The belief that climate change is the most pressing issue of our time isn’t only ill-informed, it’s dangerous. So says climate economist Bjorn Lomborg, author of Best Things First and False Alarm. Lomborg sat down with spiked’s Fraser Myers to discuss the disastrous economic impact of climate alarmism, particularly in the UK and Europe, and whether we are at the dawn of a better way forward. What follows is an edited extract from their conversation. You can watch the whole thing here.
Fraser Myers: Scepticism towards Net Zero seems to be going mainstream. Presumably, you see this as a welcome development?
Bjorn Lomborg: It’s certainly a good thing that we’re more realistic. Remember, climate change is a real problem. But it’s not the end of the world. It’s not as though there is a meteor hurtling towards Earth, and nothing else matters, which is how the conversation has been going for the past 10-15 years. This view has led to a lot of really bad policies.
Now, it’s still a problem. I don’t want to go all the way to the other side of the argument and just say ‘drill, baby, drill’, and stop caring about the climate. The important thing is to stop doing all of the stupid stuff that is costing us trillions of dollars, but isn’t helping to fix climate change. Let’s fix climate change, but let’s do it in a cheaper, more effective and smarter way.
Myers: Can you explain why Net Zero has had such a terrible impact on the economy, particularly in Europe?
Lomborg: Fundamentally, if you’re speaking about Net Zero, you very easily end up with a renewables-only approach. Solar and wind are the favourite policies at the moment. The problem is, of course, that you can’t run an economy on something that only works sometimes.
Wind and solar are great when the Sun is shining and the wind is blowing, but at other times the cost is tremendous. Most countries have storage capacity for 10 or 20 minutes of renewable power. But you need capacity for two or three months.
The more wind and solar you have, the higher the cost of energy. No country on Earth has lots of solar and wind and cheap energy. That’s why heavy industry has left Germany, because businesses can’t afford the cost of solar and wind. Instead, they move to the US or China, where energy is cheap.
By aggressively pursuing Net Zero, Germans have done something to make themselves feel good. But unless you have China, India and Africa onboard, you’re missing out on most of the emissions in the 21st century. The reality is that you’re not going to show the way by impoverishing yourself. They will look at Germany and see it as an example of what to avoid.
Myers: Is nuclear energy a viable solution here?
Lomborg: Absolutely. And the fundamental point is that, if you have paid for and built nuclear power plants, you should definitely not decommission them. Unfortunately, that is the mistake that Germany, the US and many other countries around the world have made. That’s just stupid, because you have a free, green energy supply that could last you up to 30 years.
There’s promise in the small, modular fourth-generation nuclear reactors. You wouldn’t need to make one opera house after another. Instead, you could simply roll them out from the factory floor. It has the potential to make nuclear power incredibly cheap and very safe. Of course, we’ve heard that promise before with nuclear power, and it hasn’t happened. So we should be focussing on whether there is a way we could make it happen.
Myers: Why is it that fossil fuels are still so essential to the modern economy?
Lomborg: Because most of us lead comfortable lives, we forget that energy is the basis of our wellbeing. Energy is what makes the world go round.
Remember, half of all food is grown using synthetic fertiliser, which is basically made from gas. More than 80 per cent of global energy comes from fossil fuels. So no, you can’t ‘just stop’ oil, coal and gas. If you did, literally four billion people would die, because we wouldn’t have enough food.
If the UK and European Union went Net Zero today, it would have no impact on the climate. If you put it into the UN climate model, the world would be about 0.02 degrees cooler by mid-century. We wouldn’t even be able to measure it. Even by the end of the century, it would be less than 0.1 degrees. So there would be no impact on the climate, but the cost over the 21st century would be well over 100 trillion pounds. We would impoverish ourselves for no purpose.
Myers: Prosperity seems to come second to the climate these days – but surely a more prosperous society is better for everyone?
Lomborg: Getting people out of poverty is one of the best climate policies you can have. If a hurricane hits a poor country like Guatemala, it kills tens of thousands of people and it destroys their economy. If the same hurricane hits Florida, it kills a couple of people and impacts a bit of production for a few months. This isn’t to downplay the issue, but simply to recognise that what keeps most people safe is the fact that they’re not poor.
Most people think we are seeing more climate disasters than ever. But that’s not true. There are a few categories in which things are getting worse. For example, we’re experiencing more heatwaves. But if you measure the impact of floods, droughts, storms and wildfires in terms of lives lost, far fewer people die today than they did a century ago. In the 1920s, on average, about half a million people died each year from these disasters. In the past 10 years, that figure is around 10,000 – roughly, a 98 per cent reduction in lives lost as a result of natural disasters. So if you want to save people, the best thing you can do is make sure they’re not poor.
Myers: The alleged fate of polar bears is often central to environmentalist campaigning. How are they faring these days?
Lomborg: Polar bears became an iconic species, largely because people became convinced they were going to die out. They featured prominently in Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth. We don’t hear about them anymore, and the main reason is because they’re not going extinct, or anything close.
In the 1960s, there were less than 10,000 polar bears. The number might have been as low as 5,000. Today, that number is around 26,000. Why? Because we’ve stopped shooting them.
I’m always surprised when I hear people say that we need to recalibrate the entire global economy in order to save polar bears. If you really care about them, then stop shooting them.
Fraser Myers was talking to Bjorn Lomborg. Watch the full conversation here:
