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2 Sides of Climate Change Debate

I watched former VP Al Gore's testimony before Congress earlier this week on CSPAN today regarding climate change. Given how partisan the debate is, it's amazing that we actually get anything done in Washington D.C.

I saw the movie An Inconvenient Truth, so Al Gore's testimony wasn't that new. I thought it was even more interesting to watch the economist that the Republicans called to testify before Congress. Bjorn Lomborg, a professor at the Copenhagen Business School, provided his testimony before Congress shortly after Al Gore did. He offers a very different perspective on the climate change challenge. He wrote a book called The Skeptical Economist. Basically, he was suggesting that there are higher return investments than dealing with climate change. For example, controlling HIV/AIDS or malaria would result in far more human benefit. He offered some interesting perspective on solutions like the Kyoto Protocol, taxing carbon emissions, cap-and-trade solutions, etc. He was suggesting that these have all failed and that the gap between where technology is and where it needs to be to be economically viable is way too far off. So our best investment is in research and development.

It's a pretty lively testimony. The first question from Congressman Gordon is based on completely incorrect data. Then he gets attacked by one of the Democratic Reps, Jay Ensley, who brings up the moral debate, disses Denmark, and then later goes on to talk about some small islands that will go under water if Greenland melts. That guy was pretty scary. The Polo t-shirt and jeans threw me off at first, but Lomborg handled himself pretty well.

The media has definitely latched on to the whole climate change issue and seem to argue that we must do something immediately or there will be some catastrophe in 50 years. You rarely see the other side of the debate. Interesting to see this guy.

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