SMART IDEAS: Eat your vitamins - A very Canadian way to solve a world problem

The latest alarming news about climate change is that huge swaths of densely inhabited land will be underwater by 2050, with their cities “erased.” These reports – which appeared in The New York Times and many other media outlets – are based on a good research paper by scientists at Climate Central, but they get the story wrong.

This is part of a damaging pattern. Climate change is a man-made problem that we need to tackle, but many of the news stories about its purported effects are scaring us without justification and misleading us about how to act.

 As Elon Musk presented the new Tesla 3, a fawning press announced that the “world-changing car” could “dominate” the market. Within days, 276,000 people had put down $1,000 to pre-order the car.

But the Model 3 doesn’t exist yet. There is no final production version, much less any production. Musk is “fairly confident” that deliveries could start by the end of 2017. But running on schedule isn’t Tesla’s strong suit. Meanwhile, Tesla’s current best-seller has been plagued by quality problems.

ABUJA, NIGERIA – Over the next 15 years, the international community will spend $2.5 trillion on development, with national budgets contributing countless trillions more. In September, the world’s 193 governments will meet at the United Nations in New York to agree on a set of global targets that will direct these resources. With so much at stake, it is vital that we make the smartest choices.