I just viewed the controversial documentary "Cool It" about "The Skeptical Environmentalist" author Bjorn Lomborg. And I must say that I don't understand the uproar other than that the Al Gore bashing goes a bit too far. The film criticizes Gore and others for stoking fears of a climate catastrophe and yet at the same time throwing billions of dollars at failed methods to solving global warming. But the film makes no mention of Gore's follow up to "An Inconvenient Truth," the book "Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis," in which the former Vice President proposes many of the same solutions that Lomborg advocates.
Lomborg believes in the free market and making cost-effective investments in finding real solutions to reducing carbon and solving climate change. Near the end of the film he breaks down how a global budget of $250 billion a year can be infinitely more effective than the current methods at reducing carbon. The biggest investment would of course be in research and development of renewable energy to bring the cost down and find storage methods for intermittent sources like solar, wind and tidal power. And also more R&D for biofuels like algae oil. But where he differs with Gore, the European Union and others is that after that $100 billion investment in clean energy R&D, he would invest the rest in geo-engineering as a contingency plan; cooling cities by, for example, painting roofs white; and potable water, education and fighting diseases like malaria and HIV/AIDS in the developing world.
Please see the film and keep an open mind. You will be inspired. I sure was.
Here is the trailer:
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