Climate Change and What We Do About It (If Anything)

Listen to this podcast.   It’s super interesting.  The Climate Change debate has devolved into two factions.   Part of it is the “believers” have denounced the “deniers” as anti-science and Luddites.  The Climate Change people I hear in the media, and run into in my personal circles have a fanatical religious belief about it.  The only path is to use wind or solar energy and end fossil fuels, full stop.

The politicians traipsing through Iowa right now are trying to scare everyone.  As if the reason farmers can’t get their crop in this year is climate change.  It’s been extremely rainy and cold.  They forget that years like this happen from time to time and have all through history.

Lomborg deconstructs the issue through the use of really good data.  He’s not “for or against” climate change.  For example, we know that if hurricanes hit poor people it’s going to be a lot more expensive to clean them up and it will affect them for longer periods of time.  Maybe the solution we should be considering is not to burden poor people with higher costs of energy but to implement policy that makes them wealthier?

The thing that I like about this podcast is that Lomborg really upends a lot of the “current solutions” and forces people into uncomfortable places to think about very different solutions to the same problem.

The host, Russ Roberts, challenges him along the way.