Bjorn Lomborg: Yes, Climate Change Is Real. But...

What does Britain look like at 10% of current emissions? You almost can't imagine this. You'll have to be poor, you'll have to do less, it'll have to be terrible. We've just had the hottest day on records. It's climate change real. Yes, that absolutely is. You only hear part of the story. You don't hear the full story. Every word on the planet, many more people die from it. That's going to be surprising because a lot of people net zero is almost physically impossible. The difference by the end of the century will be. Should we spend a couple hundred trillion dollars? That's a really bad idea. China, India, Africa, not going to be particularly fond of this. Oh, come and be like England. By 2040, we're going to cut 90% which is impossible and going to be fantastically advancing. So sometimes between 2030 and 2040, this film is going to break. We've just had the hottest day on records in the UK, France and everything. So is climate change real? Yes, it absolutely is. What is it? What's happening? So fundamentally, we put out CO2 in the atmosphere and all of the things equal, it makes the planet warmer. So we're expecting by the end of the century that the world will be say two and a half, three degrees warmer than it used to be back in the pre-industrial age. And so we've seen a 1.2, 1.5 degree increase in all in centigrade, since the pre-industrial time. And that means you get more heat waves. That means you get more problems with heat. I see. That's going to be surprising because a lot of people have known you for decades as the world's predominant climate skeptic. Why are they getting that wrong? So the point that I'm making is really twofold. Partly that you only hear part of the story. And the other one is that our policies, and I'm sure we'll get back to that, often very expensive and only do very little or even counterproductive. So they end up making the world worse and cost a lot of money. But the reality here, for instance, when we talk about heat waves, yes, as temperatures rise, you're going to see more heat waves. That's absolutely true, and that is a problem. You're also going to see fewer cult waves. And that's a good thing because remember, everywhere on the planet, many more people die from cold, them from heat. It's sort of obvious in England, but it's even true in South China, Africa. Look, in Scotland, on the average year, more people die from cold than from heat in the summer. That's because it's not very great summer, right? The point here is that we are actually a tropical species. So when you do the math, and this, you know, these are Lancet magazine articles. So one of the top journals in the world that have done a lot of these extensive service, everyone shows many more cult deaths than heat deaths. Europe has the lowest ratio because we haven't done anything about air conditioning. So we have a lot of people dying from heat, but it's still about 50,000 that die from extreme heat in Europe every year on an average year, about 130,000 that die from moderate heat. And then it's 640,000 that die from cold, 51,000 of which die from extreme cold. So extreme heat is the smallest killer. And so when I say, yes, there are more people that are going to die from heat, and especially extreme heat with climate change, that's both true. But also you really need to put it in contact. And remember, there are many more people that die from cold. And actually we could fix a lot of the problems with the people dying from extreme heat. And we have a situation where as temperatures rise, as global warming kicks in, you're going to see ever fewer people dying from cold, actually over the last 20 years. We know that globally, about 100 and sorry, I'm just trying to remember the numbers 100, oh god, I'm not going to get those numbers right. But about 160,000 more people will die from heat, but 283,000 more fewer people will die from cold over the last 20 years because temperature is increased. You only hear the first part, not the second part, and you're not well informed if you only hear all the bad news. One of the beautiful things about being able to speak to an expert like you is like, I don't know what I'm talking about. So I get to be the proxy for the audience and ask the questions which might seem simple to you. But when I used to say stuff like that, if I was at school and I said, well, maybe it's good as getting hotter. I want us to have a climate like Spain. And so on, the people would always say, oh, it's much more complicated than that. It's not just heat and cold. And in some places, maybe it will get colder. And like all sorts of weird things will happen because it's unstable, particularly also with the heat comes the ice caps melting and flooding and we'll use a lot. So aren't those bigger issues? So you're absolutely right, or your teacher who ever told you, yes, they're more, it's more complete. It actually won't get colder. People are trying to tell you whenever it's really cold. Oh, that's also global. That's just ridiculous. Global warming makes pretty much everything, certainly on average warmer. That's just how it is. And that's what all the models show. So when you hear people saying, oh, the cold is also caused by climate change. You know, you're kind of talking to someone who's trying to make a political point rather than a scientific one. But yes, it's not just about heat and cold. But the point, though, is that most places in Northern Europe will be very happy that it gets warmer. Yes, they'll have a few weeks when it's really uncomfortable. And of course, eventually they'll get air conditioning. But these are the guys who always and invariably end up taking journeys to New York or to Spain. There are very, very few people who go up to Northern Norway and say, oh, this is where I'm going to spend my holiday. So we really very clearly show our preference. Now, the reason why climate change is a problem almost everywhere is because our infrastructure is not adjusted to anything but what it was in the past. So both of it got colder or warmer, you would have a substantial cost because you actually have to retrofit your house. That's true in England. That's true in Spain. But remember, most people live out a very large part of people live below Spain. So close it to the equator. If you live in Ethiopia, it's mostly just not a good thing that it gets warmer. And that's why net global warming is a problem. So there's going to be benefits. It's going to help, you know, I come from Denmark. It's going to help most Scandinavian countries. It's probably going to be good for Scotland. I don't know about all of England, Canada, Russia. But most people, most places will be less well off. But again, and that's the other point that I try to make. So climate economics have been trying to estimate. So how bad is this going to get? And the answer is by the end of the century, the cost will be equivalent to two to three percent of GDP. It's going