If the global warming circus has a bad boy, it’s Bjorn Lomborg, the Danish author of “The Skeptical Environmentalist” and longtime foil of folks clamoring for big global socialist schemes to tackle climate change, like former vice president Al Gore.
Mr. Lomborg, speaking at the WSJ Eco:nomics conference in California, is sticking to his guns. In a nutshell, he says, that means “If we are going to spend money to do good, let’s try to do the most good.”
His Copenhagen Consensus, a gathering of Nobel-prize winners, drafts a wishlist for global problem solving—not just focusing on energy, but everything from education to combatting tuberculosis. Audience members at the conference voted for education and energy research as their top priorities.
Mr. Lomborg’s presecription for saving the world does not mean signing up for another Kyoto protocol to slowly curb greenhouse-gas emissions, but doing little things such as spending on better nutrition and healthcare in the developing world, he says. He’s afraid the global climate talks slated for Copenhagen in December will be a simple continuation of the climate gabfest circuit that started in Rio de Janiero in 1992: “Let’s try again, but make it even harder,” he scoffs.
If cap-and-trade plans like Kyoto are a bust, what should the world do? Vastly ramping up research and development of new energy technology offers the most bang for the buck, he says, and is “absolutely better” than capping carbon emissions. Each dollar spent on energy R&D would bring $11 in benefits, his group figures; each dollar spent on traditional cap-and-trade plans brings about $0.90 in benefits.
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