How the energy crisis can be solved

The UN climate summit in Azerbaijan kicked off Monday in the shadow of Donald Trump’s election and with many key leaders not even showing up.

Sep 4, 2010 10:18 EDT Bjorn Lomborg, author of “The Skeptical Environmentalist,” used to argue that concern about climate change was overblown because there were better causes to spend money on such as curing AIDS or malaria. The Danish political scientist now says in a book coming out later this month called ”Smart Solutions to Climate Change: Comparing Costs and Benefits,” that global warming is one of the top challenges facing the world and we should spend money on trying to fix it – $100 billion a year.

The concept of trade-offs has become unfashionable. Politicians around the world like to pretend that their choices will bring us nothing but superlative benefits.

Nowhere is this whitewashing more pervasive or accepted than in climate change. There is a prevalent, comforting notion that we can have our cake and eat it too: that cutting carbon need not involve financial sacrifice.