How to Make the World a Better Place | Bjørn Lomborg and Ralph Schoellhammer | #285

COPENHAGEN – Efforts to stem global warming have nurtured a strong urge worldwide to deploy renewable energy. As a result, the use of wind turbines has increased ten-fold over the past decade, with wind power often touted as the most cost-effective green opportunity. According to Connie Hedegaard, the European Union’s commissioner for climate action, “People should believe that [wind power] is very, very cheap.” In fact, this is a highly problematic claim. (...)  

In an interview with Wall Street Journal editor Paul Gigot, Lomborg points out that even though climate change is one problem we need to fix, the world’s poor have many more urgent concerns of which rich countries, multilateral institutions and even development organizations are losing sight.

2013-03-31 Bjorn Lomborg's article in The Sunday Times

As I fly into a snow-bound Britain, I realise that you might be asking where global warming has gone as you shiver in the coldest March for 50 years and wonder what you will do if gas has to be rationed. I have been involved in the climate debate for more than a decade, but I am still amazed at how wrong we get it. Let us try to restart our thinking on global warming. Yes, global warming is real and mostly man-made, but our policies have failed predictably and spectacularly. (...)