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The good and bad of Joe Biden’s $2 trillion climate change plan
Promising to spend $2 trillion on climate over the next four years, U.S. presidential candidate Joe Biden is taking a path similar to that of politicians from many other rich countries, vowing costly policies to help address global warming. Many of his proposed policies are ineffective and expensive. Some might even increase emissions.
However, Biden’s proposal to quadruple global green energy R&D investment is exactly what could fix climate change. Three-quarters of the expected emissions over the rest of the century comes from China, India, Africa and the rest of the non-rich world. They are not about to implement unaffordable trillion-dollar climate investments. But if innovations could push the price of zero-CO₂ energy below fossil fuels, all nations would switch.
Lomborg's new column is being published in newspapers around the world, including Los Angeles Daily News, The Australian, Jakarta Post (Indonesia), New Zealand Herald and Aftenposten (Norway).
Lomborg also discussed the fires on Sky News Australia with host Chris Kenny.
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Bjorn Lomborg's new book False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet continues to receive positive reviews from media across the globe.
Britain's newspaper of record The Times calls the book a "calm, rational analysis of climate change and what to do about it... False Alarm is an essential book. If anyone in your family or circle of friends has succumbed to XR mania, this could be an invaluable corrective, providing balance, solutions and optimism."
 Canadian newspaper Financial Post praises Lomborg for his "sensible perspective on climate change policies", and Denmark's leading newspaper Jyllands-Posten concludes in its book review that "Lomborg's insights are more important now than ever, and he presents them razor-sharp with a wealth of useful and convincing data and examples."
These follow good reviews e.g. in Financial Times which highlights Lomborg's "powerful" argumentation, National Review says Lomborg's "approach is undoubtedly the optimal one…If you buy only one book on climate change…this should be the book," and Forbes praises the book for being "meticulously researched, and well worth a read."
Lomborg also discussed the book on radio shows worldwide, e.g. with Chris Smith on 2GB Australia or W Radio in Colombia.
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California Gov. Gavin Newsom made headlines by signing an executive order banning the future sale of new gasoline-powered cars and trucks. Banning gas transport, he said in a statement, “is the most impactful step our state can take to fight climate change.” Poetically, he stressed that “our cars shouldn’t make wildfires worse.”
Focusing on alleviating wildfire with electric cars is both bad science and policy. Even if we incorrectly grant Newsom emissions reductions from 2 million new cars every year from 2035, this will reduce temperature increases in 2100 by less than 0.002°F. Instead, Newsom should fast-track prescribed burns to actually tackle wildfire over just a few years. But he wouldn’t get as many headlines.
Read Bjorn Lomborg's op-ed for The Dallas Morning News. The article was also published across Latin America, e.g. in Perfil (Argentina), Milenio (Mexico) and La Prensa (Nicaragua).
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Modernised administration for increased autonomy
 Digitising public administration at the local level improves efficiency and productivity. Faster and simpler revenue collection, especially, boosts transparency and increases municipalities’ autonomy by enhancing their ability to generate more local income in a systematic manner.
 Together with Germany's development agency GIZ, Ghana Priorities analysed the implementation of software to manage property rate collection. The benefits are a faster data collection process, improved efficiency, and increased revenue for the municipalities. Each cedi spent on this intervention yields a return nearly nine times higher.
Read more about the dlRev software in Bjorn Lomborg's article for Ghana's leading newspaper Daily Graphic and on the GIZ website.
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Transformed transportation to boost growth
 Ghana has been experiencing steady economic development, but GDP growth has not been supported with enough infrastructure to boost welfare sustainably in the long term. Accra’s rapid demographic growth also creates transportation issues through an increased number of vehicles and congestion.
 While solutions in the transport sector have only moderate cost-benefit ratios, researchers for Ghana Priorities found that by linking rural areas to cities via road, rail, and ferry and easing Accra’s traffic congestion to save costs and time, decision-makers can bring both short-term comfort and long-lasting change for the people.
Read a summary of this study in Bjorn Lomborg's article for Ghana's leading newspaper Daily Graphic.
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Boosting Ghana’s industry for sustained growth
 Ghana has the potential to improve its industry sector - particularly with regard to bauxite mining to aluminium production - thanks to large natural resource deposits. However, infrastructural deficits impose restrictions on the growth drivers of the economy and undermine efforts for structural transformation.
 To improve Ghana’s industrial sector, researchers for Ghana Priorities studied the costs and benefits of setting up an integrated bauxite authority to facilitate mining, processing, and transforming bauxite into alumina and aluminium. They found the benefits to be slightly higher than the cost.
Read a summary of this research in Bjorn Lomborg's article for Ghana's leading newspaper Daily Graphic.
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