Bjorn Lomborg: Beware the bum's rush on climate change

Urged on by environmental activists, many politicians are vowing to make carbon cuts designed to keep expected temperature rises under 3.6 degrees (2.0 Celsius).

Expecting any nation to achieve such far-fetched cuts is simply delusional.

Imagine for a moment that the fantasists win the day, and that at the climate conference in Copenhagen in December every nation commits to reductions even larger than Japan's, designed to keep temperature increases under 2 degrees Celsius.

The result will be a global price tag of $46 trillion in 2100, to avoid expected climate damage costing just $1.1 trillion, according to climate economist Richard Tol, a contributor to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. His findings were commissioned by the Copenhagen Consensus Center and are to be published by Cambridge University Press.

Lomborg is director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center and the author of "Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming."

http://www.dailymail.com/Opinion/Commentary/200910070705