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Bj酶rn Lomborg brands himself 鈥渢he sceptical environmentalist鈥�, the title of his first book. Sceptics love him for his opposition to the Kyoto protocol on climate change; most environmentalists hate him. But in his new book Cool It he insists he is a genuine environmentalist who is only a sceptic because the world has got its policies wrong. How could a man so articulate and forceful 鈥� and who wrote his doctorate on game theory and cooperation 鈥� be so misunderstood? He spoke to Fred Pearce.

How did a game-theory specialist get into the climate-change debate?

It came from my teaching. I tried to enliven my courses with studies outside the curriculum. In 1997, I read an essay by Julian Simon, a famous right-wing sceptic on environmental issues. I regarded myself as progressive and thought this would be right-wing propaganda. Together with my students we checked his arguments and found that he had some valid points, so we wrote some articles in the Danish papers on what we had found. I thought it would cause a couple of weeks of conversation and that would be it, but it still isn鈥檛 over.

What kind of things did you find?

We found, for instance, that there were 20 deaths a year from well-regulated pesticides in the US. Yet the obvious solution of going organic would also have a price. Besides costing $100 billion a year in the US, it would have pushed up food prices, people would have bought slightly less fruit and vegetables and you could end up with 26,000 extra deaths from cancer.

It was serious research, but many people just said we couldn鈥檛 be right. Some of my friends wouldn鈥檛 even read what I wrote, only what my critics wrote. It seemed people preferred to go with the perceived wisdom regardless of the data. The findings gradually turned into my first book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, which said that what you think is true may not actually be true.

Now you have written Cool It, a book just about climate change. Are you denying climate change?

No, it is definitely a problem. But one among many. I don鈥檛 think that, say, a 30-centimetre rise in sea level this century is going to be a major civilisation changer. We have a failure of imagination here. We fail to realise how different the world is going to be in so many other ways a hundred years from now. After all, sea levels have risen by 30 centimetres since 1850 and we barely noticed. The total damage of global warming in the coming century will be substantial 鈥� perhaps $15 trillion 鈥� yet this will only be 0.5 per cent of total economic activity.

You could turn that argument round. The cost of solving the problem is of that order too, so why not solve the problem?

Absolutely. We are rich enough to solve most of our problems, but if the past is anything to go by we certainly won鈥檛. So what I want to do is engage people with the issue of spending money wisely. I think we should spend less money on panicky efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions today 鈥� often at great cost and with very little result 鈥� and a lot more on research and development into cheap low-carbon technologies.

In Denmark we put up a lot of inefficient windmills in the 80s and 90s. We are now replacing them with more efficient ones. Maybe we shouldn鈥檛 have been in such a rush. We have an emotional attachment to the idea of cutting emissions right now. I say maybe it is better to invest in long-term research.

Solar panels could turn out to be the real solution to climate change. But they are expensive now. I say let鈥檚 spend our money developing cheap panels that hundreds of millions of people can afford to install. What matters is to make sure that the Chinese and the Indians, and of course our grandchildren, have the technologies to cut their carbon emissions 鈥� not just a little, but dramatically.

So is the effect of the Kyoto protocol predominantly negative?

The protocol is better than nothing, but it does probably 30 cents鈥� worth of good for every dollar. Moreover, it has generated very little investment in research and development.

What should a post-Kyoto agreement look like?

We have to wean ourselves off carbon dioxide by mid-century, but we will not get there unless we have much cheaper technology. I鈥檇 like to see a treaty that makes countries invest maybe 0.05 per cent of their gross domestic product in non-carbon energy technologies. It would cost seven times less than the protocol, yet would generate 10 times the R&D.

What about global targets for carbon dioxiode emissions?

It is not targets that we need, but a global carbon tax. Economists put the damage from carbon dioxide at probably $2 per tonne, and not more than $14. If we imposed a $2 tax on emissions it wouldn鈥檛 change our economies very much, but it could raise $50 billion for R&D.

Don鈥檛 your arguments provide cover for the climate-change deniers and for the policies of the Bush administration?

Sure, there are people who want to find an excuse not to do anything. Likewise people who don鈥檛 like me are using me as a straw man to a more rational conversation.

The Bush administration seems more interested in existing technology than R&D. Biofuel, for instance, is a bad investment. It does little good and has many bad side effects. There is something fundamentally wrong about taking food and turning it into fuel, at great environmental cost, and at the same time driving up food prices which especially affects the poor.

You are still saying technology is the answer, not changing our lifestyles.

Asking people to show goodwill and change their lives is effectively a tax on good people. We need markets and social systems that make the choices for us. Humans shouldn鈥檛 have to be experts at everything. I want my drains to work and my computer to function without knowing the details of exactly how they operate.

That is why a carbon tax would be good. In Denmark we have a 180 per cent tax on cars. That means I鈥檝e never owned a car. I cycle everywhere 鈥� not because I am especially good, but the system encourages me not to buy a car. All the same, the solution will come, in the main, not from carbon dioxide taxes but from smarter technologies.

鈥淚 cycle everywhere because the system encourages me to鈥�

Does the hostile reaction of environmentalists to your message surprise you?

Yes. One reason is that I argue against creating a panic. You can鈥檛 sustain panic. And if climate change is a 50 to 100-year issue then that is not a good strategy. By over-worrying now, we may end up doing less. Take bird flu. There was huge awareness about this issue a couple of years ago. Now we鈥檝e stopped worrying about it at all. Both responses are wrong.

I understand the emotional satisfaction of having everyone screaming about climate change now, yet maybe that鈥檚 not the best way of delivering a solution.