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Has the self-styled 鈥渟ceptical environmentalist鈥� changed his mind about global warming? After all, he says we need $100 billion a year to counteract it

First off, let鈥檚 get something straight. Exactly how sceptical are you about climate change?

Man-made global warming exists. My problem is with the single-minded focus on drastic carbon emission reductions that have been promised in the 18 years since the Earth Summit in Rio, and have gotten virtually nowhere.

What鈥檚 the alternative to this approach to cutting carbon emissions?

I assembled a team of leading economists to do cost-benefit analyses on a range of solutions, from planting more trees to methane reduction and carbon taxes. The top short-term solution was investing in research into climate engineering, such as whitening clouds to reflect more sunlight 鈥� with the caveat that we don鈥檛 know if it works yet. The best long-term option turned out to be investment in green energy technology.

Can decisions about climate change be boiled down to monetary calculations?

No. These are political and moral questions 鈥� but economists can help. We can put monetary value on things like the loss of ecosystems and show how to prioritise climate change compared with other problems.

Your calls for $100 billion a year to fight climate change. Yet in the past you鈥檝e criticised those who advocate throwing money at the problem.

I would hope that everyone would criticise the strategy of carbon cuts at a cost of $250 billion, with every dollar spent only saving a couple of cents of climate damage. That is a waste of money. If you spend that money as our research shows, you avoid $11 of climate damage every year for every dollar spent. That鈥檚 a great deal.

Where will the money come from?

Most economists would suggest a carbon tax because you should tax negatives according the damage done. The latest research estimates that the cost of emitting an extra tonne of CO₂ is about $7. If you applied this tax worldwide, you would raise around $250 billion dollars. But this level of taxation only amounts to around 6 cents on a gallon of fuel, so is not going to make people switch off from fossil fuels.

How come everybody else has got it wrong?

There is a complete polarisation of the debate on climate change. You either hear that global warming is not happening, or it is the end of the world. We need to look at the smart middle. What鈥檚 the smartest way to stop emitting CO₂? A lot of campaigners who are wedded to cutting carbon emissions say we shouldn鈥檛 talk about climate engineering as this will detract from the morally superior choice of accepting that we should do without. Frankly, it hasn鈥檛 happened and I don鈥檛 see most of the world accepting that. Doing without may work for a small proportion of well-meaning westerners, but it鈥檚 not going to work for the majority, nor for anyone in the developing world.