Showing 1 - 10 of 10
Green energy has become a pricey delusion
Oped, Bjorn Lomborg, Published on 13/05/2025
» Ask families in Germany and the UK what happens when more and more supposedly cheap solar and wind power is added to the national power mix, and they can tell you by looking at their utility bills: it gets far more expensive. This goes against everything that we're being told. Green energy is supposed to be incredibly cheap. But we're not hearing the real story.
What climate spending really costs the globe
Oped, Bjorn Lomborg, Published on 24/01/2025
» Across the world, public finances are stretched dangerously thin. Per person growth continues dropping while costs are climbing for pensions, education, healthcare, and defence. These urgent priorities could easily require an additional 3-6% of GDP. Yet green campaigners are loudly calling for governments to spend up to 25% of our GDP choking growth in the name of climate change.
Pricey policies to curb climate change 'dead'
Oped, Bjorn Lomborg, Published on 28/11/2024
» The latest climate summit has been as hypocritical and dysfunctional as every one before, with most world leaders not even bothering to turn up. Still, 50,000 people flew in from across the world, while essentially telling the rest of us to stop flying. Poor-country politicians performatively staged a "walk-out", and rich nations ended up promising a climate slush fund of US$300 billion (about 10 trillion baht) a year.
Climate policies are getting far too expensive
Oped, Bjorn Lomborg, Published on 02/11/2024
» As climate policy increasingly drives up living costs with next to no results, voters are becoming wearier of expansive green promises. We can only hope this backlash could lead to better, cheaper and more effective measures.
The transition to green energy that wasn't
Oped, Bjorn Lomborg, Published on 06/09/2024
» Despite much hype, the much-vaunted green energy transition away from fossil fuels isn't happening. Achieving a meaningful shift with current policies turns out to be unaffordably costly. We need to drastically change policy direction.
Eyeing climate change, follow science, warily
Oped, Bjorn Lomborg, Published on 06/06/2024
» We endlessly hear the flawed assertion that because climate change is real, we should "follow the science" and end fossil fuel use. We hear this claim from politicians who favour swift carbon cuts, and from natural scientists themselves, as when the editor-in-chief of Nature insists "The science is clear -- fossil fuels must go".
Politicising novel solutions to climate change
News, Bjorn Lomborg, Published on 13/05/2024
» Climate studies are increasingly becoming politicised. Harvard University recently shut down a key geoengineering research project because of intense backlash, despite the college's aspiration to become "a global beacon for climate change."
Why solar and wind are not winning
Oped, Bjorn Lomborg, Published on 20/04/2024
» Despite us constantly being told that solar and wind are now the cheapest forms of electricity, governments around the world needed to spend US$1.8 trillion (66.3 trillion baht) on the green transition last year. "Wind and solar are already significantly cheaper than coal and oil" is how US President Joe Biden conveniently justifies spending hundreds of billions of dollars on green subsidies. Indeed, arguing that wind and solar is cheapest is a meme employed by green lobbyists, activists and politicians around the world. Unfortunately, as the $1.8 trillion price-tag shows, the claim is wildly deceptive.
Reducing emissions not so easy
Oped, Bjorn Lomborg, Published on 10/11/2021
» At the UN Climate Summit in Glasgow (COP26), most leaders of rich nations are eagerly promising to decarbonise their economies by mid-century or even sooner. Yet, it is highly questionable if they and their successors will want or be able to keep their promise. Even worse, growth-reducing climate policies won't convince developing countries who need to lift their populations out of poverty and whose emissions matter most this century.
Shifting climate costs to the world's poor
Oped, Bjorn Lomborg, Published on 28/05/2021
» To tackle climate change, rich nations are promising to end fossil fuel use in 29 years. As this becomes excruciatingly costly, the G7 is now thinking about making the world's poor pay for it. That will go badly.