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

by Bjørn Lomborg

All this is far easier said than done. It is going to be very expensive. And, in every case, the promise is likely to be broken. It is instructive to look at the case of New Zealand. It was actually the first country in the world to promise to go carbon neutral. It is also the first country to have spectacularly failed, and the first to promise for a second time to achieve the same thing. In 2007, Prime Minister Helen Clark declared her vision was that the small nation would become carbon neutral by 2020. She was celebrated by the United Nations as a “Champion of the Earth.” If only cutting carbon was as simple as winning attention. New Zealand not only failed to achieve the vision, but also failed even to reduce any emissions. The latest 2019 official statistics show that the country’s total emissions will be higher in 2020 than they were when Ms. Clark’s ambition was declared.