PUBLIC INTELLECTUALS

Global Warning

Bjørn Lomborg

Should addressing climate change be the leading global priority? Can economic growth and environmental protection be reconciled? Who should pay the costs of pollution: Consumers? Big business? Government? Can we really feed the world on organically grown food?

RECENT COMMENTARIES

FEATURED COMMENTARIES

The Emperor’s New Climate-Change Agreement

Bjørn Lomborg Series: Global Warning

2012-01-10

Dressing up failure as victory has been integral to climate-change negotiations since they started 20 years ago. The latest round of talks in Durban, South Africa in December were no exception.... read

Comments: 3 Recommended: 0 Read: 9728

The Climate Extremists

Bjørn Lomborg Series: Global Warning

2011-12-13

Nowadays, no hurricane or heat wave passes without a politician or activist claiming it as evidence of the need for a global climate deal, like the one sought at the latest round of unsuccessful negotiations in Durban, South Africa. But such claims merit close scrutiny.... read

Comments: 9 Recommended: 1 Read: 15549

Seeming Green

Bjørn Lomborg Series: Global Warning

2011-11-14

From political photo opportunities, to governments' environmental subsidies, it seems everyone these days wants to look green. But we do not burn fossil fuels simply to annoy environmentalists; we burn them because fossil fuels facilitate virtually all the material advances that civilization has achieved over the last few hundred years.... read

Comments: 15 Recommended: 0 Read: 15594

Making HIV/AIDS Investments Count

Bjørn Lomborg Series: Global Warning

2011-10-14

Funding from developed governments for efforts to combat HIV/AIDS is dropping – a trend that must be reversed. But we also need to acknowledge that billions of dollars have been spent on well-meaning attempts to save lives, with an alarming lack of high-quality evaluation of how these investments have performed.... read

Comments: 2 Recommended: 0 Read: 9774

Rethinking the Fight against HIV

Bjørn Lomborg Series: Global Warning

2011-09-15

HIV/AIDS remains a daily threat to millions, stunts development, and destroys far too many lives. With attention and financial support flagging, it is vital that we step up our fight against the disease by adding lessons from cost-benefit analysis to our arsenal.... read

Comments: 3 Recommended: 0 Read: 11019

A Dim Light on Global Warming

Bjørn Lomborg Series: Global Warning

2011-08-12

Amid a growing wave of concern about climate change, many countries – including Brazil, Australia, the US, and EU members – passed laws in the 2000’s outlawing or severely restricting access to incandescent light bulbs. But the real problem, as ever, is that the new technology is not yet as attractive as the old.... read

Comments: 15 Recommended: 0 Read: 17788

Green Bootleggers and Baptists

Bjørn Lomborg Series: Global Warning

2011-07-15

Whenever opposite political forces attract, as activists and big business have in the case of global warming, there is a high risk that the public interest will be caught in the middle. That, in a nutshell, is the story of the rise of "renewable" energy.... read

Comments: 3 Recommended: 0 Read: 16869

How to Set Goals

Bjørn Lomborg Series: Global Warning

2011-06-14

The intention behind the UN's Millennium Development Goals was laudable, but 11 years on, progress in achieving them has been uneven. As decision-makers start to consider what our aspirations should be after the deadline has expired in 2015, it is worth looking back at what worked, what didn’t, and how we could do better.... read

Comments: 2 Recommended: 0 Read: 14721

The Myth of Green Energy Security

Bjørn Lomborg Series: Global Warning

2011-05-17

In many Western countries, climate-change policies are increasingly being wrapped in promises of greater energy security. But the old, discredited policies look no better in their new packaging.... read

Comments: 5 Recommended: 0 Read: 18509

No Nukes?	Bjørn Lomborg
The harsh reality highlighted by the Fukushima nuclear disaster – is that we do not yet have the luxury of dumping nuclear power. Until we can find a feasible alternative, doing so would mean greater reliance on fossil fuels, and thus higher carbon emissions and more fatalities than nuclear energy has ever caused.... read

