We need to get smart about climate

From the Fraser Institute

APPEARED IN THE FINANCIAL POST

By: Bjørn Lomborg

Canada’s chattering classes claim that climate change is one of the country’s pre-eminent threats. This is extraordinary. Canada is experiencing a productivity slowdown, the worst decline in living standards in 40 years, and growth rates that lag most developed economies. Geopolitical threats loom, the healthcare system is under stress and education is faltering. Yet the federal government has spent or committed more than $160 billion on climate initiatives since 2015, and is funneling $5.3 billion to help poor countries respond to climate change.

Like most nations, Canada faces tough decisions in coming decades. Resources spent on climate will not be not available for health, education, security or boosting prosperity.

Global warming is a real problem. Science has shown quite clearly that more CO₂, mostly from fossil fuel use, increases global temperatures. Climate economics has shown how this brings both problems and benefits (for instance, more deaths caused by heat, fewer by cold) but, overall, more problems than benefits. More CO₂ means higher social costs, so reducing CO₂ does have real benefits.

But climate policies also have costs. They force families and businesses to use more expensive energy, which slows economic growth. You might have heard otherwise but if the new ways really were cheaper, no regulations or mandates would be needed.

If climate change were treated like any other political issue, we would openly recognize these trade-offs and try to balance them to get the most climate benefits for the least cost, recognizing that climate policies need to compete against many other worthy policies.

But in two important ways the climate conversation has gone off the rails.

First, people say — wrongly — that global warming is an existential challenge, risking the end of mankind. Of course, if the world is about to end, it follows that any spending is justified. After all, if a world-obliterating meteor is hurtling towards us, we don’t ask about the costs of avoiding it.

Second, it is also often claimed — somewhat contradictorily — that the green transition will make energy cheaper, societies safer and everyone richer. In this “rainbows and unicorns” scenario, there are no trade-offs and we can afford climate policy and everything else.

Both claims are repeated ad nauseam by Canadian politicians and activists and spread by media hooked on selling climate catastrophes and green utopias. But both are quite untrue.

That is why I’m writing this series. I will outline how many of the most sensationalist, scary climate stories are misleading or wrong and ignore the best climate science. Being data-driven, I will show you this with the best peer-reviewed data and numbers.

So: Is climate change the world’s all-encompassing problem today? One way to test this is to look at extreme weather, which we constantly hear is having an ever-larger impact on our societies. But the data paint a very different picture (see chart).

We have good evidence for the number of people killed in climate-related disasters, i.e., floods, storms, droughts, and fires. (We’ll look at temperature deaths next week.) A century ago, such disasters routinely killed hundreds of thousands, even millions of people in a single disaster. On average, about half a million people a year died in such disasters. Since then, the death toll has declined precipitously. The last decade saw an average of fewer than 10,000 deaths per year, a decline of more than 97 per cent.

Of course, over the past century the world’s population has quadrupled, which means the risk per person has dropped even more, and is now down by more than 99 per cent. Why this great success story? Because richer, more resilient societies with better technology and forecasting are much better able to protect their citizens. That doesn’t mean there is no climate signal at all, but rather that technology and adaptation entirely swamp its impact.

In the same way, climate’s impact on overall human welfare is also quite small. In proportion to the total economy, the cost of climate-related disasters has been declining since 1990. Looking to the future, the best estimates of the total economic impact of climate change come from two major meta-studies by two of the most respected climate economists. Each shows that end-of-century GDP, instead of being 350 per cent higher, will only be 335 per cent higher.

“Only” becoming 335 per cent richer is a problem, to be sure, but not an existential threat. Despite that, as this series will show, many of the most draconian climate policy proposals so casually tossed around these days will do little to fix climate but could dramatically lower future growth and the opportunities of future generations.

We need to get smart on climate. This series will map out how.

Bjørn Lomborg

Related Topics:#BjornLomborg #CO2 #FraserInstitute #GlobalWarming climatechange feature FinancialPost GetSmartAboutClimate

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Bjorn Lomborg

Climate change hasn’t set the world on fire

Published on August 24, 2023

Todayville

From Bjorn Lomborg of the Copenhagen Consensus Center

One of the most common tropes in our increasingly alarmist climate debate is that global warming has set the world on fire. But it hasn’t.

For more than two decades, satellites have recorded fires across the planet’s surface. The data are unequivocal: Since the early 2000s, when 3% of the world’s land caught fire, the area burned annually has trended downward. In 2022, the last year for which there are complete data, the world hit a new record-low of 2.2% burned area.

Lomborg points out in in Wall Street Journal (also in New York Post without paywall) that you’ll struggle to find that reported anywhere. Instead, media like the New York Times and climate activists often suggest that we’re facing a fiery climate apocalypse, scaring us into supporting even very expensive climate policies.

Although many argue that climate policy is the only way to fix fires, that is just embarrassingly wrong. Prescribed burning, improved zoning and enhanced land management are much faster, more effective and cheaper solutions for tackling fires.

Let’s make the world better and stop the fear-mongering

Fear-mongering and the suppression of truly inconvenient truths are pushing us dangerously toward the wrong solutions.

