Dr. Bjorn Lomborg (academic, social scientist and author of “False Alarm”) and I discuss the truth about climate change, the cost of climate panic, green energy, interpreting data properly and why innovation will always be the best solution.
Find Dr. Bjorn Lomborg at his website at https://www.lomborg.com and on twitter @BjornLomborg
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- [3:00] If you think everything about the environment is getting worse; you’re wrong
- [4:00] There are a lot of problems, but we don’t have enough money to fix everything at once
- [4:30] “Let’s get our priorities straight, let’s talk about climate as well, lets focus on it smartly.”
- [6:00] Minimum cost benefit analysis – spend a little money and get a lot done
- [10:00] “More than half, somewhere between 50-100% of temperature rises we’ve seen since 1950 is our fault because mostly, we emit more C02.”
- [12:00] It is crucial that we find solutions that will actually motivate other countries to participate in using earth friendly innovations
- [14:00] China’s use of coal
- [15:00] “It doesn’t help that you in Toronto, or me in Copenhagen, change our behavior a little bit if three quarters of the world is still going to use lots and lots of fossil fuels because their first priority is quite frankly to get out of poverty.”
- [16:30] The day that China was the most shut down, they still admitted 78% of what they normally do
- [18:30] “Once you start thinking about what works and what doesn’t you stop doing the stuff that has almost no impact and you start doing the stuff that does have an impact.”
- [21:00] Fundamentally, most of the potential global problems are solved by innovation.
- [23:00] Craig Venter and algae that soaks up CO2 and sunlight to produce oil
- [24:00] Hydrogen fuel cells
- [25:00] “The problem isn’t that we can fix it principle, the problem is we can’t fix it in any realistic way that people would be actually willing to pay for – that’s what we need to change with innovation.”
- [28:30] “If you look at what we’re doing today to fix climate change, we’re doing nothing. We’re spending lots and lots of money but we’re doing virtually nothing.”
- [32:30] “If you can get people out of poverty, out of corrugated roofs and scanty towns. They’re not only better in all these other wonderful ways, but they’re also more safe from these hurricanes and they will have more attention and resources to deal with climate.”
- [33:00] The negative effects of energy poverty
- [38:00] In America, there are 16 times more people that die from cold than from heat
- [41:00] The truth about the displacement of people due to sea level projections
- [44:30] “We should look at the real impact, but we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be inundated by these incorrect arguments”
- [46:00] Coral bleaching
- [48:00] The deal with accretion and small island nations
- [51:30] In reference to nuclear power; “only large scale energy sources that we have right now that you can produce and have almost zero CO2 emissions, one of the safest technologies if you look at the number of dead per how much electricity.”
- [52:30] The real problem with nuclear power is that it costs a lot of money
- [54:30] “The guy who says it’s all about wind turbines, or it’s all about hydrogen, or it’s all about nuclear. No, all of these technologies share one thing, that they are too expensive right now to imagine as solutions for most of the world’s energy consumption. But we should research all of them to make sure that one of them becomes so cheap that it’ll basically power the rest of the 21st century.”
- [55:00] “basic physics argument, put out more CO2 in the atmosphere, slightly increases the amount of retention of heat on the planet…that’s basically why you have global warming.”
- [58:30] “ If the problem is 2% make sure you don’t end up making policies that cost you say 16% to save part of a 2% problem.”
- [59:00] “We need to find a solution that’s proportionate or actually does the most good for every dollar spent”