BJORN LOMBORG: South Africa should not follow West's example on climate and development
Being smart about climate change also means that governments will have more resources to invest in solving other important challenges.
In recent years climate anxiety has taken over many Western governments and most international organisations. The result has been ruinous policies that help little but undermine future prosperity needed to deal with a host of other problems. Fortunately, South Africa can avoid repeating these mistakes.
Climate change is a man-made problem, but campaigners and irresponsible politicians have distorted this out of all proportion and now falsely call it an existential threat that could eradicate humanity. This exaggeration grossly misrepresents the science in the UN Climate Panel reports. Moreover, it is repudiated by the world’s leading climate economists, including the only one to win the Nobel Prize. The cost of no further action on climate is equivalent to lowering GDP by 2-3% by century’s end — a problem, not the end of the world...
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