Our planet has been basically starved for CO2 for the last several thousand years by comparison with the times when it was as its optimum when the earth was covered with lush vegetation.  CO2 is minimal now. We are just beginning to recover a little bit of that and the result of it is a great increase of plant growth around the world, a shrinking in deserts and an increase—most importantly—in agricultural crop yields which means more food and lower prices for food. So if we are pushing down CO2 we are pushing up the price of food. If we are pushing down CO2 by fighting the use of the cheapest energy sources—oil, coal, and natural gas—then we are also pushing up the prices of food that way as well. And that means we’re starving people.

Pastore: If you had say a hundred million dollars to invest in order to help the environment, help the world’s poor, how would you do it?

Beisner: Well, I don’t have to be the one to make that analysis myself because a group called the Copenhagen Consensus has done that repeatedly. Their most recent report came out just a couple of months ago. They said that if they had, actually they were asking if I had $70 billion, where would I put it? The number one place would be micro nutrient supplements for children—vitamin A and Zinc to fight malnutrition.

Pastore: Really?

Beisner: Number two would be the Doha round of the World Free Trade Development Agenda. That is the expansion of free trade. Because free trade leads to economic development and that’s what the poor need more then anything else. And you know where global warming mitigation efforts fell?

Pastore: Probably number three. 

Beisner: [Laughing] No, 29 and 30 out of 30.

Pastore: Really?

Beisner: They’re terrible. They cost more than the benefits that can be projected coming from them. They are a total waste. Not only by themselves but more importantly also because they rob money from these other actions that would be more helpful. If you spent $250 billion trying to fight CO2 emission you can’t spend that same money on micronutrients supplements for children. As a result more children die….

This was not just a group of smart guys. This was eight world class economists. Five of whom are Noble Prize economists. Reading papers by scores of experts on the various different policy options looked at. Many, many, policy options—far more than 30—and they narrowed it down to 30 and global warming mitigation falls at the bottom.