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The Green Inquisition

Bjørn Lomborg Series: Global Warning

2008-07-11

Because of climate panic, our attempts to mitigate climate change have provoked an unmitigated disaster. We will waste hundreds of billions of dollars, worsen global warming, and dramatically increase starvation.... read

Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 42721

Global Warnings

Bjørn Lomborg Series: Global Warning

2007-09-12

From global warming to the threat of terrorism, pesticides, and the loss of bio-diversity, the media pelt us with a constant barrage of one-sided warnings. We need to put all of these warnings in perspective, so that we can figure out which ones really should concern us, and when we should act on them.... read

Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 40061

Lights Out?

Bjørn Lomborg Series: Global Warning

2008-04-11

The recent “lights out” campaign was intended to energize public opinion about the problems of climate change by urging citizens in 27 big cities to turn out their lights for an hour. But, as has become typical of environmental debates, no one pointed out that the event was immensely futile, and that it caused much higher overall pollution.... read

Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 37800

Misusing the Inaction Argument

Bjørn Lomborg Series: Global Warning

2008-09-12

One commonly repeated argument for doing something about climate change is based on comparing the cost of action with the cost of inaction. This argument sounds compelling, and almost every major politician in the world uses it, but it turns out to be entirely fallacious.... read

Comments: 3 Recommended: 0 Read: 35433

Money for Nothing

Bjørn Lomborg Series: Global Warning

2008-05-12

The EU's plan to reduce carbon emissions by 20% by 2020 will most likely cost at least €150 billion a year, yet it will postpone temperature increase due to global warming by just two years, from 2100 to 2102. For that money, we could provide clean drinking water, sanitation, education, and health care to everyone on the planet, while increasing CO2-reducing R&D ten-fold. ... read

Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 33424

McCain, Obama, and Hot Air

Bjørn Lomborg Series: Global Warning

2008-06-25

Both John McCain and Barack Obama have promised tough action on global warming. But the cornerstone of their plans – a cap-and-trade system to reduce carbon emissions - is expensive, unwieldy, and would mainly benefit politicians and big businesses in privileged positions.... read

Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 33301

Free Trade Breakdown

Bjørn Lomborg Series: Global Warning

2008-08-12

Global fear about free trade, reflected in the breakdown of the Doha Round, leaves the planet at risk of missing out on the extraordinary benefits that it offers. Free trade is good not only for big corporations, or for job growth. It is simply good.... read

Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 32433

Re-Thinking Counter-Terrorism

Bjørn Lomborg and Todd Sandler Series: Global Warning

2008-03-03

Although rich countries' citizens regard terrorism as one of the world’s greatest threats, trans-national terrorists take, on average, just 420 lives each year. So, have the terrorists succeeded in getting the developed world to invest poorly in counterterrorism, while ignoring more pressing problems involving health, the environment, conflict, and governance?... read

Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 31975

A Time for Clarity

Bjørn Lomborg Series: Global Warning

2008-02-12

A roundtable of international economists, including five Nobel Laureates, will convene in May to assess more than 50 solutions to different global challenges as part of the “Copenhagen Consensus” project. We will then discover what could happen if politicians would rise above the distortion of the media’s intense concentration on terrorism and climate change.... read

Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 30192

The Green Pseudo-Revolution	Bjørn Lomborg
President-elect Obama is now facing countless people who claim that subsidies for renewable energy and CO2 taxes are great ways to tackle global warming and forge a new green economy. But the way to tackle global warming and support a genuinely vibrant economy is with lean investments in future breakthroughs, not bloated subsidies for inefficient technologies.... read
The Best Investments	Bjørn Lomborg
In a world fraught with competing claims on human solidarity, we have a moral obligation to direct additional resources to where they can achieve the most good. Unfortunately, that is not how we allocate international aid now.... read

AUTHOR INFO

Bjørn Lomborg

Bjørn Lomborg is the author of The Skeptical Environmentalist and Cool It, head of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, and adjunct professor at Copenhagen Business School.

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