Second, immediate carbon cuts are expensive — and the cost significantly outweighs the benefits. If the Kyoto agreement had been fully implemented throughout this century, it would have cut temperatures only by an insignificant 0.2°C, at a cost of US$180 billion every year. In economic terms, Kyoto only does about US$0.30 worth of good for each dollar spent.
And deeper emissions cuts like those proposed by the EU — 20 percent below 1990 levels within 12 years — would reduce global temperatures by only one-sixtieth of one degree Celsius by 2100, at a cost of US$10 trillion. For every dollar spent, we would do just US$0.04 worth of good.
The saddest thing about the global warming debate is that nearly all of the key protagonists — politicians, campaigners, and pundits — already know that the old-style agreement that is on the table for Copenhagen this December will have a negligible effect on temperatures.
Unless we change direction and make our actions realistic and achievable, it is already clear that the declarations of “success” in Copenhagen in December will be meaningless. We will make promises. We will not keep them. And we will waste another decade. Instead, we must challenge the orthodoxy of Kyoto. We can do better.
Bjorn Lomborg, the director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, is an adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School.
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