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Smart solutions to climate change
Lomborg book compares costs and benefits
Bjorn Lomborg’s thought-provoking new book Smart Solutions to Climate Change: Comparing Costs and Benefits comes out in the UK on towards the end of September. The book challenges many orthodoxies while it focuses on the likely costs and benefits of a very wide range of policy and smart technology options.
These include geo-engineering, mitigation of CO2, methane and ‘black carbon’, the need for significant research and development investments, low-carbon energy plus encouraging green technology transfer.
For each policy, there is a clearly presented outline all of the costs, benefits and likely outcomes accompanied by shorter, alternative perspectives.
The purpose of the book is twofold:
To present research by expert authors on the costs and benefits of different solutions to climate change and to provide analysis of that research by Nobel Laureate level economists, so that readers can see which solutions have the most merit.
The book opens with a relatively accessible, 6-page introduction by Bjorn Lomborg in which he:
- Acknowledges that global warming is real and notes that this has always been his position
- Outlines why we should care about this challenge
- Argues that the ‘Kyoto approach’ to global warming has failed
- Says we must look at other ways of solving global warming
- Explains the Copenhagen Consensus approach and lists the Center’s past projects
- Tells readers that for each different ‘solution’ to climate change, there are at least two chapters by two sets of authors – this is to provide readers with different views about the costs and benefits. There are main chapters and then ‘alternative perspective’ sections
- Introduces every chapter in the book and summarizes in a sentence or two the author’s key findings.
The book has eight chapters which each contain complex analysis and reviews of other studies to establish the costs and benefits for spending up to $250billion annually on ‘solutions’ to climate change such as climate engineering, carbon dioxide mitigation, forestry carbon sequestration, black carbon mitigation, methane mitigation, adaptation, climate policy and technology transfers. – with 2 ‘alternative perspective’ sections
An ‘expert panel’ of five explains jointly and then individually how each ranks the solutions. In other words, which ‘solutions’ should policy-makers focus on first? The experts include three Nobel prize-winners in economic science. The five are: Nancy L. Stokey, Vernon L. Smith (NOBEL winner), Thomas C. Schelling (NOBEL winner), Finn E. Kydland (NOBEL winner), Jagdish N. Bhagwati.
The panel concludes that money should be spent on:
- Researching green energy alternatives to solve the massive technological challenge in moving away from fossil fuels;
- Researching climate engineering solutions (such as, for example, ‘marine cloud whitening’ where particles are shot into the atmosphere) to establish their feasibility as a possible emergency back-stop measure.
These conclusions (and the overarching concern that policy-makers are ‘on the wrong track’) are consistent with the film COOL IT.
Smart Solutions to Climate Change: Comparing Costs and Benefits by Bjorn Lomborg is published by Cambridge University Press. Price £19.99
More information: www.cambridge.org
One Response to “Smart solutions to climate change”
ecoadmin says:
Microsoft multi billionaire, Bill Gates, says: “This research shows clearly that we must prime the pump on innovation now with increased funding for research and development.”