Listen, global warming is a real problem, but it's not the end of the world. A 30-centimetre sea level rise is just not going to bring the world to a standstill, just like it didn't over the last 150 years.

Wishful thinking is not sound public policy.

Think on a 50-year scale, which is a much more natural time-scale for global warming. The US is right now spending about 200 million dollars annually on research into renewable energy.

Winter regularly takes many more lives than any heat wave: 25,000 to 50,000 each year die in Britain from excess cold. Across Europe, there are six times more cold-related deaths than heat-related deaths...by 2050...Warmer temperatures will save 1.4 million lives each year.

I tentatively believe in a god. I was brought up in a fairly religious home. I think the world is compatible with reincarnation, karma, all that stuff.

The obvious issue is providing clean drinking water and sanitation to every single human being on earth at the cost of little more than one year of the Kyoto treaty.

If every country committed to spending 0.05 per cent of GDP on researching non-carbon-emitting energy technologies, that would cost $25 billion a year, and it would do a lot more than massive carbon cuts to fight warming and save lives.