久久亚洲国产成人影院-久久亚洲国产的中文-久久亚洲国产高清-久久亚洲国产精品-亚洲图片偷拍自拍-亚洲图色视频

Global EditionASIA 中文雙語Fran?ais
Opinion
Home / Opinion / Op-Ed Contributors

Instead of panicking, fight climate change with innovation

By Bjorn Lomborg | China Daily | Updated: 2021-03-22 07:32
Share
Share - WeChat
[Jin Ding/China Daily]

Across the world, politicians are going out of their way to promise fantastically expensive climate policies. US President Joe Biden has promised to spend $500 billion each year on climate policies-about 13 percent of the entire federal revenue. And the European Union has vowed to spend 25 percent of its budget to combat climate change.

Most rich countries now promise to go carbon neutral by the middle of this century. Shockingly, only one country has made a serious, independent estimate of the cost: New Zealand found it would optimistically cost 16 percent of its GDP by then, equivalent to the entire current budget of the country.
The equivalent cost for the EU and the US would be more than $5 trillion. Each and every year. That is more than the entire United States' federal budget, or more than the governments of EU member states spend across all budgets for education, recreation, housing, environment, economic affairs, police, courts, defense and health.

We are incessantly being told that renewables are ever cheaper and that a transition to green energy will make us richer. Yet this facile argument is belied by reality. Solar panels in some places make cheaper electricity at noon, but at night the cost is infinite. That is why across Europe, the higher the share of wind and solar, the higher the household cost of electricity.

German consumers had to pay €31 billion ($36.92 billion) last year to support supposedly cheaper green energy. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that of the 128 analyzed climate policies, all made us poorer.
Tellingly, European Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans recently admitted that climate policies would be so costly that it would be a "matter of survival for our industry" without huge, protective border taxes.

Climate change is a real, man-made problem. But its impacts are much lower than breathless climate reporting would suggest. The IPCC has found that if we do nothing, the total impact of climate change in the 2070s will be equivalent to reducing incomes by 0.2-2 percent. Given that by then each person is expected to be 363 percent as rich as today, climate change means we will "only" be 356 percent as rich. A problem, yes, but hardly the end of the world.

Climate policies could end up hurting much more by dramatically cutting growth. Comprehensive studies show that for rich countries, lower growth means higher risks of protests and political breakdown. This isn't surprising. If you live in a burgeoning economy, you know that you and your children will be much better off in the coming years.

Therefore, you are more forgiving of the present. If growth is almost absent, the world turns into a zero-sum experience. Better conditions for others likely mean worse conditions for you, resulting in a loss of social cohesion and trust in a worthwhile future. The yellow-vest protests against eco-taxes that have rankled France since 2018 could become a permanent feature of many or most rich societies.

Yet politicians focus on ever stronger climate policies that would lower and potentially eradicate growth over the coming decades. This would delight a few job-secure academics that from comfortable ivory towers advocate degrowth for climate, but it would lead to tragic outcomes of stagnation, strife and discord for ordinary people.

Most voters are not willing to pay for these extravagant climate policies. While Biden proposes spending the equivalent of $1,500 per American per year, a recent survey by The Washington Post showed that more than half the population was unwilling to pay even $24.

Moreover, these policies have little impact. If all Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries were to cut their carbon emissions to zero tomorrow and for the rest of the century, the lack of energy would devastate societies. Yet run on the standard UN climate model, the effort would make an almost unnoticeable reduction in temperatures of 0.4 C by 2100.

This is because more than three-fourths of the global emissions in the rest of this century will come from Asia, Africa and Latin America. The countries in these regions are determined to lift their populations out of poverty and ensure broad development using plentiful energy, mostly from cheap fossil fuels.

The last 30 years of climate policy have delivered high costs and rising emissions. The only reliable ways of cutting emissions have been recessions and the COVID-19 lockdowns, both of which are unpalatable. Expecting countries to stop using cheap energy won't succeed. We need innovation.
Take the terrible air pollution in Los Angeles in the 1950s. It wasn't fixed by na?vely asking people to stop driving cars. Instead, it was fixed through innovation-the catalytic converter allowed people to drive further yet pollute less. We need to invest in research and development to make green energy much cheaper-from better solar, wind and batteries, to cheaper fission, fusion and carbon capture.

Spending trillions of dollars on enormous and premature emission reductions is an unsustainable and ineffective Western world approach. Instead, we should spend tens of billions of dollars to innovate the price of green energy below fossil fuels. That is much more effective, realistic and will make everyone switch.

The views don't necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

The author is president of the Copenhagen Consensus and visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

If you have a specific expertise and would like to contribute to China Daily, please contact us at opinion@chinadaily.com.cn, and comment@chinadaily.com.cn.

Most Viewed in 24 Hours
Top
BACK TO THE TOP
English
Copyright 1995 - . All rights reserved. The content (including but not limited to text, photo, multimedia information, etc) published in this site belongs to China Daily Information Co (CDIC). Without written authorization from CDIC, such content shall not be republished or used in any form. Note: Browsers with 1024*768 or higher resolution are suggested for this site.
License for publishing multimedia online 0108263

Registration Number: 130349
FOLLOW US
主站蜘蛛池模板: 久草在线免费新视频 | 请看一下欧美一级毛片 | 欧美日本亚洲国产一区二区 | 亚洲欧美在线视频免费 | 国产不卡a | 欧美特黄一级 | 久久国产欧美日韩精品免费 | 免费精品国产 | 欧美操操操操 | 国产一级毛片亚洲久留木玲 | 欧美在线日韩在线 | 欧美精品国产一区二区三区 | 玖草视频在线观看 | 日韩特级片| 美女视频很黄很a免费国产 美女视频黄.免费网址 | 精品国产一区二区三区www | 一本到不卡 | 欧美视频一区二区三区精品 | 一级特级毛片 | 国内精品久久久久影院网站 | 美女张开腿给男生桶下面视频 | 一区二区三区在线观看视频 | 亚洲欧美18v中文字幕高清 | 美女一级毛片免费看看 | 日本草草视频在线观看 | 日本人成18在线播放 | 最新理论三级中文在线观看 | 欧洲精品一区二区三区在线观看 | 欧美高清一区二区三区欧美 | 欧美一区二区三区精品 | 男女男精品视频免费观看 | 精品网址| 一个人看的日本免费视频 | 欧美视频在线观看 | 亚洲2020天天堂在线观看 | 天天综合天天看夜夜添狠狠玩 | 好叼操这里只有精品 | 亚洲v视频 | aaa级精品久久久国产片 | 亚洲国产日韩欧美综合久久 | 欧美日韩一区二区三区四区在线观看 |