Lomborg Sees Green Tech, Not GHG Cuts, as Global Warming Fix

In an op-ed published today by the Washington Post, climatologist Bjorn Lomborg said the Copenhagen climate summit "did the planet a favor by refusing to endorse a binding agreement to drastically reduce carbon emissions. That's because their inability to make progress may be the nudge the international community needs to face the real inconvenient truth: that after nearly two decades of fruitless efforts, it's time to give up our Rio-Kyoto-Copenhagen fantasy and get real about combating global warming."

Lomborg said developing nations would continue to block international agreement on mandatory GHG cuts because their economic needs must come first. Developed nations face the same issue, because "trying to force drastic cuts in carbon emissions makes no economic sense. We would need a global tax on carbon emissions that would start at $102 per ton [or about 90 cents per gallon of gasoline] -- and increase to $4,000 per ton [or $35.51 per gallon of gasoline] by the end of the century. In all, this would cost the world $40 trillion a year. Most mainstream calculations conclude that this is 50 times more expensive than the climate damage it seeks to prevent."

What could work? Lomborg said green technology offers one possibility, if R&D were pressed forward as quickly as possible and governments funded the work "to the point where we can increase our reliance on them by several orders of magnitude. Instead of condemning billions of people to continued poverty by trying to make fossil fuels more expensive, we should make green energy cheaper."