Innovation not global regulation will save the planet

2013-01-08 Read Bjørn Lomborg's commentary in an article by Joseph Brean in National Post.

"Global warming has stalled and will not raise world temperatures over the next five years, according to a new prediction from the British national weather service. The updated computer model of the planet’s climate lowers by about 20% an earlier prediction of how much hotter the coming few years will be than the long-term average since 1971."

Announced with much fanfare 11 months ago, the Paris Climate Treaty finally came into force earlier this month – just in time for the election of Donald Trump to potentially render the whole thing moot.

But there’s a bigger problem for climate campaigners than Trump. It’s that the Paris Treaty will in any case have very little effect on temperature change.

It promises to keep temperature rises below 2C. But there is no way any of the Paris promises will get anywhere close to achieving this.

As the COP26 summit meets over the next couple of weeks in Glasgow, we can all expect to be bombarded with disaster scenarios, replete with stories about our species’ imminent demise. Over the last couple of days, we have had Boris Johnson warning that it is “one minute to midnight” and Prince Charles claiming that this is “literally our last chance saloon”. And of course, Greta Thunberg has already made a few appearances of her own, accusing politicians of “pretending to take our future seriously” and saying that COP26 will “lead us nowhere”.