Björn Lomborg on Avoiding Panic in Climate Policy
“If innovations could push the price of carbon-free energy below the price of fossil fuels, all nations would switch. Climate economics shows that this is the most effective, long-term climate policy. During the Paris Climate Summit 2015, then-President Obama and many other world leaders, including Chancellor Merkel, promised to double global spending on green research and development by 2020. Unfortunately, actual spending has barely moved.
Why costs and benefits should be weighed against each other in climate policy beyond all ideology.
But Biden’s plan could change all that. He proposes to spend $75 billion a year on green research and development, which would quadruple the spending of all OECD countries annually. We will not sustainably fix climate change with expensive measures that are a hundred or a thousand times more expensive than what people are willing to pay. Scaring voters with false climate alarmism will backfire. But Biden’s proposal to quadruple global investments in green research and development is exactly what could fix climate change.”
– Björn Lomborg, President of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, in “No Climate Panic”, guest commentary in Handelsblatt of November 3, 2020, No. 213