to feel like you're two to three percent less well off than you otherwise would have been. Which is a substantial amount. But again, remember, by the end of the century, you're going to be much, much richer. The average person by the UN's sort of central estimate is that the average person will be 450 percent as rich as he or she is today. That's a fantastic world. It has a world that's much, much better. It's a world where we've lifted most people out of poverty and, you know, we're all going to be better off. It doesn't mean that there are going to be no problems in 2100, but will be much better off. But because of global warming, it's going to feel like we're only 435 percent as rich instead of 450 percent as rich, right? It's going to be those two to three percent percentage points lower. So we are going to have a problem. But when most people sort of make you believe that this is the end of the world, no, it's not. It's a two to three percent problem will still be much better off, but slightly less, much better off. And then with some parts flooding, so we have a bit less space in northern Europe, let's say where things will be quite nice, I suppose, if it's one degree warmer also. People in Africa will have to start moving up, right? Would there not be just loads of immigration to Europe? So first of all, let's just take the flooding because I actually forgot that part. You talked about how, for instance, a Greenland or Antarctic will melt more, and that's absolutely true. So most of the flooding or the most of the sea level increase will actually come just simply from hot water, just like anything else, expands. And so you have sea level rise, you'll also have some sea level rise from melting Greenland and melting eventually melting Antarctic. And what that means is you may get somewhere between half and a full meter of sea level rise. You would think that that would mean a lot of plays that we would get flooded, but you know, again, Holland is a great example of that not happening. We know how to avoid that. Just like we know how to avoid heat deaths from heatwaves with air conditioning, we know that how to basically how basically to protect our shorelines. And we've known that since the Babylonians, what, 6,000 years ago, but Holland explicitly has done this really, really well. If you ever flown into Amsterdam Airport, which is like 13th largest airport, they on their website, they're very proud to pronounce it. This used to be the site of a major naval battle. It used to be four meters under sea level. And now it's one of the big international airports because we know how to fix this. It's not going to be costless. Again, there are problems with climate change, but it's mostly problems will fix no big issue. So over the last 40 years, Holland has probably spent about 10 billion euros in total. That's what they estimate. That's their trivial amount. I mean, I don't have 10 billion euros, but it's a trivial amount compared to the GDP of Holland over 40 years. So the point here is it's going to be very cheap. And so studies show we're going to preserve almost everything of all land, just simply because it's worthwhile. Not quite so in Africa. So that was your other question. What about people in Africa? They're really poor. Absolutely. They will have more problems with global warming. Everybody loves to point that out because somehow we say poor people will have more problems with global warming. So we should help them through climate policy. Well, poor people have more problems with everything. It really, really sucks to be poor. They have more problems with health, you know, disease, with malnutrition, with poverty, with bad education, with lack of jobs, all kinds of other things. And so the real question is, should we help them through climate policy, which of course, we'll have no impact in the next 10, 20, 30, 40 years, but we'll help them a tiny bit and a hundred years are actually, it'll help their descendants in a hundred years, right? If they're lucky enough to get descendants after it works. No, but should you rather help them by making sure that they don't die from easily curable infectious diseases today, get good education, get better jobs, get out of poverty. And the short answer is yes, that is what you should be doing. And so yes, if we imagine sort of a heat-stricken Africa now with sea levels higher up, they will have a lot of problems. And hence, they should probably, there's a good chance that they would all try to get up here. But the reality is, Africa is going to be much richer and Africa is hopefully going to be pulled out of many of these problems. And we should help make sure that that happens so that once they start getting many of the problems from climate change and many other issues, they will be much better off and hence, well, actually want to figure it out by themselves. This is really fascinating. And I think what you're saying is hitting at the crux of your argument, which is climate change, yes, it's happening. But is it better to spend our money trying to stop it, which is going to be very difficult to measure, very difficult to actually implement, it's going to cost a lot of money. China's not going to stop doing their stuff anyway. So what a waste of time. Or do we use that money better and try and help all of our societies to grow and be able to defend against it and live with it? The only thing I'm thinking is whenever we have tried to lift, say, Africa out of poverty, it doesn't really seem to work. You sort of just throw money at them and there's corruption and there's very, you know, and it doesn't work. So I don't know. And I think people would be concerned that the way immigration is right now, I mean, we will literally be at boiling point if we go up in other couple of degrees, both literally and politically, is it just going to cause millions and millions and millions more than we already have to move into you? We're not literally going to be at boiling point anywhere. But yeah, we are politically going to be at a boiling point. But yeah, the it's interesting. If you look back on what people worried about, sort of 20, 30, 40 years ago, it was India. That was a basket case. It was India that would never make it out of poverty. It was Southeast Asia that would never make it out of poverty via normal these places. Now, of course, they're all fixed or they're not fixed, but they are certainly on the move and on the right trajectory. And now we're worrying about Africa. Now, that is definitely an issue. But we have to recognize that it's worked many times before. And we know what works. Stop kids from dying. Get them into school, but also make sure that they learn stuff in school and make sure that we actually buy their products. There's something wrong about the idea that we say, oh, so you can go great flowers and Kenya, but no, you can't sell them here. That's the kind of thing, of course, that gives them opportunity to actually partake in a global