Lomborg on Australian radio show 2GB

Danish statistician, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist (2001) and one of the TIME 100 Scientists & Thinkers of 2004, Bjorn Lomborg, 42, sat down with TIME's Laura Blue in London to discuss carbon cuts, his many critics, and his new book, Cool It: the Skeptical Environmentalist's guide to Global Warming, published in the U.S. in September 2007. Watch the full interview

COPENHAGEN – Imagine that over the next 70 or 80 years, a giant port city – say, Tokyo – found itself engulfed by sea levels rising as much as 15 feet or more. Millions of inhabitants would be imperiled, along with trillions of dollars worth of infrastructure. This awful prospect is exactly the sort of thing global-warming evangelists like Al Gore have in mind when they warn that we must take “large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it.” The rhetoric may sound extreme, but with so much hanging in the balance, surely it’s justified.

President Biden enthusiastically describes his administration's new Inflation Reduction Act as "the most significant legislation in history to tackle the climate crisis." Curiously though, neither officials nor media praising the IRA are stating the actual climate impact of spending $369 billion on the bill's climate provisions.