APRIL/MAY 2023 | VOLUME 52, ISSUE 4/5
Thinking Smartly About Climate Change
Bjorn Lomborg
Copenhagen Consensus Center
The following is adapted from a speech delivered at a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar on April 24, 2023, in Irving, Texas.
In a recent survey of Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries—i.e., all the rich countries in the world—about 60 percent of respondents said they believe that global warming will likely or very likely lead to the end of mankind. This is the result of the fact that a lot of the conversation around global warming is vastly exaggerated.
Let me add at the outset that I am a social scientist focused on the economics of this issue, not a scientist. There is scientific dispute over the extent to which global warming is manmade. I will not weigh in on that controversy, except to concede that global warming is real, to some large extent manmade, and a serious problem.
The degree of seriousness is obviously important to address. If it is true that mankind is facing imminent destruction, we should do everything in our power to deal with it. If the world will end in twelve years if we don’t address climate change, as U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez claimed in 2019, she was then justified in demanding that we should spend whatever it takes to prevent that from happening.
If you think the world is ending—that climate change is the equivalent of a giant meteor hurtling towards Earth—political rhetoric of that sort makes sense. But I think it can be easily demonstrated that climate change, however serious, is not an incoming giant meteor.
U.N. Secretary General António Guterres and many Western leaders, including the current administration in the U.S., tend toward the end-of-the-world point of view: “The world is facing a grave climate emergency. . . . Every week brings new climate-related devastation. Floods. Drought. Heatwaves. Wildfires. Superstorms. . . . We are in a battle for our lives. . . . Climate change is the biggest threat to the global economy.” These claims are echoed endlessly in the media. But are they true?
Consider the supposed rise in “superstorms” such as stronger hurricanes. What do we actually know? The annual number of hurricanes that make landfall in the U.S. since 1900 is slightly declining, not increasing. The same is true for major hurricanes (category three and above) hitting the U.S. We see the same thing if we look at world data for total hurricane energy in the satellite era, 1980-2022. In fact, 2022 was the second lowest recorded year. Did you hear that reported anywhere? No, because it doesn’t fit the dominant narrative.
https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/thinking-smartly-about-climate-change/