economy. To the EU's credit, we've actually tried to allow them to do that. So, the whole point here is to make sure that they also become part of the global community, just like the rest of the world has done. But the real issue is if you start focusing or if your main focus is just on climate change, you will end up putting everything in the climate frame. So you will say, oh, they have problems in Africa. We should help them through climate policy. And as you point out, that's just going to be incredibly expensive and do almost no good and only in a century's time. That is a terrible way to do, to help. And often, we end up making them a disservice right now. Remember, again, if you try to go net zero, as a lot of people talk about, it's not really going to make a big difference for the world if the rich world does this because we're going to be a very small part of the emissions of the rest of the 21st century. One scenario shows that we're going to be about 13% of emissions. So if we go net zero by 2050, as many of us have promised, not the US, but yeah, they might come back, even if we did that. And if you run it through the U.N. climate model, the difference by the end of the century will be less than 0.1 degree centigrade. It'll literally not be measurable by the end of the century. So what we're talking about is saying, should we spend a couple hundred trillion dollars on not doing any difference, but only in a century? We estimate the benefit cost ratio, so how much cost per compared to how much benefit it'll do is about 17 pence back on the pound, which is a really bad way to spend the pound. You could just give it away and done seven times more good. So the whole point here is this is not how we should be doing it. And if you make the rest of the world, of course, the rest of the world is you point out China, India, Africa, not going to be particular sort of fond of this. Don't have air conditioning, have high energy prices, have lots of debt and de-industrialization. That sounds great. Now, I mean, nobody's going to say, who got to go with that? So they're not going to do it. But if they were, it would be terrible for them. One study showed that if you remember, most people in poor countries are farmers, if you did this and if you tried to go net zero, yes, you would reduce, you'd reduce hunger from global warming, but because you make energy much, much more expensive and energy goes into tractors and it goes into fertilizer, you'd actually end up, according to this one model, about 50 million more hungry people because you've done them a net disservice. So when we're trying to do a lot of good, we often end up actually doing very little good if it was just the rich world, it went net zero or even doing a net bad when we end up trying to do you know, tackle things from the hunger and end up with more hungry people. So when you speak, it all sounds very sensible and rational, rational, rational, rational, rational, or something. One of these words, it feels like words, important words. And I know that most people watching this will be nodding along, going, that makes so much sense. Like, yes, there's an issue, but that's not the way to solve it. It's going to make things much, much, much worse. It seems obvious. So then explain to me, I know they always throw around the 97% of scientists or 98% of science agree about climate change, or so do you, so do you. But they don't, that's not about how to implement things. So who are the people, you know, at the top, forcing us to embrace what is going to be a catastrophe? So we used to think that it was going to be easy to do net zero. I think a lot of people sort of imagined, and you know, we've talked ourselves into this, that, you know, solar and wind is cheaper than fossil fuels. Solar and wind are the cheapest energy sources. What we forgot to say, and I think some people were deliberately telling you this, but a lot of people just want it to hear this. What they forgot to tell you, yes, solar and wind can be the cheapest. Remember, solar is not the cheapest and Britain, right, and cloudy Britain or in Denmark or somewhere else, but it can be the cheapest in, you know, in many parts of Africa, but only when the sun is shining. And wind is only the cheapest when the wind is blowing. Otherwise, they're infinitely expensive. And so what you basically have to do is to have two systems running at the same time. Now, you save on some fossil fuel costs. So there are real savings, but basically you have to buy two systems. Imagine if I told you you could have this great solar power car. It's going to be cheaper than your regular car. You'd be like, "Oh, that sounds interesting. Maybe I would want to do that." Until, of course, you're really, "Oh, but it won't drive if the sun is not shining." So you basically have to have two cars, right? Yes, you'll save a bit on the gas. You basically have to pay for two cars. That's not going to be cheaper. And that's what we see. If you, if you plot, we have data for about seven countries in the world. If you plot how much solar and wind is part of your electricity supply. So the higher up here, and then plot the electricity cost, they're all getting higher and higher. So there's a lot of, so basically they're all countries here. No countries down here where it's cheap and lots of solar and wind. There's no country in the world that's lots of solar and wind and cheap electricity. Now, there are some countries like the UK that has very, very high-endage prices, not that much solar and wind. So you can actually do it worse than the best-case scenario, which is not surprising. It's easy to screw up politics, but it's really hard to come with the, it's going to be cheap. And so we've been told the story. It was going to be cheap. We've been told the story. "Oh, we got to get on the train before it leaves the station," which is a great metaphor. But metaphor for what? I mean, we're not talking about this is not going on a train ride or anything. Actually, if you look at people, people will tell you we're about to transition to renewables. If you look at how we have gone with energy over the last two centuries, here is how much wood we've used more and more wood, more and more coal, more and more oil, more and more gas, more and more hyd unconcuit, more отк'd an more and more Sola and bridges, we just use more and more and more as the famous title of a French energy analyst. For so, he basically points out this wonderful statistic, right? We went from using basically being powered by a wood. And then we switched to coal in the second part of 1800s. But actually, if you look at how much wood England used in 1790, and then how much wood used in 1890, you would imagine would use had gone down. No, England actually used more wood in 1890, 100 years later, just for wood props in the coal mines. Yeah, we just use more and more and more of everything because energy is really, really good. So we're not going to get people to transition