Matt Ridley

If we had a technology that said, we can stop emitting carbon dioxide tomorrow and it won't cost you a penny, fine, no problem.

You then have to say, well,

How difficult is it to stop emitting carbon dioxide?

And we've tried for 30, 40 years now to do that.

And today, 82% of the world's energy comes from fossil fuels.

The year 2000, 83%, roughly.

We've hardly changed.

It's gone up a bit and then down a bit.

may have got to 84 at one point, down to 81 at one point.

But, you know, we can't find a replacement for fossil fuels that is both reliable and cheap.

And, you know, just think about

eating your home or driving your car or whatever you know it ain't that easy and if you're if you're living in burkina faso and you're burning brushwood which you've collected from the from the surrounding forest or scrub to keep yourself to cook food at night and the world bank says you can't have money for a bottled gas program in that country because it's a fossil fuel

Then I think you should be pretty cross about that because you're burning fire is killing your kids indoor air pollution is kills four million people a year and

It produces more carbon dioxide than burning gas.

It steals the wood from beetles and other creatures who want to eat it.

Whereas gas doesn't do any of those things.

So that's the reality of our obsession with trying to stop using fossil fuels, is that we are doing genuine harm today.

And you have to put that in the balance against the potential future harms of runaway warming.

I think it's relatively simple.

The advice I'd give was don't set a deadline.