It seems incontrovertible to me that there is a global warming effect and that it is going to be serious, probably not in the amount of, say, six degrees warming, but it's likely that we'll get two to three degrees warming and that will be serious enough.

For the longest time in Denmark I didn't want to say what I was politically. I thought it was irrelevant.

To prepare adequately for the challenge of global warming, we must acknowledge both the good and the bad that it will bring. If our starting point is to prove that Armageddon is on its way, we will not consider all of the evidence, and will not identify the smartest policy choices.

When thinking about the future, it is fashionable to be pessimistic. Yet the evidence unequivocally belies such pessimism. Over the past centuries, humanity's lot has improved dramatically - in the developed world, where it is rather obvious, but also in the developing world, where life expectancy has more than doubled in the past 100 years.

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.

Of course, the world is full of problems. But on the other hand it's important to get the sense... are we generally moving in the right direction or the wrong direction?