Thursday, November 18, 2010

Reopening the Climate Change Debate

Sullivan's take on the new movie 'Cool It' by the Skeptical Environmentalist, Danish Bjorn Lomborg:
I have seen the movie and highly recommend it. The only dodgy moment for me was the film's depiction of cap-and-trade as solely corruption. It is corrupt, as anyone in the EU will tell you; but the film made the point without explaining the more fundamental point that cap-and-trade - originally seen as a free market solution to CO2 - could work, but at way too high a price for very modest drops in temperature.

What's great about the movie is its focus on R&D and how innovating new energy is more important than taxing carbon. In a mostly negative review, Andrew O'Hehir whines from the left but makes no substantive critique of what Bjorn argues. Yes, some climate change denialists latch onto his work, but Lomborg is not now and never has been a climate change denialist. He's a climate change realist and wants to address the problem through new technology while focusing aid on more pressing human problems....
I haven't seen the movie, but I'm open to its arguments. I think the entire climate change issue needs redebating, with all sides opening their minds (and hearts) to new facts, arguments, and possibilities.

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