How the climate elite spread misery

Submitted by Bjorn Lomborg of the Copenhagen Consensus Center

The chattering classes who jet to conferences at Davos or Aspen have for years been telling the rest of us that our biggest immediate threats are climate change, environmental disasters and biodiversity loss. Yet, their singular focus on climate change ignores that people are much more worried about rampant inflation, especially rising food and energy prices.

Unfortunately, climate policies are making those problems worse. Lomborg writes in The Wall Street Journal that when people are cold, hungry and broke, they rebel. If the elites continue pushing incredibly expensive policies that are disconnected from the urgent challenges facing most people, we need to brace for chaos.

He also discussed this topic in interviews with Paul Gigot on The Journal Editorial Report, with Laura Ingrahamand with Stuart Varney.

The rich are denying the poor the power to develop

Rich countries – despite their climate rhetoric – are heavily relying on coal, oil and gas to cope with the current energy crisis. Yet, the G7 recently decided to stop funding any fossil fuel projects in the developing world, immorally blocking the path for poorer countries to develop. This is clearly not what developing countries want, as their leaders and ordinary citizens have made very clear.

Cost-benefit analysis can help policymakers maximize social returns

The Copenhagen Consensus approach has successfully introduced a rational, data-driven input to national priority-setting in many countries, including Bangladesh, Haiti, India, Ghana and Malawi in recent years.

With the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals reaching their halfway mark by the end of this year, it is time to assess how much progress countries have made towards the goals, and what they should focus on over the following eight years to create the largest-possible benefits for their societies.

Lomborg argues in a full page article for the leading Honduran newspaper El Heraldo that data from economic science can help politicians and their officials pick more of the really effective programs and slightly fewer of the less so, to maximize social returns for every dollar spent.

US $369 billion climate bill has virtually no impact

President Biden enthusiastically describes his administration’s new Inflation Reduction Act as “the most significant legislation in history to tackle the climate crisis.” Curiously though, neither officials nor media praising the IRA are stating the actual climate impact of spending $369 billion on the bill’s climate provisions.

There’s a good reason for this: As Lomborg explains on social media and TV interviews, e.g. with Varney and Kudlow, the UN’s own climate model shows that the impact will be impossible to detect by mid-century and still unnoticeable even in the best case by the year 2100.

Lomborg’s findings were also highlighted in a Wall Street Journal editorial and by Fox News which reported that the White House and leading proponents of the bill “didn’t respond to inquiries” pointing out that the bill would slow down rising temperatures by merely 0.0009°F to 0.028°F in 2100.

Green energy needs to be affordable for everyone

The climate-policy approach of trying to push consumers and businesses away from fossil fuels with price spikes is causing substantial pain with little climate pay-off. In rich countries, this approach risks growing resentment and strife, as France saw with the “yellow vest” protest movement.

But for the poorest billions, rising energy prices are even more serious because they block the pathway out of poverty and make fertilizer unaffordable for farmers, imperiling food production. The well-off in rich countries might be able to withstand the pain of some climate policies, but emerging economies like India or low-income countries in Africa cannot afford to sacrifice poverty eradication and economic development to tackle climate change.

Read Bjorn Lomborg’s globally-syndicated column in publications such as New York Post and Press of Atlantic City (both USA), Financial Post (Canada), Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Switzerland), O Globo (Brazil), The Australian, Berlingske (Denmark), de Telegraaf (Netherlands), Tempi(Italy), Listy z naszego sadu (Poland), Addis Fortune(Ethiopia), Milenio (Mexico), El Periodico (Guatemala), La Prensa (Nicaragua), La Tercera (Chile), El Pais(Uruguay), La Prensa Grafica (El Salvador), El Universal(Venezuela), CRHoy (Costa Rica) and Listy z naszego sadu(Poland).

Lomborg also discussed the importance of affordable and reliable energy on Tucker Carlson Tonight.

‘False Alarm’ around the world

Bjorn Lomborg’s bestselling book False Alarm* is now available in more than a dozen languages. Here is the Chinese edition, other translations include German, Czech, Spanish, Finnish, Norwegian and many more.

The book remains an international success. The English original has been reprinted eight times in hardcover and six times in paperback, and several translations are also being reprinted now.

*As an Amazon Associate Copenhagen Consensus earns fromqualifying purchases.

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Bjorn Lomborg

Climate change hasn’t set the world on fire

Published on August 27, 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 28, 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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Libertarian journalist John Stossel created Stossel TV to explain liberty and free markets to young people. Prior to Stossel TV he hosted a show on Fox Business and co-anchored ABC’s primetime newsmagazine show, 20/20.

Stossel’s economic programs have been adapted into teaching kits by a non-profit organization, “Stossel in the Classroom.” High school teachers in American public schools now use the videos to help educate their students on economics and economic freedom. They are seen by more than 12 million students every year.

Stossel has received 19 Emmy Awards and has been honored five times for excellence in consumer reporting by the National Press Club. Other honors include the George Polk Award for Outstanding Local Reporting and the George Foster Peabody Award