Harris Stops Talking About Climate Change

Despite intense climate worries, electorates have been unwilling to spend the trillions needed to cut emissions dramatically. That is why climate campaigners have increasingly pursued a new strategy: forcing climate policy through courts. Across the world, the UN now counts at least 1,550 such climate cases in 38 countries and more than a thousand just in the U.S., often filed by young people invoking a fear for their future. Unfortunately, such cases undermine democracy, harm the poor and sidetrack us from smarter ways to fix the climate.

Patt Morrison for May 5, 2011

Has Bjorn Lomborg—the poster child of environmental skeptics—changed his climate?

Bjorn Lomborg, Danish environmental academic, infuriated scientists around the world when he published The Skeptical Environmentalist in 2001. The book claimed that overpopulation, destruction of resources, and global warming are not imminent problems. It would be a waste of time, Lomborg wrote, and even detrimental, if countries focused on environmental problems like global warming instead of on bigger problems such as worldwide poverty and disease. (...) 

2014-01-08 Will we be living better in 2050 than our predecessors did in 1900? The discussion over the state of the world, and whether things are getting better or worse, is not new. Scientists and philosophers have debated the topic for centuries. From Malthus to The Limits to Growth, pessimists have built their case for a future blighted by overpopulation, starvation, and depleted resources as optimists have tried to assure them that everything would be OK.