Bjørn Lomborg

It's more like it's a virtual signal.

So just, you know, I work with economists.

I'm actually not an economist, but I like to say I claim I kind of am.

But, you know, the fundamental point is we would say, well, how much does it cost to cut a ton of CO2?

And the answer is for most electric cars, we're paying in the order of $1,000, $2,000.

You know, Norway, they pay up to, what, $5,000 or thereabouts.

You know, huge amount for one ton of CO2.

You can right now cut a ton of CO2 for about, what is it, $14 on the Reggie or something?

That's a regional greenhouse gas initiative.

So you can basically cut it really, really cheaply.

Why would we not want to cut dozens and dozens of tons of CO2 for the same price instead of just cutting one ton?

And the simple answer is we only do that because we're so focused on electricity.

That unfortunately has fallen into the disreputable economics.

So I think the main point that I've been trying for a long time, and I think that's also a little bit what Andy has been talking about.

For a very long time, the whole conversation was about what does the science tell us?

Is global warming real?

And to me, it's much more,

what can we actually do?

What are the policies that we can take and how effective are they going to be?

So the conversation we just had about electric cars is a good example of how an economist think about, look, this is not a question about whether you feel morally virtuous or whether you can sort of display how much you care about the environment.