Polar Bears, Dead Coral and Other Climate Fictions

Copenhagen wants to be the world’s first CO2-neutral city by 2025. But this initiative, however wonderful it sounds, is little more than a costly vanity project.

After all, the whole accounting exercise works only if others are still using coal and gas that Copenhagen’s unpredictable wind power can replace. If the city's unrealistic assumptions fall short, the financial losses for its inhabitants will be substantial.

Promising to spend $2 trillion on climate over the next four years, U.S. presidential candidate Joe Biden is taking a path similar to that of politicians from many other rich countries, vowing costly policies to help address global warming.

Along with his fellow Democrats, he pledges to end fossil fuels in the power sector by 2035 and cut net U.S. emissions to zero by 2050.

Climate change is clearly an important global issue, but we are tackling it very badly and our overwhelming focus on reducing carbon emissions also distracts us from many of the world's most pressing problems. What makes it so hard to cut emissions is that CO2 is a byproduct of prosperous economies, and replacing cheap fossil fuels with today's mostly expensive and unreliable green alternatives remains incredibly expensive. An analysis for the government of New Zealand recently showed that achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 would cost the nation 16% of GDP.