unless we either find enormous political pressure to do so. That's what you're seeing in England for a while. And you will certainly be able to do it politically. You can just force people to, you know, not be able to pay for their electricity, but it turns out that's not very popular. Or if you could innovate a cheap green energy source, imagine just for a second, imagine that you could have a cheap green energy source that was cheaper than fossil fuels. We'd be done. Everyone would switch to not just rich, well-meaning, brits or, you know, indeed, your fans or Americans, but everyone, the Chinese, the Indians, the Africans, and these are the ones who matter, right? So the point here is we've sort of been barking up the wrong tree. We've been trying to believe that the solution is to say, thou shall not fly less, drive less, do all of these things less. All the things you like, no, can't have it. That's not going to work. But if we could innovate our way through and actually find a better, cheaper, greener energy source, we'd be done. Now, if I had that, I'd be incredibly rich, right? So we don't have it. We don't have that technology. But we know how to get to it. That's through innovation. We should be spending much, much, much more on innovating, cheap, new, green energy. Do you think if we put the whole, like if the whole world went right, this is the number one thing we'd solve it? Well, first of all, it's not the number one thing, right? If you ask poor mom in Africa with three kids, what's the big issue? It's making sure those kids don't die from malnutrition or easily care problem infectious disease. Lots of other problems. And here in Europe, we have, you know, bad education and failing pension system. We have a land war and with Ukraine. There are lots of other issues as well. But we should be spending much, much more money on green energy R&D. Right now, we're not. What if it's impossible? So, so let me, let me just make the argument for, for why it is possible. But there is a chance that it's impossible. But right now at Paris in 2015, the world promised to, you know, go net zero essentially by 2050. And of course, nobody's living up to it. England may be the EU may be, but I think they'll eventually break because they'll turn out to be so expensive that will boot out those politicians who try. But most of the world absolutely will not. But at Paris, there was another meeting called the breakthrough innovation, which was headlined by Obama and Bill Gates and a lot of billionaires and Xi Jinping was there as well. We had a tiny bit of a, of a stake in it because we had actually make the analysis that showed that this was by far the best investment for the world to make. There they promised to double spending, which is not very ambitious, but just double spending. We never did because we're so busy on putting up new solo panels and, and wind turbines to feel good rather than focusing on innovating. Now innovation, you can't promise that you're going to come out. So that goes to your what if it's impossible? It may be impossible. But if it is impossible, we're kind of screwed either way because we will never allow our politicians to basically taxes to death and then say, sure, for climate change, right? We're just going to rebel and we're going to vote for, you know, Donald Trump sort of thing or Farage here or, you know, there are lots of other opportunities around Europe. And that is going to be the end of climate policy. So what we need is a smarter, cheaper and more effective energy policy. If you look, I often compared to it back in the 1950s and the Los Angeles. It was incredibly polluted, mostly because of car, car air pollution. And everybody knew about it. Doctors were debating and everybody was sort of worried about this. It's also part of because of their sort of geological setup. But you know, it was absolutely cars. And, you know, the standard climate solution would be to tell everyone, could you stop driving? And of course, that would never work. You can't stop people from doing the thing that makes life great or at least more parable in Los Angeles. Instead, what we did was we innovated the catalytic converter. This little gizmo you put on the end of the tailpipe and then you basically can drive much longer and almost pollute nothing. It cost about 200 dollars. So yes, it was a cost, but a very bearable cost. And that's how you fix that problem. Now, this I'm not saying Los Angeles grade. There's lots of other problems. But fundamentally, you saw problems through innovation because that way you can have people have more and solve a problem. If you're going down the other route, people have less and less and less. Eventually you'll have a break with the politicians. I feel like I've heard Musk suggesting Elon Musk that there's, you know, certain deserts. You could just fill them up with solar panels and that could supply the whole of the US. Others, I've heard say you could have some kind of really hot tall tower. You heard that one as well as reflect some to the solar panels and things like that. What do you make of those? So the point is you could take about 1% of the global surface area. And that could supply the entire world with solar power. But it's a it's a math issue here. It's a good example of starting showing that there's a lot of solar power around the world. But of course, how do you get it to the place where you need it? Remember, we all have this problem that you put up solar panels, but they're not where you need it. So you need long transmission lines. You have two few transmission lines. So it turns out to be fairly expensive and you have two little and so you have to pay them to not produce. And you don't get enough. And there's still the big problem of what do you do when it's not sunny? And of course, you know, in many places, it'll be not sunny for a long time. So it'll be not sunny here for like half a year. And and even in India, you have them on soon. It'll be not sunny for 40, 60 days. And then you're in real trouble. People will then say slightly, you know, blindly, but you know, batteries, but batteries right now cover about 20 minutes of global electricity consumption. So that's something. But actually, the latest study from the US shows that if you want to run your entire country on solar or run it on wind, you need three months of backup power. So we need about, you know, 6,000 times more. There's just no way we could afford that. Even at very, very low cost, this would cost in the order of 10 to 33% of US GDP. That's just unfandable. I can't say that word, but very, very hard to imagine. So the point here is you need to go back and find a better way. Solar and wind can be great in some circumstances. Solar, for instance, in California, you get most solar on a very hot, sunny day. And that's exactly when you need the most air conditioning. So you have a great way to sort of cover up that. But it's only about 5% of California's electricity supply. What