Joe Biden’s climate-change plans will burn billions, won’t bring change we actually need

Bjorn Lomborg he points out that the costs of our climate promises would be higher than the total tax intake of all governments across the world today, far exceeding the benefits of climate change mitigation.

A new United Nations report has revealed the disturbing news that the number of global disasters has quintupled since 1970 and will increase by another 40 percent in coming decades. They find that more people are affected by disasters than ever before, and the UN Deputy Secretary-General warns humanity is “on a spiral of self-destruction.”

A carbon tax is much discussed as a solution to climate change. It is simple and straightforward: a climate price tag makes industry and consumers take into account the implicit negative effects of their actions, whether it is the aircraft fuel for a vacation, or fossil fuels for food fertilizers or to heat and cool a home.

I have argued for a well-designed carbon tax for more than a decade. But five important caveats, almost universally breached by politicians, affect the likelihood of such a policy working.