A FOOLISH OVERREACTION TO CLIMATE CHANGE

Over the past five years the scaremongering of the climate alarmists has led the governments of Europe to commit themselves to a drastic reduction in carbon emissions, regardless of the economic cost of doing so, says Lord Nigel Lawson former British Chancellor of the Exchequer.

In fact, given that warming produces benefits as well as costs, it is far from clear that for the people of the world as a whole, the currently projected warming, even if it were to occur, would cause any net harm at all. By contrast, slowing down world economic growth, by shifting to much more expensive non-carbon sources of energy, would be massively costly and by extension do great harm - especially to the world's poor.

That is one good reason why the sought-after global agreement to cut back drastically on carbon dioxide emissions, embracing China, India and the other major developing countries, is not going to happen.

But a very real danger remains: Europe's intention to start a global trade war by imposing trade barriers against countries that don't accept a mandatory cut in their emissions, as President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and others are already urging...

READ MORE