Unholy Green Alliance
Beware of activists and businesses agreeing on solutions to climate change.
The climate-change "Baptists" provide the moral cover that politicians can use to sell regulation, along with scary stories that the media can use to attract readers or viewers. Businesses see opportunities for taxpayer-funded subsidies, and to pass on inevitable cost growth to consumers. Unfortunately, this convergence of interests can push us to focus on ineffective, expensive responses to climate change. Whenever opposite political forces attract, as activists and big business have in the case of global warming, there is a high risk that the public interest will be caught in the middle.
This article comes from Project Syndicate.
Who Said It: Toronto Mayor Rob Ford or Simpsons Mayor Diamond Joe Quimby?
Is Your State Bird a Stupid State Bird? What It Should Be Instead.
Enterprise vs. Millennium Falcon: Which is the Fastest?
Bjørn Lomborg is the author of The Skeptical Environmentalist and Cool It, subject of the film Cool It, director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, and adjunct professor at Copenhagen Business School.
Photograph of "Sydney Ice Bear" for World Environment Day by Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images.