A Better Way Than Cap and Trade

by Bruce Josten

Bjorn Lomborg spoke at the Chamber's "Policy Insiders" series yesterday. In addition to his background described in his Washington Post op-ed published today, Lomborg is Director of Denmark's National Environmental Assessment Institute, was named one of the world's most influential people by Time magazine, was named one of the 50 people who could save the planet by the Guardian and organized the Copenhagen Consensus. At the Chamber event yesterday, Lomborg made the following points:

• The consequences of climate change are grossly exaggerated and, as a result, will lead to bad policy judgments.
• For example, sea levels could rise by 1 foot over one hundred years (not 20 as Gore likes to say) and Lomborg points out that sea levels already rose 1 foot in the last 150 years without any interference by man or severe consequences.
• If every nation in the world complied with Kyoto, by 2100, we would postpone warming by 5 years, but at a cost of $180 billion a year, each and every year.
• If every nation in the world complied with Kyoto, by 2100, we would save one polar bear, whereas at the same time, we kill between 300 to 500 polar bears a year hunting.
• If every nation in the world complied with Kyoto, by 2100, we would save 1400 "heat deaths" in the E.U. but he points out, at the same time, 20,000 "cold deaths" would be avoided in the E.U. and no one points that out.
• Lomborg argues that if instead the U.N. spent $75 billion a year every year until 2100, we could solve all of the world's major problems. See the 2008 Copenhagen Consensus list, and note that global warming ranked 14th out of the top 20 problems worldwide and notably failed to make the top ten. Research for the project was done by a lead author of the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change--the group that shared last year's Nobel Peace Prize with former vice president Al Gore.
• Finally, Lomborg argues that with an investment of 0.05% of GDP in R&D in non-carbon emitting technologies (ten times less than the cost estimate of complying with Kyoto) new technologies needed would be accelerated and ultimately deployed that would far more effectively tackle the challenge of carbon emission.