Lomborg stays cool as brickbats fly

Things got quite tasty at the RSA’s Presidential Lecture in London last night. Bjorn Lomborg - adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School and director of the Copenhagen Consensus Centre was at the RSA to deliver a lecture on tackling climate change. His delivery was relentless and I must admit to falling asleep for some of the time (it had been a long day at school). I noted his central theme that climate change is real, man-made and a big issue that we need to take seriously. But that the consequences of climate change are often portrayed in a one-sided manner and prone to exaggeration by those scared stiff by planetary emergencies and tipping points.

Lomborg is right to emphasise the importance of innovation (woefully under financed) rather than a single-minded approach to cutting emissions at all costs. The pay-offs from smart innovation are potentially huge. And this is where left-sided climate change campaigners just dont seem to get it. The next wave of green innovation is on its way and it is likely to come from emerging market countries - where research costs are much lower and where the incentive to develop, launch and then sell / licence innovative technologies is already well understood - and also from the labs of some of our top internet businesses.

Don’t be surprised to see Google emerge as one of the most successful and admired green technoloogy companies of the next decade. There is so much human capital in that business wholly committed to surprising and eye-catching innovations.

The question and answer session got quite tasty! There was the usual pre-planned attack on Lomborg from event guests sat on the front row. And one of the RSA Fellows resigned his fellowship in melodramatic and faintly comic fashion before striding out of the room (to the relief of those who stayed). Lomborg was cool in his responses and rather impressive. There were some smart questions from the floor, but the discussion was disfigured by people singularly unable to stand up and ask a question rather than engage in three minute streams of consciousness. Fortunately HRH Prince Philip was on hand to swat away some of the “piddling arguments” and keep things moving with his legendary good humour!