But drastic and far-reaching efforts to limit carbon dioxide emissions might be counter-productive. It is not necessarily true that the best way forward is to limit emissions to such an extent as to prevent climate change. What is important is that our climate policies don’t hurt our ability to create more wealth and better technologies and to bring power to the world’s poor. That would be a case of killing the patient to cure the disease. The biggest problems in the world are still problems of poverty and traditional environmental hazards, such as polluted air and water. Forcing too many
...more