do you do when Californians come home from work and put on the kettle or put on, they don't have kettles put on the microwave or the oven or whatever it is to cook dinner. And there's no sun. That's where you really have the peak. So we've basically been able to eradicate electricity production at daytime, but we still need just as much fossil fuel through most of the nighttime. And that's why we end up, then we're back to that two part system that you need to both have the solar power car and the gasoline car. So if we are better off actually innovating and finding that solution, then why do the people in charge of all of this and who are they, by the way? Why do they seem to resist it? So I think to a large extent is because everybody has talked themselves into this idea of, oh, green is good. Remember, there's also a lot of money to distribute. We're talking about right now the world spends about 2.3 trillion dollars. So that's 2% of global GDP on green stuff. And this is all subsidized, right? So that's a lot of ways to help you be better off, you know, if you're going to donate to my campaign or something. There's a lot of opportunity here for politicians to hand out goodies left and right. So, so I think a lot of politicians believed it for First, we build up the whole EU system, for instance, on this. It used to be that it was free trade, which is great. But we've kind of done it in the EU now. So now they need the next thing and one of the next things is EU is going to save us from climate change. But of course, you've hired all these people and you set up all these structures. It's hard to get rid of. The same thing with the Democratic Party in the US, not so much with Trump. So Trump comes in and says it's all fake, which is also untrue. But it's worthwhile to point out that you will get those sorts of politicians and those climate policies need to basically be enacted for decades and decades on both sides of the aisle. And that's just not going to happen once it's started getting really expensive. So again, politicians keep doing this because this is the rhetoric that they talk themselves into. There are lots of people behind them who've been hired on talking about this. And I think it's really hard to switch from spending lots of money badly to spending a lot less money, but really effectively. Also because, and that's of course the other reason, it feels like if you put up a solo panel part, you've kind of done something. If you just put it into your research and development, you've given it to some eggheads, nothing's happened. Because you can't see it before it's there. But again, I just want to get a sense of for generation nuclear power, for instance, there's a lot of people working on this. So the basic idea is to say before we used to have nuclear power, it's CO2 neutral, a very close to CO2 neutral. But it is incredibly expensive because we have put safety layer and safety layer and because we built every single one of these nuclear power plants as if they were opera houses, right? They had to be absolutely perfect for just this right position or something. The new idea is to say what if we did this just like we do everything else in the world, namely get them factory floor approved. So you do an approval when you produce the first unit and then you just produce 10,000 of them. Then you don't have to have an opera house every place. It's just going to be this trailer and then we'll run it straight off. It'll be much cheaper. I mean, I'm talking about this is what the promo say for the fourth generation. It may be wrong. They told us that the first three generation would be incredibly cheap. So maybe it won't be. But this is the kind of thing that we should be working on. And if we can just get one of these technologies to work, we're done. One of the things I want to get more into nuclear, but first I want to stick on something that you said, which is that there is a lot of money behind preventing any kind of innovation here and remaining on the net zero course. You've also said that by doing that, we're essentially kidding more people. More people might die of cold, for example. More people freeze to death. Is it fair to say that these people have that on their conscience now? These are people who sell themselves out for money. I hesitate to believe. I don't think there are very many bad people in the world. You guys who are advocating, certainly in NGOs for more so long win, they're good people. They want to do good. I think sometimes they end up making very suboptimal or even bad solutions, but it's not because they want it to. Now, if you work in a wind turbine company, of course you want to sell more wind turbines, but that's no different from if you work in an oil company, you want to sell more oil or in a podcast business, you want to sell more podcasts, right? I think that's fine. We have to make decisions as public. How are we going to spend our money? We've been sold this idea. It's going to be very cheap and it's going to be incredibly cheap, so we should probably just do it. Now everybody is starting to realize, "Oh, wait, this is not the case. It's actually going to be incredibly expensive." Then you want to find a better way for it. I think that's absolutely how we should be thinking about it. We should ask our politicians to switch over. I think in some ways either they'll listen to us and change their minds, "Oh, we will change the politicians and we'll vote in some new ones." I can't really see this ending any other way. We switch from a focus on net zero to a focus on finding the solution in terms of energy. That's actually a cleaner way. Sorry. Remembering that there are many, many other issues. A lot of people have said, "Climat changes as media are hurtling towards earth. We're all going to be extinct. It's going to be a dinosaur moment." This is all we should be spending our money on. If it was this dinosaur killing meter, that's perfectly true. It's not. It's a two to three percent problem as we talked about. If it's two to three percent, it's one of the many problems we should fix. I would love us to not be so maniacally focused on just as one thing, but saying, "Yeah, climate change. We fix that through innovation. Then we also need to fix the schools and we need to fix defense." One funny thing is Europe last year spent 350 billion euros on climate. We need, according to the economist, to spend 325 billion more on defense. I was like, "Huh, maybe there's an idea there." The point is we can't spend money twice. Why don't we talk about where we could spend it? If we're a little more less obsessed with climate, we can be smarter both in climate and also remember that there are many other things we need to fix. There's that. I can't remember what it's called now. Is that thing where it's the three stages of a civilization and they think we're at 0.7? Oh, yeah, yeah. But I mean, I know it. It's this idea that you eventually encapsulate the whole sun and solar