When the Only Problem Was Climate Change

Op-ed by Bjørn Lomborg in Project Syndicate.

The Doha meeting continued 20 years of failed climate negotiations, since the original Earth Summit in Rio in 1992. There, countries pledged to cut greenhouse-gas emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2000; the OECD countries fell short by almost 9%. The Kyoto Protocol from 1998 has almost entirely failed. And the effort intended to save the world in Copenhagen in 2009 collapsed spectacularly. 

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.