Jordan Peterson and Lomborg highlight how the meaningful exchange of truly diverse ideas and perspectives has withered over recent decades.

Instead, we need to foster critical thinking and constructive discussion. This is the goal of the new Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC), an international coalition of politicians, business leaders, public intellectuals and cultural commentators.

One of the crucial goals is to help the poorer half of the world focusing on the 12 best policies identified in Copenhagen Consensus’ Halftime project.

The ARC event is by invitation only, but Peterson along with Lomborg and others will host an evening event on November 1 for 15,000 people at the O2 in London (more than 2/3 of tickets have been sold already).

Read Lomborg and Peterson’s article for newspapers around the world, including New York Post, The Telegraph (UK), National Post (on the front page, see left picture above) and Calgary Herald (Canada), The Australian, Business Times (Singapore), Philippine Daily Inquirer, Jakarta Post (Indonesia), Dhaka Tribune (Bangladesh), Daily Graphic (Ghana), Addis Fortune (Ethiopia), Daily Mail (Zambia, print only), New Times (Rwanda), Al-Ahram (Egypt), An-Nahar (Lebanon, in Arabic) Jordan Times, El Tiempo (Colombia), La Prensa (Nicaragua), El Universal (Venezuela), Portfolio (Hungary) and a large number of newspapers across the US, including Detroit News (right picture above), Las Vegas Review-Journal and Santa Maria Times.

Best Things First now available as audiobook

Bjorn Lomborg’s new book Best Things First* (named one of the best summer books of 2023 by Financial Times) is now available as an audiobook.

The book shows how the world’s 12 most efficient policies, for just $35 billion a year, could save more than four million lives per year, and generate annual economic benefits worth over a trillion dollars.

Ahead of the UN General Assembly next month where the Global Goals for 2030 will be a major talking point, Lomborg is promoting the most effective solutions in media around the world, urging the UN and its member states to prioritize those solutions that will do the greatest amount of good per dollar spent.

Take a look at his new interviews e.g. with Tom Bilyeu, Michael Shermer, the Ricochet podcast, VOA Africa and Thought Economics.

Earlier, Lomborg also discussed the book on TV shows and podcasts hosted by Fareed Zakaria, Julia Hartley-Brewer, Will Cain, Jordan Peterson, TRIGGERnometry, Steven Crowder, Adam Carolla, Brendan O’Neill and Andrew Bolt.

*As an Amazon Associate, the Copenhagen Consensus Center earns from qualifying purchases.

Climate alarmism leads to poor policies

As surely as temperatures rise during the summer, climate alarmism serves up more stories of life-threatening heat domes, apocalyptic fires, and biblical floods, all blamed squarely on global warming. Yet, the data to prove this link is often cherry-picked, and the proposed policy responses are enormously ineffective.

Take the tragic fire in Hawaii, for example. It is lazy and unhelpful for pundits to use the tragedy to incorrectly blame climate change. They claim it was tinder-box dry, but through most of the past 23 years, Maui County was drier than the week it burned. The drought is blamed on climate, but the most recent scientific study shows no climate signal. Lomborg argues in an interview on FOX News that pointing wrongly to climate change is dangerous because cutting emissions is one of the least-effective ways to help prevent future fires.

In his brand new article for New York Post, he writes that if we want to do better on climate, we must resist the misleading, alarmist climate narrative. Panic is a terrible advisor.

Lomborg on social media

Data: Fire has burned lowest area in the US in a decade

The easy fix that could save countless lives worldwide

More environmental or climate-specific knowledge leads to people having less climate change anxiety

10x more cold deaths than heat deaths in Europe

Is the US “rapidly shifting away from fossil fuels”?

Wildfire emits ever less CO₂

About Bjorn Lomborg and the Copenhagen Consensus

Dr. Bjorn Lomborg researches the smartest ways to improve the environment and the world.

He is the author of several best-selling books, Visiting Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, and he has worked with many hundreds of the world’s top economists, including seven Nobel Laureates. TIME Magazine has named him one of the world’s 100 most influential people.

Lomborg is a frequent commentator in print and broadcast media, for outlets including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Times of India and China Daily. His monthly columns are published in 35+ newspapers across all continents in more than a dozen languages.

The Copenhagen Consensus Center was named Think Tank of the Year in International Affairs by Prospect Magazine. It has repeatedly been top-ranked by University of Pennsylvania in its global overview of think tanks.

Thank you for your continued interest .

David Lessmann
Communications Manager
Copenhagen Consensus Center
[email protected]

Bjorn Lomborg

Actions That Would Do More Good Than Wasting Trillions on Climate Change

Published on June 27, 2023

Todayville

From Stossel TV

Bjorn Lomborg studies solutions for the world’s biggest problems. He says we should spend on the “best things first.”

I asked people on the street in New York how they’d spend money to help the world. Fixing climate change was the most common answer.

Lomborg agrees that climate change is a problem that may threaten our kids someday. But he also says, “if you live most other places on the planet, you’re worried about the fact that your kids might die from easily curable diseases tonight.”

Lomborg has a cheaper plan that would save millions of lives.

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