Tackling climate change 'too expensive' 11 May 04

Our old friend Bjorn Lomborg disinters himself with an unwelcome appearance in today’s Times, making his oh-so familiar argument that implementing Kyoto will take billions of dollars which would otherwise have helped feed starving babies in Africa (or, more likely, flabby arms dealers in Washington). “The cost of the Kyoto Protocol will be at least $150 billion a year, and possibly much more,” he whines. Of course, the only thing we can all be certain about with regard to economic predictions (unlike science-based climatological ones) is that they’ll be wrong, and that they reflect the assumptions of those doing the calculating rather than anything approaching reality. And as usual, Lomborg supports his case by underplaying (though not denying) the dangerous impacts of climate change – for which he provides only a laughably optimistic costing. So combating global warming will cost billions, whilst not combating it will cost, er, not very much. And a bit of warming may even be good for us! Impeccable logic as always, Lomborg.