panels or something like that. It's how energy-intensive your civilization is. Something scale. It's like a Russian name. Yes. It's a very sci-fi kind of thing. It's a good. So, look, the. CardiShip scale. CardiShip scale. Oh, see? Just came to me. Just came to me as I happened to be typing on the. Yes, no, it's amazing. It's amazing. You are an AI. I'm an AI. I'm connected to the iPad. But anyway, but it underlines a very important point, namely that energy simply makes life better. Yeah. Remember, 200 years ago, almost everyone on planet Earth, not a few people on Britain because you started using Kola already then. But most people got all of their energy from the land. So there's just one sun. We used the energy to power our own bodies. We had an average in Europe, you had one-fifth of a horse, and you had some fire, some wood for fire. And that was pretty much it. And if you translate the mechanical energy, that's equivalent to about one person to help you. That was the fifth of a horse, right? But it can't help you in very many ways. It can't clean your room like a room bow or take you across the Atlantic. It can only really do horse. But what we did was then we managed to get lots and lots of energy in rich countries. We now have so much energy every one of us that's equivalent to 500 silent servants, if you will. It's like you have 500 servants. I have 500 servants, the guy who's running the desk behind all this technology here has 500 servants and so on. This is why you can go to America if you want to. This is why you can have a room bow clean up your room. This is why you get food. So remember, half of all food is predicated on energy. It's actually fertilized with fossil fuel, fertilized and mostly gas. So half of the world would not be able to survive if we didn't have fossil fuel. And fossil fuel is essentially all the millions of sons that have been in many, many eons before us that we're now using. Of course, it's not sustainable in sort of a thousand year period, but again, thousand years will be a very, very different species. But it is sustainable right now. And what we need to realize is that everybody's lives get much better if you have much more energy. We should be focusing on having more energy. We're very, very focused on sort of no energy is bad, but that's a very European kind of thing and very Protestant sort of thing. Energy is good. And we know that there's a very strong correlation between how much energy you have and how much wealth you have. And so there's a very, very strong line between those two. If you plot the two, you just basically see all the countries line up there. Of course, we call them correlation, though. Oh, there's definitely a dual causation. So also when you're rich, you use more energy, but we also absolutely know that as you have access to more energy, you get much richer. And the country is below Sahara. If you exclude South Africa, they have so little power that they have a couple of servants. And literally they have, you know, there's one amazing statistic. They have less power than the average California news on heating their hot tubs. So yeah, it's the wonder you're poor in Africa. And we should make sure that they get much more energy in the short run. That's going to be mostly fossil fuel. And yes, that's bad for climate. But in the long run, of course, we should be working in the innovations so that they get this from zero, near zero energy sources. And we should be working on it just simply from a moral point of view that they have the ability to get out of poverty. I started thinking as you was saying that about servants and the equivalent I'm not going to ask you a moral question, I suppose. It might not be that energy related. Well, it is energy related. But I think that slavery, we would probably still have slavery. And I think people like to say, we're too human and moral. That's why we stopped slavery. But it seemed to coincide with the time when energy was able to provide more than the servants and slaves were. Yeah. I mean, there was a cost we could. There's a very strong argument that if you didn't have a lot of energy as great to have slaves, if you have lots of energy, there's really no point in having slaves anymore. They're sort of in the way almost. The luxury is a luxury, isn't it? Yeah, so, you know, I'm not sure it's a luxury. But I mean, it's a luxury to be able to have to be the best part of your YouTube clip there. It's a luxury. No, no, I don't mean that. I mean, it's a lie that we will be quote. No, it's someone who'll take that. Yes, someone who will be able to make the moral decision and tell yourself your moral when really it happened at the same time as energy increasing to a point where we didn't need them anymore. Yes. If it happened when we still needed stays, then you could go, oh, humans are so moral. Yes. And there's also an argument that the American South came on later because it was really hard to mechanize the cotton industry. So much that we think is like human morality. It's actually just like efficiency. We are scum. Well, I don't think so. But I think we're also motivated by economics and certainly it's easier to get people to do the right thing if it's easy. You know that Hanlon's razor thing. Do you know Hanlon's razor? It's always miss quote too. But I know I'm not. No, I'm sorry, but this is the other one. Those are the two Hanlon's Gillette razor. Don't know. Many other razors are available if you want them. Unless they pay us, then just get Gillette, the best, and man, so I think that's the advert. Yes. Yeah, Hanlon never assume malice when you're just a great answer. And don't assume malice when stupidity might be the answer. And I don't think either really work. And I think he was saying before I was saying about these kind of elites who are why they're letting us die. And I think he was suggesting you were going to Hanlon's razor. I, well, even more because I don't think it's stupidity either. It's just simply well, good intentions. And if you're in a bubble, it's very easy to be convinced. So, you know, if you only read the Guardian, you will think climate change is a huge problem. And it's incredibly cheap to do something about it. Unfortunately, both of these are very, very bias ways of looking at the world and not correct. But I understand if you only read the Guardian, that's probably the summary you will get. And if you only interact with all the other people who read Guardian, it's not because you're a bad person. It's just simply because you're not fully informed. I would add to the Hanlon's razor, because I agree it's not stupidity or such. But I would say it's a kind of unconscious self-interest. So, you know, if you happen to, if you work in podcasting, oh, yeah, I want my podcast to do well. And subconsciously, I might do things. I don't even realize I'm doing it, because it helps my podcast do better. And I think it's the same with the people involved in the energy and all of those