That’s the title of Bjorn Lomborg’s new book and Kimberley Strassel reviews it here.
From Strassel’s concluding paragraph: “Lomborg’s cost-benefit approach won’t sit well with leftists who see global warming programs as a proxy for other goals (say, reducing “materialism”). And his calls for taxpayer-funded R&D investments won’t sit well with small-government conservatives who may be skeptical of global warming in the first place.”
The first point is indubitably correct. Global warming hysteria is the Trojan Horse for smuggling into public policy a host of coercive utopian dreams. The left won’t any more abandon it than the lion abandons its wildebeest carcass.
On the second point, the better argument against government-funded R&D is that is will inevitably be politicized. Think about Jimmy Carter’s energy programs. I say we should leave the research to the private sector.
