… Global warming is an important issue and one which we should address. But there is no sense of proportion either in environmental terms, or indeed in terms of the other issues facing the world.
If you just take the environmental problem first, it’s very clear that what causes by far the majority of deaths is lack clean drinking water and lack of sanitation. Millions of people are dying each year from this. …
The second biggest problem is indoor air pollution, which probably kills somewhere between 1 and 3 million people each year, basically because people are too poor to use good fuels and end up using dung or cardboard or whatever they can find. Only a very distant third comes climate change, which the WHO puts at 150,000 to die right now. …
One of the top climate change economists has modelled – and several papers that came out a couple of weeks ago essentially point out – that climate change will probably mean fewer deaths, not more deaths. It is estimated that climate change by about 2050 will mean about 800,000 fewer deaths.
… the bottom line is there are many problems in the world where we can do much more at much lower cost. …
Lomborg’s the author of The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World.
Rick McCharles 