things, right? Absolutely. And I think that's true for everyone. There was a wonderful study a couple months ago in science where they gave people a data set on immigration. And then they gave it to researchers who were skeptical of immigration. Researchers were happy about immigration. And then they said, you know, find out if immigration, roughly as immigration, good or bad. And not surprisingly, the people who were skeptical found that it's bad and people who are happy about immigration found it was good. And what it shows is that, yes, we can do science and science can exclude some things. But if there's too many variables and too much that you can sort of end up doing, you can get reality to sort of agree to whatever it is you want. And that's of course where your presuppositions come in. But I think that's exactly what's so important about a lot of the podcast sphere and many other conversations that this argument that I've just made for you is a fairly straightforward and I think, obviously I think it's correct, but I think it's also reasonably stood the test of time. But it's just not one that you typically hear. Because again, you hear about every single day and newspapers are on news media, what was the worst thing that happened today? News is essentially the collection of the curated version of the worst things that happened that passed 24 hours on planet Earth. That's a great way to know about the worst things that happened is not a good way to be informed about what the world works like. There's a great example in the US over the last 30 years. Crime in pretty much all ways have dramatically dropped. So murder, violent assaults, thefts have dropped dramatically by half to two thirds, according to FBI statistics. But if you ask people, they think every year crime has gotten worse. Why? Because we started with CNN and now of course we have everyone telling you 24/7, there's just been this murder. Oh, and there's this crime committed. So you see more and more of it, although it's actually less and less. Just like with the climate, you see every time there's a forest fire, you see every time there's a wildfire. Actually, we have satellites from NASA circling the earth 24/7 since 2001. Fire on planet Earth has declined by about a little more than 25% of the last 25 years. Wow. But you don't hear that because you only get the journalists that come, I'm out here in reporting. There's a huge fire going on behind me. You have no journalists that go, I'm out here and there's nothing. It's always like next to like George Clooney's house or something. Which adds to the, actually, there's a fun story in Australia. Do you remember in 2019? 20, when there's a huge fires in Australia? Almost all of those fires were near where TV cameras were, namely in South Sydney and Melbourne. Overall, Australia had one of the lowest burn years. But I'm not saying that it was unproblematic because there were burning places that don't usually burn. It was a big drought, that kind of stuff. But if you just measure an area that was burnt, it had one of the lowest burns ever. But it wasn't what you saw on TV because the TV cameras were right next to where it was burning at this time. So that was a little bit George Clooney. So the global warming stuff that is, that the panic is creating a panic anyway. From that panic, what is the worst scenario that can happen? What's the worst? What's so bad about people panicking? So panic is really a good way to do good policy. And the bad thing about people panicking is that we've embarked on this net zero, which is I think almost physically impossible, but certainly politically just impossible. It's just not going to happen. But we've now set in motion a lot of machinery of the government in both the UK and Europe, not so much rest of the world a little bit. But those places, we're just emissitating ourselves. We're deindustrializing. We're putting ourselves in debt in order to achieve something that first of all, we probably won't do ourselves and certainly will not be inspiring everyone else. So the Europe has promised to cut 55% of its emissions by 2030, which is going to be very costly, but doable. And by 2040, we're going to cut 90%, which is impossible and going to be fantastically expensive. We're just going to have to say, get out, get rid of those politicians. And you're starting to see that in polls. And I think there's going to be a lot of other bad impacts in that. I don't agree with many of the parties that are also arguing that net zero are bad because they also say, Ukraine is at fault. And we should have peace Russia. And there are all kinds of other things. But fundamentally, you're going to get a break if you make this too hard on people. And once you get too impossible. So the short answer to when people panic, they make very bad decisions. And that's the worst thing that'll happen. And we should stop making really bad decisions. What does Britain, for example? What does it look like 10% of current emissions? You almost can't imagine this because there's no way that you can run most things. You wouldn't have enough batteries. And remember, the important loophole is that you're going to be importing most of your stuff from other countries and still use fossil fuels, which is what we, to a very large extent do with China already today. But you'd import almost everything. You wouldn't be able to have any artificial fertilizers. So what do you do with your agriculture? It's not going to be competitive at all. But you'll probably just import the whole stuff. But eventually, of course, you can't just import everything. What are you going to be selling? You're not going to be selling everything. And then nobody, of course, will sell you anything. You're also going to be in a position where you not only will not be able to cool yourself in the summer, which is a problem right now, but you know, will bait in a couple of weeks. But how are you going to heat yourself in the winter? There's just how are you going to go anywhere? At 10% society, unless we have massive technological change. Again, imagine if we could get fusion going, which is sort of the big dream, not fish in, which is nuclear power right now, but fusion, essentially having at our artificial sun. And we could just have it burning all the time. And there would be no clouds. We just have infinite energy. Then, of course, we could solve it. And then we'd be good to go. But unless we get that sort of breakthrough technology, or if we get a fourth-generation nuclear that's just incredibly cheap, then we can do it. And that's, of course, what I'm arguing for. But if we don't get that, if we're just going to do it on, you know, you'll have to be poor, you'll have to do less, it'll have to be terrible, and then we'll have lots of solar panels and wind turbines. Hey, sometimes you'll have power. That's just not going to be a vote winner. And it also paints a pretty catastrophic future if, because often the votes aren't