Climate change is real, but overblown alarmist claims mislead Canadians and hide true costs and trade-offs of climate policies

VANCOUVER—Contrary to exaggerated and alarmist claims, climate change—while it is a concern—is not an existential threat and many climate policies impose significant costs and fail to achieve their stated goals, according to a new series of essays by internationally-recognized climate and environmental analyst Dr. Bjørn Lomborg, published today by the Fraser Institute, an independent, non-partisan Canadian public policy think-tank.

Climate Change: A fact-based assessment of costs, trade-offs, and results is a new multimedia research and educational project by the Fraser Institute in collaboration with Dr. Lomborg’s Copenhagen Consensus. It offers Canadians a data-driven analysis of the real risks posed by climate change, and measures the substantial costs and trade-offs that accompany many climate policies.

“Climate change is real, and it’s an issue that Canadians and policymakers must contend with, but it is not the existential threat to humanity that alarmists make it out to be,” said Elmira Alikabari, director of natural resource policy at the Fraser Institute and coordinator of the project.

“By understanding what the data actually show about the risks of climate change, Canadians can better assess the costs and trade-offs of the various climate policies being pursued by governments across Canada.”

The first five essays in the series, written by Lomborg, explore the reality of many of the rationales provided by climate activists for extremist measures to combat climate change. Specifically:

• We Are Hyping Up Rising Heat Deaths, but Ignoring Declining Cold Deaths: While rising temperatures explain a 6.0 per cent increase in heat deaths globally, deaths from cold have declined 40 per cent because of rising temperatures.
• No, the Planet Is Not on Fire: In the early 2000s, roughly three percent of the world’s land surface burned annually, but by 2022, only 2.17 per cent burned, and in 2025, it was 2.2 per cent.

• Are Natural Disasters Increasing Because of Climate Change?: Once we correct for population increases and increased wealth over time, the data show a clear decreasing trend in both human and economic vulnerability from natural disasters, with global average mortality down 6.5 times and economic loss rates declining five times from 1980–1989 to 2007–2016.
• Despite Alarmist Claims, We’re Actually Growing More Food than Ever Before: Since 1990, the average number of children dying from malnutrition has declined dramatically from 6.5 million to 2.5 million each year. The World Health Organization expects the decline to continue—even with climate change—with annual deaths expected to halve once again by 2050.

“There is a lot of misinformation circulating around the climate change debate, and without a fact-based assessment of the actual risks of climate change and the actual costs of climate policies, governments are unlikely to get the balance right,” Aliakbari said.

“The Institute is pleased to work with Bjørn Lomborg to offer Canadians data-driven research that lays out the facts of climate change so they can better asses the solutions on offer.”

Lomborg is a visiting fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, President of the Copenhagen Consensus, and author of the best-selling books: False Alarm How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet, Best Things First, and The Skeptical Environmentalist.

Media Contact:
Jason Clemens, Executive Vice President, Fraser Institute
Elmira Aliakbari, Director of Natural Resource Policy, Fraser Institute

To arrange media interviews or for more information, please contact:
Drue MacPherson, Fraser Institute
604-688-0221 ext.721
drue.macpherson@fraserinstitute.org