Climate change: solutions might be worse than the problem
Expecting nations to stop using cheap fossil-fuel energy won’t succeed. We need innovation
Across the world politicians are going out of their way to promise fantastically expensive climate policies. US president Joe Biden has promised to spend $500bn each year on climate — about 13% of the entire federal revenue. The EU will spend 25% of its budget on climate.
Most rich countries now promise to go carbon neutral by midcentury. Shockingly, only one country has made a serious, independent estimate of the cost: New Zealand found it would optimistically cost 16% of its GDP by then, equivalent to the entire current New Zealand budget. The equivalent cost for the EU and the US would be more than $5-trillion — each and every year. That is more than the entire US federal budget, or more than EU governments spend across all budgets for education, recreation, housing, environment, economic affairs, police, courts, defence and health...
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