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A Warming Contrarian Calls for a Global Tax
2010-08-31 21:05:56.689 GMT
By JOHN COLLINS RUDOLF
Aug. 31 (New York Times) -- With the publication of his 2001
book, "The Skeptical Environmentalist," Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish
economics professor, became a leading contrarian voice on global
warming and a leading opponent of carbon reduction efforts like
the Kyoto Protocol.
Mr. Lomborg did not dispute that adding greenhouse gases
like carbon dioxide to the atmosphere was warming the climate;
rather, he argued that the vast expense of reining in emissions
would far outweigh the benefit deferred by the resultant effect
on global temperatures.
"We can help the developing world so much better by doing
other things, like giving them clean drinking water and proper
sanitation," Mr. Lomborg said in a 2002 interview.
Yet Mr. Lomborg's latest book, "Smart Solutions to Climate
Change: Comparing Costs and Benefits," is unlikely to bolster his
popularity among those opposed to drastic immediate action to
curb greenhouse gas emissions. In the book, to be published in
September, he calls for $150 billion in new investment annually
for clean energy development, climate engineering and climate
change adaptations like building sea walls to protect low-lying
areas from sea-level rise -- with the money to be raised
through a global tax on carbon dioxide emissions.
"If we care about the environment and about leaving this
planet and its inhabitants with the best possible future, we
actually have only one option: we all need to start seriously
focusing, right now, on the most effective ways to fix global
warming," Mr. Lomborg wrote in the book, according to an excerpt
in The Guardian newspaper.
In an interview with The Guardian, Mr. Lomborg denied making
an abrupt U-turn on climate change, arguing that he has always
taken the issue seriously. He blamed the highly partisan nature
of the climate debate for skewing his views.
Still, over the course of the last decade, Mr. Lomborg has
regularly played down the probability of catastrophic climate
change any time soon -- a position that led Britain's Telegraph
newspaper to dub him the "Antichrist of the green religion."
"In 20 years' time, we'll look back and wonder why we
worried so much," Mr. Lomborg told the paper in 2002, referring
to climate change and other environmental concerns.
Now Mr. Lomborg appears to be hedging his bets. One set of
proposals he explores in his new book, "Smart Solutions to
Climate Change," which includes the work of several other
economists, is the much-debated field of geoengineering, which
involves the alteration of the Earth's climate through
large-scale engineering projects.
Such projects would be useful, Mr. Lomborg told The
Guardian, if "really bad" climate impacts were "lurking around
the corner."
Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company
-0- Aug/31/2010 21:05 GMT
