Let’s focus on the smartest strategies to help the world

This article submitted by Bjorn Lomborg of the Copenhagen Consensus Centre

Dr. Bjorn Lomborg researches the smartest ways to do good in the world and has repeatedly been named one of Foreign Policy’s top 100 public intellectuals.

He is the author of several best-selling books, Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and he has worked with many hundreds of the world’s top economists, including seven Nobel Laureates.

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 dozens of newspapers across all continents.

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.

Net-zero climate policy offers much pain, little gain

In rich countries, energy policies designed to make fossil fuels expensive are doing exactly what they were supposed to do. Since the 2015 Paris climate agreement, global fossil-fuel investment has halved, inevitably driving up prices.

Unfortunately, the painless transition to renewable energy sources that climate activists have promised has not happened: Renewables are far from ready to power the world. This has been a significant contributor to the current energy crisis, and despite energy scarcity, we’re not reining in carbon emissions.

Emerging economies that are focused on poverty eradication and economic development are unlikely to follow a net-zero approach that brings much pain for very little climate reward. India even wants the West to pay $1 trillion in climate finance just to start its transition.

Bjorn Lomborg writes in a new op-ed for New York Post(USA), National Post (Canada), The Australian, Addis Fortune (Ethiopia) and Tempi (Italy) that without affordable, effective fossil-fuel replacements, power bills will rise and growth will shrink. That’s why we need to focus on green energy innovation.

Electric car subsidies are a bad investment

Climate activists and politicians constantly tell us electric cars are cleaner, cheaper, and better. California and many countries, including the U.K., Germany, and Japan, will even prohibit the sale of new gas and diesel cars within a decade or two.

But if electric cars are really so good, why do we need to ban the alternatives? And why do we need to subsidize electric cars to the tune of $30 billion per year?

Lomborg writes in Newsweek that you can buy the same CO2 reduction an electric car offers compared to a gas car on America’s longest-established carbon trading system for about $300, making electric car subsidies one of the least effective and most expensive ways to cut emissions.

The world is getting better. We just don’t hear about it.

Not long ago, environmentalists constantly used pictures of polar bears to highlight the dangers of climate change. The bears even featured in Al Gore’s fear-inducing movie An Inconvenient Truth. But the reality is that polar bear numbers have been increasing – from 5,000-10,000 polar bears in the 1960s, up to around 26,000 today. We don’t hear this news. Instead, campaigners just quietly stopped using polar bears in their activism.

With a torrent of doom and gloom about climate change and the environment in the news, it’s understandable why many people — especially the young — genuinely believe the world is about to end. The fact is that while significant problems remain, many indicators, even environmental, are in fact getting better. We just rarely hear it.

Bjorn Lomborg’s op-ed is currently being syndicated with newspapers around the world. So far it has been published in multiple US newspapers including New York Post, Las Vegas Review-Journal, Press of Atlantic City and The Daily Courier as well as Financial Post (Canada), The Herald (United Kingdom), Business Day (South Africa), Berlingske (Denmark), Listy z naszego sadu (Poland), Addis Fortune (Ethiopia) and Voinamir (Bulgaria).

Facts on hurricanes are blowing in the wind

Despite what you may hear over and over again, Atlantic hurricanes are not becoming more frequent. The best long-term data shows that the frequency of hurricanes making landfall on the continental United States has declined slightly since 1900.

But many more people live in the paths of hurricanes compared to even a few decades ago. Florida had fewer than 600,000 houses in 1940 — today, that number is 17 times higher, at more than 10 million.

Yes, we need to find smart climate solutions. But if our goal is to protect lives and property from hurricanes, better infrastructure, fed by improved technology and wealth, does more than cutting carbon emissions.

Read more in Forbes and multiple American newspapers including Las Vegas Review-Journal, Boston Herald, The Reporter, The Mercury, The Times Herald, News Tribuneand The Times Herald.

Practical solutions to address climate change

Climate change is not the extinction-level event it is often characterized as. Still, it is a problem we need to address, focusing on smart, effective solutions. In his latest long-form interview on climate change and climate policy on Uncommon Knowledge (filmed at Stanford University), Lomborg discusses practical ways to lower our carbon footprint and emissions, pointing out why “carbon free by 2050” probably isn’t achievable without massive energy breakthroughs coming from green energy R&D.

He also recorded an hour-long podcast interview with Mark Moss, discussing the cost of climate change as well as our responses to it, including renewables, electric cars, greenwashing, biofuels and innovation.

People will rebel against green policies

The disconnect between climate-worried global elites and the real world suffering from the energy crisis and the aftermath of the pandemic is growing by the day. The costs of the climate and environmental policies are quickly becoming unbearable, and people are starting to rebel against green diktats, as we have recently seen in the Netherlands and Sri Lanka.

Even under today’s policies that won’t get us close to the net zero target, EU vice-president and long-time climate action advocate Frans Timmermans admits many millions of Europeans may not be able to heat their homes this northern winter. This, he concludes, could lead to “very strong conflict and strife”. He’s right. When people are cold, hungry and broke, they rebel. If the elite continues pushing expensive policies that are disconnected from the urgent challenges facing most people, we need to brace for much more global chaos.

Read Bjorn Lomborg’s analysis in newspapers around the world, including Financial Post (Canada), The Australian, The Philippine Daily Inquirer, City AM (UK), El Tiempo (Colombia), Milenio (Mexico), Listin Diario(Dominican Republic), La Prensa (Nicaragua), El Periodico (Guatemala), El Universal (Venezuela),
Business Day (South Africa), Addis Fortune (Ethiopia), Tempi (Italy), Finmag (Czech Republic) and multiple US newspapers such as Las Vegas Review-Journal, Press of Atlantic City, The Telegraph and The Times of Northwest Indiana.

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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.

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