Climate change: are we overreacting? - GZERO Media
Climate change: are we overreacting? - GZERO Media
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Climate change: are we overreacting?
Climate experts agree that climate change is real and human-caused. But how far should the world go to combat it? Will the worst-case scenarios forecast by climate scientists end up a reality?
On GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, author Bjorn Lomborg says the answer is no. Climate change is indeed a problem, he says, but “it’s not the end of the world.”
The capabilities of renewable energy technology like solar power, wind turbines, and battery storage have significantly improved over the last decade, while at the same time, the costs have gone down dramatically, notes Lomborg, who recently published "Best Things First: The 12 most efficient solutions for the world’s poorest and our global SDG promises." But he argues that throwing a pile of money at the problem is not a viable solution because renewable technology is nowhere near where it needs to be to avert climate disaster.
We're not talking about ‘we need to double or triple [renewable energy capabilities].’ We need a hundred-fold increase,” Lomborg tells Ian Bremmer. “We are far away from this actually being something that will scale even in rich countries and certainly not in poor countries.”
Lomborg worries that policy priorities are out of whack and billions of dollars are being wasted on incremental climate mitigation when there are so many urgent issues, like education or maternal mortality, where that money could be used more effectively.
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld or on US public television. Check local listings.
Related Knowledge Center: Climate science
What began as a theory in the 1890s — that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide could increase global temperatures — had progressed to a scientific fact a century later. Scientists across a range of disciplines are studying the impact of the still-growing concentration of carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere as they call for industrial and governmental policies to slow, then halt, the warming of the planet.