Well-known climate change apologist Bjorn Lomborg is at it again.
In May 2008, the “skeptical environmentalist” will be hosting the latest Copenhagen Consensus 2008 conference in Denmark.
For the uninitiated, this event is where a group of right wing economists, hand picked by Bjorn Lomborg, paid for by the conference organized by Bjorn Lomborg, will rank a laundry list of the Earth’s ills based on an arbitrary budget and timeline.
The budget?
$50 billion dollars, or a mere 0.07% of global GDP.
The timeline?
Only five years.
Based on those arbitrary constraints, the experts selected by Lomborg at their first conference in 2004 determined that dealing with climate change was the least cost-effective way to save the world.
Given that Bjorn Lomborg has made a lucrative career of being a climate change contrarian, it is not surprising that his 2004 conference was contrived to result in climate action ranking at the bottom of the list. It also provided Bjorn Lomborg yet another media soapbox to tour around the world lobbying against urgent action on this planetary emergency.
What is new and highly offensive is that he is now using the very real issues of AIDS in Africa and malaria as talking points to tell the world that if we try and reduce carbon emissions we are essentially endangering the poorest people in the world.
Strangely, Bjorn Lomborg almost never discusses malaria or AIDS except as an opportunity to discourage action on climate change. His message also ignores the devastating and disproportionate impacts that climate change is already having on the developing world.
Bjorn Lomborg should be given a Ph.D. in chutzpah for this latest effort.
In 2004, concern over climate change largely limited to the world’s scientific community. Since then, the general public has begun to realize the stunning implications of playing with the planet’s thermostat. Contriving another conference named Copenhagen Consensus 2008 aimed at slagging efforts to deal with this global emergency is putting the “skeptical environmentalist” squarely on the wrong side of history.
Who are the participants in the Copenhagen Consensus 2008?
Who is funding this conference?
What are the limitations of this so-called economic analysis?
We are going to be digging deep on the Copenhagen Consensus 2008 and providing some balance to the media play that this conference will no doubt be seeking to generate.
Stay tuned for more postings.
