The Press: Toll of climate change manageable

Bjorn Lomborg writes in an opinion piece in The Press that, while climate change is real, man-made and needs to have action taken over it, it is not the end of the world.

A recent study has suggested that a 6m sea level rise (higher than most predictions) would not be as catastrophic as feared – it would require that 15  million people be relocated, and that smart, coordinated action could mean a total cost of only US$600 billion (less than 1% of global GDP).

An excerpt: (read in full here)

“Climate science is a subtle and convoluted discipline that rarely yields unambiguous forecasts or straightforward prescriptions.

“And after 20 years of much talk but precious little action on global warming, a certain amount of frustration is to be expected. There is an understandable desire to want to cut through the verbiage and shake people by the shoulders. Unfortunately, trying to scare the socks off people doesn’t help matters.

“Yes, a startling statistic, combined with some hyperbolic prose, will make us sit up and pay attention.

“But we quickly become desensitised, requiring ever more outrageous scenarios to move us.

“As the scare stories become more inflated so, too, does the likelihood that they will be exposed for the exaggerations that they are – and the public will end up tuning the whole thing out.”