Sorry, solar panels won’t stop California’s fires

Every government minister, senior civil servant or charity official is familiar with the pitch. Spend money on my project, says the supplicant: it will bring such large benefits that you will actually save money in the long run. At this, the official sighs, knowing that another supplicant with an equally bold pitch is waiting outside. How can he pick among competing pleas for bridges, IT systems, deworming medicines and a thousand other things?

This week, at a conference in Dhaka, the Copenhagen Consensus will try to answer that question, reports the Economist.

The global economy must be transformed immediately to avoid catastrophic climate damage, a new United Nations report declares. Climate economist William Nordhaus has been made a Nobel laureate. The events are being reported as two parts of the same story, but they reveal the contradictions inherent in climate policy—and why economics matters more than ever.

Over the past 21 years, Haiti has been hit by 40 cyclones, thunderstorms and heavy rains. Each year on average two events cause flooding and landslides with serious consequences for people and their livelihoods.

Haiti is more vulnerable than many nations because of the number of people living in poverty. Climate change means that these phenomena could increase in occurrence and severity.