Energy

Chancellor Phillip Hammond was slapped down by Downing Street last week for warning that reaching net zero carbon emissions could cost the UK £1 trillion and require cuts to funding for schools, hospitals and the police force. Climate change needs a response, but Mr Hammond is right to highlight the cost – and in fact, he is likely to be underestimating the real price-tag.

You’ve probably seen the latest alarming headlines: Rising sea levels from climate change could flood 187 million people out of their homes. Don’t believe it. That figure is unrealistic—and it isn’t even new. It appears in a new scholarly paper, whose authors plucked it from a paper published in 2011. And what the earlier paper actually found was that 187 million could be forced to move in the unlikely event that no one does anything in the next 80 years to adapt to dramatic rises in sea level.

Ever notice how, in the last decade or so, we quietly stopped just having storms and started having “extreme weather events”? It feels like no temperature drop or seasonal downpour is too small for the media to slap a scary name on it and issue minute-by-minute warnings. Well, now some news outlets and campaigners are trying to do the exact same thing for climate change itself.

On the sidelines of the 2015 Paris climate summit, then-UK prime minister David Cameron and 19 other world leaders made a promise to double green energy research and development by 2020.

The United Kingdom is on course to break that promise. As a percentage of GDP, spending on low-carbon energy R&D has stayed sluggishly around 0.02 per cent since 2015, according to data from the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Aprovechando la cumbre climática de París en el 2015, 20 líderes mundiales se comprometieron a duplicar la investigación y el desarrollo de la energía verde para el 2020. Hoy van camino de incumplir esa promesa.

You’ll be hit by two big things: (1) Despite the nonstop stream of depressing news, the world is actually getting to be a better place—cleaner, more prosperous, less violent. (2) By pursuing commonsensical, cost-effective programs to battle the troubles still plaguing our planet, we can achieve a level of prosperity and quality of life for all that would have been deemed utterly unattainable only a few years ago. You’ll be heartened and inspired by much of what you hear in our absorbing conversation.

Environmental protesters and politicians around the world are calling for countries to become carbon neutral by 2050, if not sooner. These proposals get a lot of attention, but they would incur far higher costs than almost any electorate is willing to pay.

Durante el último cuarto de siglo, el cambio climático ha recibido más atención y generado más profecías catastrofistas por parte de líderes políticos y religiosos, celebridades y miembros de la realeza que cualquier otro tema.

Spätestens seit dem Aufschwung der Bewegung Fridays for Future gilt der Kampf gegen den Klimawandel vielen Politikern als wichtigstes Ziel. Der Politologe Bjørn Lomborg hält das für falsch: Regierungen sollten ihr Geld für andere Dinge ausgeben