# Bjorn Lomborg's Fundamental Mistake

*Published:* 2007-09-13
*Author:* Jon A. Anda

*Today’s post is by [Jon Anda](http://www.environmentaldefense.org/page.cfm?tagID=1308), president of Environmental Markets Network. It’s a response to [a column in Tuesday’s New York Times](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/11/science/earth/11tiern.html).*

The column’s writer, John Tierney, goes along with Bjorn Lomborg, author of the book “Cool It”. Lomborg acknowledges that global warming is happening, but is against “hysteria and headlong spending on extravagant CO2-cutting programs.”

In the world of greenhouse gases, the devil is in the details. Climate policy is not about any specific scenario – like the one-foot sea level rise Lomborg wades us through – but the chance of a catastrophic outcome.

Sensitivity of the climate to greenhouse gases, and the resulting sea level rise, both bear greater chances of worst-case outcomes than best-case (per the IPCC reports). Sound policy is about hedging a set of risks that are not normally distributed and therefore not suited to Lomborg’s base-case analysis.

So what policy creates an effective hedge? Lomborg wants government research to pick the winning technologies. That means market forces can’t reallocate capital when today’s winner becomes tomorrow’s loser. Lomborg also supports a small carbon tax that will encourage emitters to forgo technology investments, and keep polluting, while paying his relatively cheap tax.

These are not effective hedges. Mandatory emission cuts and a cap and trade system will give us the cost-effective technology and climate stabilization we need to hedge our risk.

Lomborg’s insistence on false choices, like AIDS/malaria versus climate, is wrong. Can we really tell future generations that instead of planetary stewardship, we just ranked all the projects and climate lost?