Lomborg's op-ed: Smarter Thinking on Climate Change

Here in Paris, there are many well-meaning people who believe that we need strong carbon cuts and green energy production subsidies now and for many years to come, to get the world to move towards tackling climate change. But at the same time, these same people argue that solar and wind is already competitive, or that this moment is just around the corner.

Those two arguments are incompatible and many people who seem to be making both points are simply wrong on one or the other.

Copenhagen Consensus Centre President Bjorn Lomborg says there are constantly climate catastrophes and it’s very easy to claim them as global warming.

“Global warming is real and it’s very likely that it does have an impact, but what you need to recognise is that because we are richer and more resilient we’ve dramatically drove down the number of people that die from climate-related disasters,” Mr Lomborg told Sky News Australia.

Weeks before thermobaric rockets rained down on Ukraine, the chattering classes at the World Economic Forum declared “climate action failure” the biggest global risk for the coming decade. On the eve of war, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry fretted about the “massive emissions consequences” of Russian invasion and worried that the world might forget about the risks of climate change if fighting broke out. Amid the conflict and the many other challenges facing the globe right now, like inflation and food price hikes, the global elite has an unhealthy obsession with climate change.