heard. Because the way you speak, I think you feel quite confident and perhaps rightly that, okay, people aren't going to vote for that. And so it's not actually going to happen. And so other people get into power, potentially some bad actors, and I understand that concern. But people also voted against immigration. That wasn't a vote winner. But it came in, we've had 1.3 million people in one year. Yeah, I know that England, and I'm not going to get into that at all. But the problem is that once you get to, so we saw in Europe, in the European elections, last year, there was a lot of people who voted for the right wing, basically, to get rid of some of the net zero craziness. And the EU has actually done that. They sort of postpone when you have to not be able to buy a gasoline power car. They've postponed some of the regulations some years. They've now put a cap on the cost of CO2, which basically defeats the whole purpose. And it's totally unclear how the EU is going to get its mission fulfilled when it's saying that the main tool with which they cut carbon emissions is going to be impeded. But for now, it gives you some relief. And now they even talking about that they're not possibly going to do the next sequences of their climate policies, or at least going to postpone them. So I think policy can be changed. And I think the craziness in much of the climate idea that no, no, no, we have to hold on to net zero. And I get it again, if you think this is a meteor hurtling towards earth, this is the only thing to do. But it's not. And I think increasingly people are realizing that. I think also some people are just simply fed up with the idea that they're going to be paying this much. So they would even vote against it, even if it was a good idea. But the point is people are just going to rebel against us. So sure you can get it wrong. But imagine if it kept on getting wrong, I think you will eventually stop. But yeah, it'll take a long time. And that of course is the net bad outcome, as you asked about from panic. If you panic, you make bad decisions. And we live with bad decisions maybe for a decade or two. And that's a lost growth, lost opportunity. That's lost energy. And the solution, the holy grail right now is not fish, fish and its fusion. Now, basically, I'll say. Well, yes. But I think, fundamentally, we shouldn't be putting all our eggs in one basket. We shouldn't just believe, oh, this is the thing that's going to save us because it might not. We should be spending money on all of these things. So we should be spending more money on fusion, on fish and, uh, fortune, or new clear, we should be spending much more money on getting better batteries. And remember, if you do this sort of thing, if you invest in a lot of money, we should have innovation. You can get a lot of byproducts. You know, there's sort of a fun saying about the Apollo program that put a man on the moon back in 1960. Yeah, we put a man on the moon, but at least we got Velcro, right? Which is not entirely true, but there's spin off effects of stuff that you actually got out of. Imagine if somebody makes better batteries, your cell phone will get better. And we will love that. And you know, there's lots of different opportunities. If you focus on splitting water, uh, to get hydrogen, you probably also get better at giving clean water, especially useful for, you know, the billionaire too, that still lacks clean drink and water and sanitation. So there are lots of byproducts of this. And the beauty is this will cost a tiny fraction. So we estimate even if we quintupled our spending on green energy, R&D, it would cost 5% of what we're spending currently on climate policies. So we can spend much more effectively, we can make a much better world in the long run and save 95% to fund all the other things on education and healthcare and, you know, pensions on war that would actually make us safer and better off and make the future much more likely to be good. This is really infuriating though. I hope, I mean, look, you're spreading the word. Infuriating. Infuriates me because it seems so obvious what you're saying to me now that you've told me. I don't mean to say like, you know, work is. But when you say it to me, say it to me, that seems obvious and it seems like our leaders don't seem to be listening and it's that infuriates me. Sure. But the beauty of it is it's a good argument and that means that, you know, through your podcast and other things, we will eventually get there and that's great. I mean, I think over the vast stretches of history, we've made an enormous amount of wrong turns. That's just how it goes, right? But with good arguments and with good conversation, we will eventually get it right. I think we're moving in that direction, although bumbling. I think you might be one of the most optimistic people I've spoken to, which is good. We need a bit of energy and a bit of, let's get this going. And I think people will share this a lot as well because I think they'll go. But also, you know, I think sometimes people forget how incredible a journey we've been on the last 200 years, mostly because a lot of people that we don't know have made incredible contributions. The world used to be 80% extremely poor. Today, it's less than 8% extremely poor. We used to live, you know, from 200 years ago, about 29 years on average on the planet. Now we live 74. We've literally got more than two lifetimes, you and I and everybody else. And the list goes on. We're much better educated. We're much higher incomes. We're much less likely to die from almost all kinds of diseases. The world is just an incredibly much better place. And it's because we've been smart a lot of different places. Yes, we're also dumb, but those are the kind of things we're talking about. And look, we get most things right. We get some things wrong. And those are all the ones that you end up being annoyed about. And so I think it's a little bit sort of, you know, they typically say it's the half-class, half-full, half-empty. But the reality is that 99% full. And this is what's so wonderful. And yes, we should still bicker about that last percent, but we should also sometimes step back and realize it's pretty damn good. I hope people share the good news. I share this video. I think they need to know about what you're saying. And where can they follow you? On X, as it's called now. X slash Björn Lomborg, x.com slash Björn Lomborg. My website, lomborg.com, and certainly my think tank is called CopenhagenKincensors.com. Okay, brilliant. Well, people please do go and follow Björn. He's been absolutely amazing. And a breath of fresh air. And I hope that you will share this around as well because people need to know this. Hit the like button and keep watching this channel. They've made a video that they think you will like. So you probably will. If you enjoyed that, hit follow on Spotify or Apple. And on Spotify tap the bell, if you can leave a quick rating, it helps a lot. Thanks.