Innovation & technology

NEW YORK – When politicians around the world tell the story of global warming, they cast it as humanity’s greatest challenge. But they also promise that it is a challenge that they can meet at low cost, while improving the world in countless other ways. We now know that is nonsense.

2014-04-09 Zbyt często pozwalamy, by emocje wyparły fakty z wiadomości. Opieramy nasze opinie na nagłówkach, które przyciągają najwięcej uwagi, i kształtujemy najgłębiej żywione przekonania na kilku tylko bardzo nagłośnionych zdarzeniach. Na jednym z głównych uniwersytetów Nowej Anglii dyskutowałem niedawno o stanie świata i doszliśmy do żywności. Powiedziałem, że Zielona Rewolucja z lat 1970. była rozwiązaniem technologicznym, które dało olbrzymie korzyści zarówno ludzkości, jak i środowisku...  

Quel état du monde en 2050? 2014-02-13, BJORN LOMBORG  La Tribune, France. 

2013-11-11 Subsidizing first-generation, inefficient green energy might make well-off people feel good about themselves, but it won't transform the energy market. Yet when inefficient green subsidies are criticized, their defenders can be relied on to point out that the world subsidizes fossil fuels even more heavily. But the misinformation surrounding energy subsidies is considerable, and it helps keep the world from enacting sensible policy.

2013-10-16

COPENHAGEN – For centuries, optimists and pessimists have argued over the state of the world. Pessimists see a world where more people means less food, where rising demand for resources means depletion and war, and, in recent decades, where boosting production capacity means more pollution and global warming. One of the current generation of pessimists’ sacred texts, The Limits to Growth, influences the environmental movement to this day.

2013-10-14 FOR the past half century, a fundamental debate has raged between optimists and pessimists over the state of the world. Pessimists build their case on overpopulation, starvation and depletion of resources. Optimists stand for the infallibility of the market economy. Wouldn't it be nice to remove the darkened or rose-tinted spectacles for once, and try to quantify how the world really has done and will do in future? I asked some of the world's leading economists to do just that. The result is a groundbreaking book, How Much Have Global Problems Cost The World?

2013-08-14 PRAGUE – Many today believe that renewable energy will let us get off fossil fuels soon. Unfortunately, the facts say otherwise. According to International Energy Agency data, 13.12% of the world’s energy came from renewables in 1971, the first year that the IEA reported global statistics. In 2011, renewables’ share was actually lower, at 12.99%. Yet a new survey shows that Americans believe that the share of renewables in 2035 will be 30.2%. In reality, it will likely be 14.5%. 

Last week an extraordinary, scary story made climate headlines around the world: a melting Arctic could release an immense amount of methane that would dramatically increase global warming and cost the world a phenomenal $60tn. Fortunately, it is just a scare story. Of course, if you take an implausibly catastrophic event and run it through an implausibly pessimistic economic model, you can get headlines, but you don’t get good policy. The depressing reality is that current climate policies have failed.

2013-07-12 The United Kingdom has been reluctant to join the hydraulic-fracturing (or fracking) revolution. Yet tapping the Bowland Shale could reignite the UK economy and deliver huge cuts in CO2 emissions. 

  2013-07-15 The U.S. Energy Information Administration recently published a report that estimates global shale gas resources. These findings may have a significant impact on energy policy in the future: Shale gas increases global resources of natural gas by a whopping 47 per cent. The shale gas revolution promises to be great news for the Canadian economy, but it is also good news for our climate.