Bjorn Lomborg supports climate change treaty

Via MR, this is striking news given Bjorn Lomborg's vocal environmental skepticism:

Bjorn Lomborg, an influential figure among climate change sceptics, has thrown his weight behind a drive to forge a global deal to halt rising world temperatures at a summit in Copenhagen this year.

“It’s incredibly important. We need a global deal on the climate,” Mr Lomborg told the Financial Times.

I was going to label Lomborg a "climate change skeptic" until I was set straight by these insightful comments by Finnsense:

It annoys me when Lomborg is referred to as a climate change sceptic. He has never denied that climate change is occurring and that it is due to man's influence. He has argued in the past that there are more pressing problems and that it makes more economic sense to deal with the consequences than try to reduce emissions.

... and Brett:

I agree with Finnsense - it's really odd that Lomborg is referred to as a "skeptic" when he more or less accepts the scientific consensus on climate change.

It'd be more appropriate to call Lomborg a "climate change optimist", in that he thinks that most proposals to deal with global warming will be more economically damaging and less helpful in dealing with the problem than focusing on maximizing growth in income and gdp (since generally only the well-to-do have the luxury of focusing on environmental concerns, and there's enormous potential for environmentally sound technologies).

Lomborg is an original and influential voice in the environmental debate - I wish he had a blog but the only one I found was in Danish. He also writes monthly at Project Syndicate, but the last time I checked they have a single RSS feed for all of their many contributors, which is too high-volume for my taste.