This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, January 30th, 2008.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Is Climate Change the Most Important Environmental Problem

facing Our Future? Indr Koclani, author of The Improving environmental problem facing our future.

Indur Koclani, author of the improving state of the world, says probably not.

In fact, he says a comparison of earthly environmental problems reveals a great deal about just what will loom largest for the next 100

years.

We spoke yesterday.

Given what we know with some degree of confidence about climate change,

what is the appropriate response?

Before I get into that, I think it's really useful to take a look at the issue as to how important climate change is relative to other problems that humanity faces.

Because if it's as important as some people think it is, then we need to be ready to

spend a lot of resources on it. But if it's less important than people have claimed that it is,

then perhaps you don't need to spend all that many resources. A number of people have told us that climate change is the most important

environmental problem facing the world this century. People such as

ex-President Clinton, President Shirak, no longer president, of France, Secretary

General Ban Ki-moon, people like that keep telling us that climate change is the most important

problem facing the world, environmental problem facing the world this century.

Now the funny thing about that is there's never been any analysis shown to compare how climate change compares with other problems and unless you do a

comparative analysis you cannot say that something is the

largest or the smallest or the same as or anything like that. Now I've done that

analysis when you compare the magnitude of a risk that climate change is contributing

...