The United Nations and many political leaders think so and want to spend trillions of tax dollars to reverse the warming trend. Are they right? Will the enormous cost justify the gain? Economist Bjorn Lomborg, director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, explains the key issues and reaches some sobering conclusions.

In the run-up to the 2015 U.N. Climate Change Conference in Paris from Nov. 30 to Dec. 11, rich countries and development organizations are scrambling to join the fashionable ranks of “climate aid” donors. This effectively means telling the world’s worst-off people, suffering from tuberculosis, malaria or malnutrition, that what they really need isn’t medicine, mosquito nets or micronutrients, but a solar panel. It is terrible news.

The decision by the Conservative government to spend 50% more on so-called "climate aid" is a feel-good policy that does little for the world’s poorest or the planet. It is part of an indefensible international movement towards ever greater chunk of aid going towards climate.

The money – £5.8 billion – is to be diverted from the United Kingdom’s overseas aid budget to its International Climate Fund over the next five years.