The Road to Net-Zero

As world leaders and influencers converge on New York for the UN’s General Assembly and Climate Week, two incompatible visions are about to clash: rich-world elites obsessed with climate change versus developing nations battling poverty, hunger, and disease.

Unfortunately, even hundreds of trillions of dollars spent on traditional climate policy can only deliver tiny benefits, whereas just billions of dollars of simple, proven policies could transform lives, alleviate poverty, promote health, and boost resilience. This chasm is why most of the world often perceives rich virtue-signaling elites as disconnected from reality.

Climate activists will flood New York, ignoring decades of failed summits. Since 1992’s Rio Earth Summit, the renewable share of global energy has risen just two percentage points -- from 12 per cent to 14 -- despite the world spending over US$14 trillion, mostly in subsidies. On current trends, it will take another four centuries to get to all-renewable. The UN’s own 2024 Emissions Gap Report shows that even if all unconditional pledges are fully implemented, emissions in 2030 would still be about 19 per cent higher than 2019 levels. Yet in New York we can expect further fanfare for even bolder, costlier promises, though with no mention of their economic toll and puny impact.

Last year, the world spent over $2 trillion on climate policies. By 2050, net-zero will cost an impossible $27 trillion every year for the rest of the century. This will choke growth, spike energy costs and hit the poor hardest -- and each dollar spent will deliver only 17 cents of climate benefits.

Meanwhile, mere billions of dollars could save millions of lives. There is no glitzy “Maternal and Newborn Care Week” in New York to draw celebrity advocacy power, yet 260,000 mothers and 2.3 million newborns die annually. Simple interventions -- like $5 neonatal resuscitation for birth asphyxia -- could avert 166,000 maternal and 1.2 million infant deaths for just $2.1 billion. Every dollar invested would generate social returns worth $87. This investment is a 600 times more effective use of scarce resources than net-zero policies.

And there’s so much else we could do. For $1.7 billion we could extend childhood vaccines to save 500,000 kids annually, yielding a return of $100 per dollar spent. Another $1.1 billion could fight malaria, avoiding 200,000 deaths and giving back $48 to society for every $1 spent. And $5.5 billion in agricultural R&D would hike food yields by 10 per cent, cutting hunger for 100 million people and transforming their futures.

Contrast this with climate policies’ huge costs and paltry returns. Net-zero pledges could end up devouring entire national budgets. If, as is realistic, only rich countries end up carrying through on these promises, the cost could reach $5,000-$20,000 per person per year. This is unaffordable and implausible.

Yet the impact is trivial, even when using the UN’s own climate model to see the difference between the current rich-world policies and achieving net-zero by 2050. The difference in global temperature will be unmeasurable in 2050 and even by 2100 will be a trivial 0.1°C. This is because most emissions will come from China, India, and Africa, which understandably are prioritizing poverty alleviation via cheap energy.

Climate campaigners claim that the end of the world is close. But in reality, meta-studies by climate economists analyzing the impacts of climate change find that unchecked warming would cut GDP by just two to three per cent by mid-century -- very far from Armageddon.

The solution to climate change is not making energy ever more unaffordable and unreliable. Instead, it is energy innovation. The world needs to boost green R&D spending, which is far too low. Much more affordable than current climate policies, such spending will accelerate breakthroughs that will make green energy cheaper than fossil fuels, making an energy transition possible for everyone, not just wealthy elites.

Increasing incomes and opportunities for the world’s poorer nations not only is good in and of itself but also means they become less vulnerable and more resilient towards climate challenges.

The important global choice is whether to focus first on the most efficient policies to tackle the world’s most urgent problems of disease, hunger, and poverty,The ERoad  or on the climate concerns of the world’s rich. Climate Week will recite the same failed script. Meanwhile, just a tiny fraction of the ill-spent climate trillions could be spent so much more effectively to tackle humanity's deadliest foes. Developing nations can’t wait around for rich-world theatrics. They need energy, food, and health now.

After 30 years of a narrow climate focus taking priority over all the world’s other challenges, it is time to pivot. The world’s poor need billions for health, nutrition and growth, not trillions for inefficient gestures. Sadly, at Climate Week, the amplification of unattainable targets will drown out all else.

Bjorn Lomborg, president of the Copenhagen Consensus and visiting fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, is author of "False Alarm" and "Best Things First."