This IEA podcast explores some of the economic considerations around the debate on climate change. Over the last three decades, governments have repeatedly set targets – often for their successors, or their successors' successors – which may be missed, but then replaced by more ambitious targets.

Richard Tol, who joins the IEA's Professor Syed Kamall, remotely of course, is a former member of Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. He has been a convening author with the IPCC and is a Professor of Economics at Sussex University. The discussion covers a number of issues including Coronavirus, challenging environmental orthodoxy, and whether we underestimate human ingenuity in tackling climate change.