CITIZEN POWER ALLIANCE

The International Energy Agency says $45 trillion (with a "t") will be needed to fight climate change. Much of the money could be better spent, but at least the agency has embraced nuclear power.

The IEA wants to cut global emissions by at least half by 2050. Yet as the IEA itself has pointed out, global population is projected to grow from 6.4 billion to 9.1 billion people from 2003 to 2050, a 42% increase.

To even keep per capita emissions the same, much less reduce them, would mean freezing everybody's living standards and condemning the world's poor to permanent poverty.

To meet this goal, the IEA proposes that the world spend an amount approximately three times the U.S. annual gross domestic product. Even spread over 50 years, it's an enormous amount.

Such a sum, and probably much less money, could be better spent and produce greater benefit for the human species.

As statistician Bjorn Lomborg has noted, the cost of such a plan "just for the U.S. will be higher than the cost of providing the entire world with clean drinking water and sanitation. It is estimated that the latter would avoid 2 million deaths (from diseases such as infant diarrhea) a year and prevent half a billion people from becoming seriously ill each year."

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