Writing in Investors Business Daily, Bjorn Lomborg asks: Why can’t we innovate our way to a carbon-free energy future?

“What if, instead of crippling economic growth by trying to make carbon-emitting fuels too expensive to use, we devoted ourselves to making green energy cheaper?” Lomborg asks.

“Right now, solar panels are so expensive — about 10 times as much as fossil fuels in terms of cost per unit of energy output — that only well-heeled, well-meaning (and, usually, well-subsidized) Westerners can afford to install them. But think where we’d be if we could improve the efficiency of solar cells by a factor of 10 — in other words, if we could make them cheaper than fossil fuels. We wouldn’t have to force (or subsidize) anyone to stop burning coal and oil. Everyone, including the Chinese and the Indians, would shift to the cheaper and cleaner alternatives.

This is why I have long urged policymakers to significantly increase the amount of money we invest in green energy R&D. As the Breakthrough Institute, a progressive think tank, has pointed out, we didn’t promote the invention of computers by taxing slide rules or restricting the supply of typewriters. We did it by investing massively in R&D.

In research published by the Copenhagen Consensus Center, Isabel Galiana and Chris Green of McGill University found that devoting just 0.2% of global gross domestic product — roughly $100 billion a year — to green energy R&D would produce the kind of game-changing breakthroughs needed to fuel a carbon-free future.”

COOL IT, the documentary featuring Bjorn Lomborg, opens in theaters beginning November 12.

For more information about Bjorn Lombog and the Copenhagen Consensus, a think-tank based in Denmark that tells governments and philanthropists about the best ways to spend aid and development money, visit: Copenhagen Consensus and FixTheClimate.com.

“What my work is about—and what COOL IT shows—is that there are better solutions to global warming, solutions that will cost far less, work more quickly, and have more impact than cutting carbon. Our goal with COOL IT is to transform the way people think not only about global warming but also about a host of other serious problems like malaria, the lack of potable water, HIV/AIDS—problems we could solve fairly quickly with just a fraction of the money some people would like us to spend on cutting carbon emissions.

Partly because of AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH, we’ve developed this single-minded focus on cutting carbon emissions. If cutting carbon emissions were the only way to save the planet, then perhaps that strategy might make sense. But it’s not the only solution. In fact, of all the possible solutions, cutting carbon costs the most, takes the longest to have any impact, and is the least politically practical.

What I hope people will get from COOL IT is the realization that we must rethink our approach to climate change. if we don’t, we will wind up wasting enormous sums of money on a solution that doesn’t do much good.”