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Freezing temperatures in the U.S. Northeast have pushed up heating costs, creating serious stress for many Americans. The poor are hit hardest by the cold temperatures, as energy costs - thanks in no small part to climate policies - have increased significantly.
In Europe, where renewable subsidies are about three times as high as in the U.S., higher costs from policies like stringent emissions caps and onerous renewable-energy targets have led to more than 30% of Germans spending at least one-tenth of income on energy, and about half of Greeks are in energy poverty, according to the IEA.
In Wall Street Journal, Lomborg writes that America should learn from Europe’s failure to protect the needy while reducing carbon emissions.
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Copenhagen Consensus, together with Tata Trusts and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is proud to announce its latest prioritization project, India Consensus, starting with the states Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan.
In each of the two states, we work with hundreds of stakeholders who identified more than 700 interventions and solutions which were shortlisted to 70 for detailed analysis. Top Indian and foreign economists are analyzing the economic, social and environmental costs and benefits of each proposal to help politicians, thought leaders, and ordinary voters to focus on doing the most good in the most effective manner.
Writing in the world's largest-circulating English language newspaper Times of India about India Consensus, and highlighting the successes of previous Copenhagen Consensus projects, Professors Faizan Mustafa (VC, National Law University Hyderabad) and VS Vyas (Institute of Development Studies, Jaipur) argue that
"budget setting can always be improved in every nation, and we submit that one of the most effective ways for India to do so would be to engage in cutting-edge economic analysis and to adopt the principle that every rupee should be spent achieving the greatest social benefit that it possibly can. (...) It is an approach that we would like to see expanded to every state."
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Making government smarter
During a month-long stay in India, Bjorn Lomborg promoted the India Consensus project with the major news media in New Delhi, and many meetings in both Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan with hundreds of top government officials, policy makers and bureaucrats. In the meeting with the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, Mr. Naidu was excited and said: "you show us the best policies, and we will implement."
In an interview with the most widely read English daily newspaper in Andhra Pradesh, The Hindu, Lomborg explains that the project "is based on the principle of time-tested cost-benefit analysis of policy decisions and quantifying how every rupee spent translates into benefits to the people", so government can prioritize “the most effective development solutions through this cost-benefit research across a comprehensive development agenda for the State”.
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A climate cure worse than the disease
 The climate policies lauded in Paris at the One Planet Summit last month are essentially high-cost, low-effect gestures. While the EU will devote 20% of its budget this year to climate-related action, even fully achieving the accord's emissions targets throughout this century would prevent just 0.053°C of global warming by 2100.
Read Bjorn Lomborg's new column for Project Syndicate in six languages. It was published by newspapers around the world, including The Australian, Shanghai Daily (China), Arab News, La Nacion (Costa Rica), Today (Singapore), Times of Oman, Tageblatt (Luxembourg) and The New Times (Rwanda).
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Innovation needed to fight climate change
The One Planet Summit in Paris demonstrated that there is a vacuum for global leadership on climate. The US lacks a climate policy, and other leaders are supporting the Paris treaty but failing to live up to it, which anyway would do very little. Underlying the political drama is the economic reality that the carbon cut-driven approach to fight climate change is deeply flawed.
In China Daily, Lomborg points out that the solution to climate change lies not in Paris's failed political approach, but in innovation instead.
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A green dictatorship isn’t the answer to climate change
 Green activists and a even Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist toy with the idea that “democracy must be suspended to solve the climate crisis.”
In Australia's highest circulating newspaper The Herald Sun, Lomborg argues that we need more democracy, not less. This includes paying more attention to the voices of the majority of people around the world who would prefer progress and smart policies on education, health, and jobs over feel-good, high-cost climate Band-Aids.
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