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Hours after being inaugurated as President, Joe Biden recommitted the United States to the Paris climate agreement, arguing that climate change was an "existential threat".
This climate alarmism is poorly founded. Take hurricanes. Carefully curated stories tell you that last year's Atlantic hurricane season was "record-setting". But globally, 2020 ranked as one of the weakest hurricanes years in the 40-year satellite record.
The Paris Agreement is a very expensive way of achieving very little for the climate, costing $1-2 trillion per year to deliver 1% of the cuts needed to limit warming to 2°C. Many of Biden's policies are simply very expensive ways to deliver almost nothing.
Fortunately, Biden is also suggesting another, much more effective solution, namely investment in green energy R&D. More than 20 other countries made a promise to increase research funding at the sidelines of the Paris Summit, but they largely failed to deliver. This part of Biden's climate policy could help refocus the world on smarter climate spending.
Lomborg's new column was published in newspapers around the world, including New York Post (USA), The Australian, Jyllands-Posten (Denmark), Die Presse (Austria), Milenio (Mexico), Perfil (Argentina), El Universo (Ecuador), La Tercera (Chile), Los Tiempos (Bolivia), Estrategia & Negocios (Central America), Jakarta Post (Indonesia) and Business Day (South Africa).
Lomborg also discussed Biden's decision on US television and radio, including Fox and Friends, Varney & Co and The Ben Shapiro Show. |
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The tragedy of pregnant women and their children dying has been on the global health community’s radar for a long time. Development professionals have put forward many proposals on how to address this global crisis, but trying to fix everything everywhere comes at a cost of over $30 billion per year — an amount that is hard to mobilize.
A new study for Copenhagen Consensus now shows the most cost-effective way to save the lives of mothers and their children. Targeted spending of less than a tenth of the amount typically asked for on family planning and Basic Emergency Obstetric and Newborn Care in the 59 hardest hit countries could save 162,000 mothers every year along with 1.2 million newborns. Every dollar spent will yield benefits worth $71.
Newspapers across the world continued to publish articles on this research in January, including China Daily, The Australian, National Post (Canada), Business Day (South Africa), Listin Diario (Dominican Republic), La Prensa Grafica (El Salvador), Los Tiempos (Bolivia), Svenska Dagbladet (Sweden) and Addis Fortune (Ethiopia).
In December, the Los Angeles Times (USA) ran this story,
along with Jyllands-Posten (Denmark), Milenio (Mexico), Jakarta Post (Indonesia), Punch (Nigeria), The Nation (Kenya), La Tercera (Chile), Perfil (Argentina), La Prensa (Nicaragua), El Periodico (Guatemala), El Heraldo (Honduras), El Universo (Ecuador) and Phnom Penh Post (Cambodia).
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The new US Administration has made climate change one of its top priorities. President Biden’s climate czar, John Kerry, just stated that climate policy will be central to the nation's foreign policy, admitting that "when almost 90 percent of all of the planet’s emissions come from outside of US borders, we could go to zero tomorrow and the problem isn’t solved." Indeed, even if all OECD countries stopped all their emissions today and never bounced back, global warming would be reduced by the end of the century by less than 0.8° F / 0.4°C.
Lomborg exlains on FOX and Friends that this is why the best climate policy is focussing on innovation to make green energy so cheap that China, India, Africa and Latin America will be able to afford it.
He also points out that White House National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy's claim that climate is the "most significant public health challenge of our time" is silly, especially during a global pandemic. Cold is 17 times more deadly than heat, and there are many other diseases both in the US and the rest of the world that qualify as significant public health issues much more than climate does.
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Digitization can help Ghana unlock enormous potentials
Ghana's President rightly emphasizes the digital opportunities for his country. Across all possible policies, the Eminent Panel of Ghana Priorities has concluded that digital revenue collection is the best policy to embark upon; it will indeed transform the whole Ghanaian economy.
As Lomborg and Prof. Augustin Fosu point out in Ghana's leading newspaper Daily Graphic, digitization is vital for local governments to generate their own income. Digitizing property and business fees can make tax collection much more efficient, and this will help municipalities to provide the best possible services to citizens.
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