Location: The Heritage Foundation's Lehrman Auditorium

Carbon-based energy fueled the phenomenal economic growth of the 20th Century.  Will it be the undoing of the 21st Century and beyond?  Visionaries of climate apocalypse frequently claim to base their projections on widely accepted science – citing sources such as, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Assessment Reports and the Stern Review.  But, what do these studies actually show?

The IPCC Assessment Reports employ various scenarios to project economic growth and the associated amount of global warming.  Using the Stern Review’s estimates of global warming damage, Dr. Indur Goklany adjusts the IPCC’s projections to find which scenarios have the best net impact – warmer-and-richer vs. cooler-and-poorer.  His clear-eyed analysis leads to some surprising conclusions about our future.

As an expert on environmental quality, technological change and human well-being, Dr. Goklany served as a U.S. Delegate to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and on the U.S. team that negotiated the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.  In addition, he served as chief of the Technical Assessment Division of the National Commission on Air Quality.