Lomborg's argument rests entirely on his uses of William Nordhaus's DICE (dynamic integrated climate-economy) model.
Nordhaus is smart, but there are people who think DICE is enough wrong that it is not useful.
For example, although agriculture is a small component of the economy in developed countries (single digit percentages), it's difficult to run an economy if agricultural harvests are 50% impaired, even intermittently. DICE ignores this, to the best of my knowledge. I also believe DICE underestimates costs and durations involved in recovering from large-scale adverse events. It would be interesting to see how well it models the world's response to Covid-19, for example.
Early papers based on the model overestimate the economic cost of emission reductions. For example the costs of wind, PV, and batteries have decreased much faster and to a greater extent than they assumed.
Others point out that DICE doesn't capture things that we value, despite them not having a direct economic value: mostly-inaccessible wild ecosystems, for one. Losing these non-economic things diminishes our future range of choices.
Lomborg also treats all actions to mitigate climate change as a deadweight cost on the economy, when many of them are worth undertaking for health reasons or other economic reasons. Renovating subway systems, for instance.
Finally, his argument in the WSJ opinion is ... subtle? "Because governments and others will take action to mitigate the effects of climate change, governments need not bother to take action to mitigate the magnitude or effects of climate change. And young people shouldn't pressure governments to do so."
Nordhaus is smart, but there are people who think DICE is enough wrong that it is not useful.
For example, although agriculture is a small component of the economy in developed countries (single digit percentages), it's difficult to run an economy if agricultural harvests are 50% impaired, even intermittently. DICE ignores this, to the best of my knowledge. I also believe DICE underestimates costs and durations involved in recovering from large-scale adverse events. It would be interesting to see how well it models the world's response to Covid-19, for example.
Early papers based on the model overestimate the economic cost of emission reductions. For example the costs of wind, PV, and batteries have decreased much faster and to a greater extent than they assumed.
Others point out that DICE doesn't capture things that we value, despite them not having a direct economic value: mostly-inaccessible wild ecosystems, for one. Losing these non-economic things diminishes our future range of choices.
Lomborg also treats all actions to mitigate climate change as a deadweight cost on the economy, when many of them are worth undertaking for health reasons or other economic reasons. Renovating subway systems, for instance.
Finally, his argument in the WSJ opinion is ... subtle? "Because governments and others will take action to mitigate the effects of climate change, governments need not bother to take action to mitigate the magnitude or effects of climate change. And young people shouldn't pressure governments to do so."
1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004016252...