Dems' Green New Deal 2.0 'not the way forward' on climate change: Lomborg

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Climate author slams the reintroduction of the Green New Deal

Bjorn Lomborg, president of Copenhagen Consensus, argues a 'smarter approach' is needed.

Bjorn Lomborg, president of Copenhagen Consensus, slammed Democrats’ plans to reintroduce the Green New Deal, stressing that a "smarter approach" is needed.

The author of "False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet Hardcover," acknowledged on "Fox & Friends" on Tuesday that global warming is "a real problem," but argued that the way Democrats try to "fix" the issue is by "throwing lots of money at it and not actually achieving very much."

Lomborg made the comments a few hours before Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., reintroduced the Green New Deal during a news conference.

Ocasio-Cortez noted that the two also unveiled legislation more than two years ago and now they are expanding that proposal. Ocasio-Cortez said during the news conference on Tuesday that the plan "creates a plan for 20 million union jobs in the United States of America" to rebuild infrastructure, expand access to mass transit, among other things.  She noted that the legislation has 103 House cosponsors. 

The broader idea of a Green New Deal, once an idea on the fringe of the party, has picked up mainstream Democratic support -- a sign of the Democratic Party’s lurch to the left in recent years.

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In fact, last month when President Biden released his sprawling proposal to rebuild the nation's crumbling infrastructure, it included pumping money into renewable energy and combating climate change. The $2.25 trillion measure will be funded largely by raising taxes on U.S. corporations.

Some Republicans, including Rep. Nancy Mace, have slammed the infrastructure bill as essentially being the Green New Deal.

"As a new member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee in Congress, and as the new representative of a district in need of funding for roads, bridges and ports, I’m disturbed by the left’s hijacking of the bipartisan issue of infrastructure and their work to morph it into a socialist wish list," Mace wrote in a Fox News op-ed.

She noted that "the plan incorporates large swaths of the socialist ‘Green New Deal,’ which remains firmly planted on the brains and wish lists of socialists in the House and Senate despite both Congress and voters rejecting the bill."

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Mace provided some examples, pointing out that nearly 10% of the package "is dedicated to subsidizing electric vehicles" and that "another $100 billion is allocated to building new public schools to make school lunches ‘Greener.’"

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"If you actually want to fix climate change, this is going to cost many trillions every year," Lomborg noted on Tuesday. "Of course people are not actually going to live up to that, they’re not going to vote for those kinds of guys and it won't solve the problem."

He went on to discuss "the fundamental problem," which he said is that "as long as renewable energy or green energy in general is more expensive than fossil fuels, you have to ask everyone to do with less."

"You have to ask them to pay more for their energy. That might work with rich well-meaning Americans, but of course it's not going to work for the Chinese, the Indians, [and] the Africans," he continued. "And so really we need to invest a lot more in research and development into green energy to innovate the price of green energy down below fossil fuel."

Lomborg explained that "once that happens, everyone will switch, not just rich well-meaning Americans, but also the Chinese, the Indians and the Africans."

He went on to say that when you actually look at the actions of Democrats as it pertains to green energy, "they are not achieving very much," which he attributed to the fact that "it's really hard to live without good, reliable and cheap energy."

"This is not the way forward to force people," Lomborg said. "The way forward is innovation as it's always been."

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A spokesperson for Markey and Ocasio-Cortez did not immediately respond to Fox News’ request for comment.