The 2015 Paris climate agreement is a highly costly treaty that will change little. That’s the view of Bjorn Lomborg, who’s been named one of the most influential people of the 21st century. Lomborg, who has his own think tank and has written several books on the issue, admits that climate change is real, but says the Paris accord is a tiny way of doing something about global warming. He argues that it will solve just one percent of the problem at a very high cost.
Lomborg argues that what we should be doing instead is investing the money into research and development of green energy, which needs to be made cheaper than fossil fuels. He joined us for Perspective.
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Lomborg warns UN Paris agreement has “a very, very high cost.”
“The Paris agreement, by its own organizers, the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) — the guys that did the Paris agreement — they estimate that the total impact, if everybody does what they promise to 2030 — will cut 1% of what it will take us to get to 2 degrees C (temperature goal). So fundamentally, it will leave 99% of the problem still there. And the cost will be in the order of 1 to 2 trillion dollars a year. So it is a very costly treaty to do very little…”
“We have been trying the Paris agreement approach for the last 20 years. We started back in 1992, promised to cut carbon emission and didn’t do it by 2000. Then we met in Kyoto and promised in 1998 to cut carbon emissions in 2010. Most countries only just made it mostly because of the global recession. So we have been promising for 25 years to do stuff that we don’t really live up to. The Paris agreement is just one more step in that approach.
I would argue if we fail for the last quarter century, maybe its time to change track.”
