The Skeptical Environmentalist
Bjorn Lomborg
Cambridge University Press, 2001
This is not exactly a book of surprises for me, since I have read Julian Simon, Donald Bailey, et al., but apparently it has caused a stir and much hostility, which I can only assume is because all the other sources haven’t attained the same (desired) publicity. It is a big book – 352 pages plus 160 pages of notes etc., divided into six sections:
- The Litany – the media consensus that things are getting worse. Lomborg sets out to counter this in his section “Things Are Getting Better” and examines “Why Do We Hear So Much Bad News?”
- Human Welfare – population, life expectancy, food stocks, general prosperity, leading to the conclusion: unprecedented human prosperity.
- Can Human prosperity Continue? The “Are we living on borrowed time?” worry, is answered reassuringly in the sections following on food, forests, energy and raw materials, water.
- Pollution – air pollution (decreasing in the developed countries, correlated with increased prosperity), acid rain (a false scare), indoor air pollution (greater everywhere than outdoors, resulting in allergies and asthma), water pollution (exaggerated and decreasing), waste disposal (not a problem as far as enough space is concerned).
- Tomorrow’s Problems – exaggerated fears over chemicals and pesticides causing cancer etc., also over biodiversity loss and species extinction, the last from figures grabbed from the air, and a long section of global warming (pp. 258-324). This may be the section that has caused most trouble. Lomborg does not deny that “anthropogenic” additional carbon dioxide may have caused, be causing or will cause global warming but he does make clear the variation possible and the excessively alarmist nature of some of the forecasts. He also points out that money spent on reducing the earth’s temperature could be better spent and that the dislocation of the world economy would reduce the expanding prosperity that makes possible the necessary efficiency needed to bring about the desired results.
- The Real State of the World is a generally hopeful one, basically summarising the message of the rest of the book and including a section on GM foods. There is also a discussion of the costs of protection measures; thus the Environmental Protection Agency (in the US) spends $21.4 billion to save 592,000 life-years (though how this figure was attained isn’t clear to me). A Harvard study estimates that 1,230,000 life-years could be saved for the same money. This is a good source-book, with something interesting on every page. I find it pretty convincing.
If the EPA really is operating at 50% notional peak efficiency then they’re doing a sight better than I’d have given them credit for.
But are you sure it’s $42,000 per life year, not $42,000 per life? The latter sounds more like the kind of sum I seem to remember from DETR discussions of road-safety spending.
Lomborg is a gay vegetarian and former Greenpeace member. He has impecable leftist credentials. He was attempting to debunk Julian Simon when he realized Simon was correct and the environmentalists were wrong. Now the left both fears and hates Lomborg because of his honesty.
Julian Simon defeats the Malthussians again.
For his effortws, Lomborg has been viciously attacked by the Environmental clergy. Scientific American devoted 14 pages to attacks, which were mostly ad hominem, while Lomborg was only allowed one page in reply. When he attempted a longer refutation on his website, they threatened lawsuits because he was using their copyrighted material (even though such use constitutes “fair use” under copyright laws).
It goes on and on…. he has been officially investigated for Scientific Dishonesty, which is normally only done for fraudulent peer reviewed scientific papers, not popular books!
The book has been out a couple of years. It would have made a much bigger impact except that it came out around the same time as the 9-11 attacks. It is well worth reading, and it reveals not only the poor science behind much environmentalism, but the crass motivations of some environmental groups and the insane motivations of many others.
“…gay vegetarian and former Greenpeace member…” And don’t forget good-looking.
People fear and hate attractive advocates for opposing causes more than they do those who can be written-off as twisted homonculi of evil. Compare the bile specially reserved for M.X. Portillo, or Clinton for that matter. We at once assume the more beautiful are leaders, or potential leaders, of the enemy, and that they are more able to convert the undecided.
We at once assume the more beautiful are leaders, or potential leaders, of the enemy, and that they are more able to convert the undecided.
In this case that has clearly happened. Far, far more people have listened to Lomborg than ever listened to Simon – and although I have plenty of admiration for Lomborg, it is Simon I consider the hero. Maybe it was that Lomborg had the impeccable credentials, and maybe it was that Lomborg came at a time when people were more inclined to listen. (Paul Erlich is easier to laugh at given that the United States’ population did not actually decline to 15 million – or whatever one of his laughable “scenarios” said – by the turn of the century).
Admirable though Lomborg’s ‘The Skeptical Environmentalist’ may be, I am not sure that there is really all that much ‘added value’ in it by comparison with the classical works of Julian Simon. Michael Jennings is perfectly right — in a way, Simon did the slog work, while Lomborg has reaped the fame and the notoriety.
Libertarians interested in ‘skeptical environmentalism’ should bookmark JUNK SCIENCE (“All the junk that’s fit to debunk”) for ongoing enlightenment.
True, Lomborg essentially is a popularizer of Simon’s ideas. I don’t think he himself would really dispute that. It is a role that, while obviouly not as worthy of celebration as that of an original thinker, is nevertheless both an honorable and a highly useful role. And while he has obviously reaped a lot of publicity and a new career for his efforts, I don’t think many of us would voluntarily sign up for the kind of vile pubic abuse he’s had to endure in the process. He deserves plenty of respect.
But are you sure it’s $42,000 per life year, not $42,000 per life? The latter sounds more like the kind of sum I seem to remember from DETR discussions of road-safety spending.
Environmental regulations are a notoriously inefficient way to address health problems. The $42,000/life year number sounds about right to me. I would expect investments in road safety to have a much greater impact on saving lives than the vast majority of what the EPA does.
Well, I belong to the group which isn’t worried about pollution, but rather worried about energy in the long run and its effects on life quality. To achieve American standards of living, the world energy generation rate(via any method, whether fossil fuel, solar, fission, whatever) needs to be able to keep up.
300 million americans currently consume 25% of the global oil output. The world has 6 billion people. We really need to improve energy efficiency, or increase the output without sacrificing longevity. But there’s a simpler way to solve our problems…
*prays anxiously for fusion research to yield dividends*