False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet

by Bjørn Lomborg

The International Energy Agency expects that 195 million people will have access to energy for the first time in the next decade. That is great. But they will get very little power, mostly because the focus is on getting them off-grid solar rather than on-grid, mostly fossil-fuel-based energy. Indeed, they will on average get just 170 kilowatt-hours per year. That is half of what one US flat-screen TV uses in a year. Consider what your life would be like with access to nothing but 170 kilowatt-hours. It is not enough to power a factory or a farm, so it cannot reduce poverty or create jobs. It won’t even be enough to hook up a stove and heater to combat the fire-created smoke and pollution that claims 1.6 million lives annually. It’s not even enough to keep a refrigerator running. For the world’s poor, this level of energy access is hardly transformational.