Blog Stage 3

California is leading the country in climate change, but according to Bjorn Lomborg of the Los Angeles Times, the actual process is being handled poorly. Lomborg claims that the cost to implement these new changes, estimated to be $13 to 22.5 billion dollars a year, do next to nothing for actually helping the environment as a whole.  Because Trump pulled the US out of the Paris Accord, no state is obligated to meet those regulations so California could be considered a testing ground for the next decade of climate control in the US.


Lomborg himself is an accomplished writer with his best selling book The Skeptical Environmentalist released in 2001. Business Insider also cited him as one of "The 10 Most-Respected Global Warming Skeptics" in 2009. Personally, he believes that too much money is spent on climate change and thinks that some of that money should be sent towards "more pressing" matters such as AIDS, malaria, and malnutrition. He believes that climate change is an actual thing, but doesn't consider it "our main environmental threat." My own beliefs are a slightly more balanced version of his with me putting more emphasis on global warming than he does. I believe that he is a more than qualified author to be considered credible for this article.


This article is meant to connect with climate skeptics and those who are on the fence. Lomborg uses multiple studies to back up his argument that the cost is not worth the benefit of California's climate change program. He starts off with the monetary cost and works his way to the inefficient aspects by detailing how up to 40% of carbon savings can be lost to leakage. In his second to the last paragraph, Lomborg suggests that instead of implementing green technology now, that money should be put towards researching tech for the future to make it cheaper, a very valid statement that often works out better in the long run for any technology.