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The climate debate needs less hyperbole and more rationality
 The truth about climate change is nuanced: it is real, and in the long term it will be a problem, but its impact is less than we might believe. And yet we are too eager to believe the problem is far worse than science shows, and – conversely – that our solutions are far easier than reality dictates.
Just as activists and the media engender fear by associating every fire, flood, and hurricane with climate change, they generate a false belief that there are simple solutions to the problem, if only politicians and the public would embrace them.
Read Bjorn Lomborg's new column for Project Syndicate in six languages. It was published by media outlets around the world including The Australian, Berlingske (Denmark), Die Presse (Austria), de Volkskrant (Netherlands), Vecer (Slovenia), The Daily Star (Lebanon), Times of Oman, My Republica (Nepal), La Nacion (Costa Rica), El Observador (Uruguay) and Finmag (Czech Republic).
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With Jordan Peterson: How to make the world better
In December, Bjorn Lomborg joined the podcast of well-known psychology professor Jordan B. Peterson for a 1.5 hour long interview on the Copenhagen Consensus' work, which Peterson calls "singularly innovative and influential".
On his website, Peterson writes:
"Dr. Lomborg and his team have done the hard conceptual and empirical work necessary to turn good intentions for global improvement into implementable and economically efficient strategies. That’s really saying something. They have, among other things, analyzed the UN Millenial goals (169 of them, which is far too many), prioritizing and rank-ordering them in terms of practical implementability and costs and benefits. Those who claim to truly care about the world’s dispossessed could do far worse than to study Dr. Lomborg’s work."
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 One of the most overlooked development success stories right now is that the population without access to electricity has fallen below 1 billion for the first time since records began.
Having powered its own development through fossil fuels, rich countries now suggest poor countries to go without reliable energy sources in the name of the environment. That’s the wrong approach. We need to make more breakthroughs in green energy so they can replace fossil fuels at scale. But we also need to ensure that life-changing electrification continues. There are one billion people in the world still without electricity access. It is immoral and rank hypocrisy to leave them in the dark.
Read Lomborg's latest article for Australia's highest circulating newspaper The Herald Sun and Forbes.
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Over the past quarter-century climate change has received so much attention that it is sacrilegious to even point out that we face other vast, complex, expensive challenges including war and domestic violence, super-killers like tuberculosis and HIV, hunger and a lack of clean drinking water, gender inequality – and the list goes on. Many of these global challenges actually have a greater cost – and have policy responses that are better understood, more easily implemented, and will help humanity much more than our current response to climate change.
In the weekend edition of The Australian, Lomborg argues that it is important to put things in perspective, and that we should abandon wishful thinking and over-the-top rhetoric when it comes to climate policy.
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The climate summit in Poland has been given a boost in recent weeks by well-timed climate change reports shaping the news agenda. But if we dig deeper than most of the media did, these reports demonstrate what is wrong with global warming policy discussion.
Lomborg argues in India's largest business newspaper The Economic Times (print only) and British news outlet CapX, that politicians need to take into account the cost of climate change policies. Further innovation, not inadequate existing technology, is the best response to climate change.
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Bjorn Lomborg recently traveled to Ghana's capital Accra to discuss how to prioritize between many worthy opportunities for the country.
 He met with high-level politicians as well as representatives from business, labor, clergy, academica and the donor community. It was encouraging to see how much support there was for a Ghana Priorities project, which would highlight smart policies in specific areas and produce a menu of spending options.
Together with Dr. Charles Mensa of the Institute of Economic Affairs, Lomborg wrote in Ghana's most influential newspaper, The Daily Graphic, that if just two per cent of the spending increase in Ghana's new budget would be spent even more effectively because of Copenhagen Consensus research, this would, over the next decade generate social benefits larger than the entire Ghanaian GDP last year.
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