Green Electricity Costs a Bundle

At the U.N., a Free-for-All on Setting Global Goals

MAY 6, 2014

by Eduardo Porter

"There are, of course, better and worse ideas. Bjorn Lomborg of the Copenhagen Consensus, who achieved renown by arguing that current efforts to cut carbon emissions to slow climate change cost too much and deliver too little, argues that many of the new targets also fail the test. He has been making the rounds among diplomats, showing them the results of cost-benefit analyses of some of the ideas on the table..."

The latest global climate summit in Poland has generated familiar predictions of doom and disaster from environmental activists. Climate change seems to freeze our capacity for critical thinking: we are too eager to believe the problem is far worse than science shows, and – conversely – that our solutions are far easier than reality dictates.

Subsidizing wind and solar wastes funds that would be better spent on R and D, adaptation and economic growth