The UK needs to spend more on researching green energy

Across the world, politicians are going out of their way to promise fantastically expensive climate policies. President Biden has promised to spend $500 billion each year on climate — about 13 percent of the entire federal revenue. The European Union will spend 25 percent of its budget on climate.

Most rich countries now promise to go carbon-neutral by mid-century. Shockingly, only one country has made a serious, independent estimate of the cost: New Zealand found it would optimistically cost 16 percent of its GDP by then, equivalent to the entire current New Zealand budget.

Are governments doing enough to mitigate the effects of climate change? No, they are doing too much of the wrong things, and too little of what will actually work. All the focus has been on immediate carbon cuts although studies show that the cost will be vastly greater than the benefit. (...)

At Reason's 40th anniversary event, held in Hollywood on November 14 and 15, "Skeptical Environmentalist" Bjorn Lomborg kicked things off with an engrossing 30-minute presentation about man-made climate change and the best ways to prioritize and solve global problems ranging from water shortages to poverty to malaria. The author most recently of Cool It, Lomborg is also the force behind The Copenhagen Consensus, a path-breaking approach toward effecting efficient solutions to the planet's most pressing issues.