The New 'Do Nothing on Climate Change' Gambit: Climate Change Won't Cost Much, But Preventing It Will.

Per 'Skeptical Environmentalist' Bjorn Lomborg in this morning's WaPo.  Here's the nut of his column:

Imagine for a moment that the fantasists win the day and that at the climate conference in Copenhagen in December every nation commits to reductions even larger than Japan's, designed to keep temperature increases under 2 degrees Celsius [which he says would be "nearly impossible"]. The result will be a global price tag of $46 trillion in 2100, to avoid expected climate damage costing just $1.1 trillion.

This makes no sense at all, of course. Why would it cost $46 trillion* to keep global warming limited to an average increase of 3.6 degrees?  This only makes sense if, absent some pretty big changes in our behavior, it's on course to warm a LOT more than that.

And if our planet warms by a lot more than an average of 3.6 degrees, there's no way the costs will be a mere $1.1 trillion.  Hell, even a fiftysomething like me will live long enough to see the costs of climate change surpass that many times over, even if the world's parliaments and congresses, including ours, suddenly decide tomorrow that this is such a big problem that, business and parochial interests be damned, they've got to do what's best for the planet now.

At any rate, it's a pretty bogus argument, but given its appearance on the WaPo op-ed page, it must be the latest excuse as to why we shouldn't do anything about climate change.

* But note that $46 trillion over the rest of the century is less scary than it sounds. That's on the order of 80% current U.S. military budget, every year for the rest of the century. Hell, the U.S. could finance a good chunk of that, simply by deciding it doesn't have to militarily outspend the entire rest of the world combined (including its allies) and spending the difference on climate change mitigation measures.