The latest TIME magazine uses the story of ?melting glaciers high in the Himalayas? to continue the drumbeat of global warming alarmism, but a much more sensible response from Bjorn Lomborg puts the issue in proper perspective:
For years, we have been spinning our wheels on what I call the Rio-Kyoto-Copenhagen road to nowhere, slavishly following the notion ? first endorsed at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and then extended in Kyoto 13 years later ? that the only way to stop global warming is by means of draconian reductions in carbon dioxide emissions. ?
Why has this approach led us to this dead end? Well, to begin with, it proposes a solution that costs more than the problem it’s meant to solve. It is estimated that if we don’t do anything about global warming, its damaging effects will cost the world close to $3 trillion a year by the end of this century. In an effort to avert this “catastrophe,” the industrialized nations have proposed a plan that would mandate cuts in carbon emissions in order to keep average global temperatures from rising any higher than 2?C above preindustrial levels.
The problem is that the cure may be worse than the disease. In a paper for the Copenhagen Consensus Center, climate economist Richard Tol, a lead author for the U.N. climate panel, determined that to cut carbon emissions enough to meet the 2? goal, the leading industrial nations would have to slap a huge tax on carbon-emitting fuels ? one that by the end of the century would reach something on the order of $4,000 per metric ton of carbon dioxide, or $35 per gallon of gas ($9 per liter). According to Tol, the impact of a tax hike of this magnitude could reduce world GDP 12.9% in 2100 ? the equivalent of $40 trillion a year. In other words, to save ourselves $3 trillion a year, we’d be giving up $40 trillion a year. No wonder we’re not getting anywhere.
Lomborg?s points make sense, even if you?ve read nothing about Climategate.
