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The New York Times
Aug 07, 2001
Bjorn Lomborg: A Chipper Environmentalist
By NICHOLAS WADE
The news from environmental organizations is almost always bleak. The
climate is out of whack. Insidious chemicals taint
food and drink. Tropical forests are disappearing. Species are perishing en
masse. Industrial poisons pollute air, earth and
water. Ecosystems are being stressed to the breaking point by the greedy,
wasteful consumption of the Western lifestyle and its would-be imitators.
So it is a surprise to meet someone who calls himself an environmentalist
but who asserts that things are getting better, that the rate of human
population growth is past its peak, that agriculture is sustainable and
pollution is ebbing, that forests are not disappearing, that there is no
wholesale destruction of plant and animal species and that even global
warming is not as serious as commonly portrayed.
Strange to say, the author of this happy thesis is not a steely-eyed
economist at a conservative Washington think tank but a vegetarian,
backpack-toting academic who was a member of Greenpeace for four years. He
is Dr. Bjorn Lomborg, a 36-year-old political scientist and professor of
statistics at the University of Aarhus in Denmark. Dr. Lomborg arrived at
this position, much to his own astonishment, through a journey that began
in a Los Angeles bookshop in February 1997.
[snip]
He refers to the persistently gloomy fare from these groups [environmental
organizations like the Worldwatch Institute, the World Wildlife Fund and
Greenpeace] as the Litany, a collection of statements that he argues are
exaggerations or outright myths.
Dr. Lomborg also chides journalists, saying they uncritically spread the
Litany, and he accuses the public of an unfounded readiness to believe the
worst.
"The Litany has pervaded the debate so deeply and so long," Dr. Lomborg
writes, "that blatantly false claims can be made again and again, without
any references, and yet still be believed." This is the fault not of
academic environmental research, which is balanced and competent, he says,
but rather of "the communication of environmental knowledge, which taps
deeply into our doomsday beliefs."
[snip]
But in his book, Dr. Lomborg cites figures from the United States Census
Bureau, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the European
Environment Agency to show that the rate of world population growth has
actually been dropping sharply since 1964; the level of international debt
decreased slightly from 1984 to 1999; the price of oil, adjusted for
inflation, is half what it was in the early 1980's; and the sulfur
emissions that generate acid rain (which has turned out to do little if any
damage to forests, though some to lakes) have been cut substantially since
1984.
[snip]
Dr. Lomborg has also been unable to find strong support in the official
statistics for the regular predictions of disaster from Dr. Ehrlich. "In
the course of the 1970's," Dr. Ehrlich wrote in "The Population Bomb,"
published in 1968, "the world will experience starvation of tragic
proportions � hundreds of millions of people will starve to death."
Although world population has doubled since 1961, Dr. Lomborg writes,
calorie intake has increased by 24 percent as a whole and by 38 percent in
developing countries.
[snip]
He contends that the internationally agreed Kyoto targets for reducing
carbon dioxide emissions will impose vast costs for little result. A more
effective approach, according to Dr. Lomborg, would be to increase research
on alternative sources of energy, like solar and fusion.
[snip]
Though no longer a member of Greenpeace, Dr. Lomborg still counts himself
as an environmentalist and portrays his critique as based on the outlook of
a leftist. "I'm a left- wing guy," he says, "and a vegetarian because I
don't want to kill animals � you can't play the `he's right-wing so he's
wrong' argument."
He believes that the environment must be protected and that regulation is
often necessary. But exaggerating problems
distorts society's priorities, he says, and makes it hard for society to
make the best decisions.
Writing about environmentalists, he says, "The worse they can portray the
environment, the easier it is for them to convince us that we need to spend
more money on the environment rather than on hospitals, child day care, etc."
Those who abandon long-held faiths are often strident advocates of their
new views. But Dr. Lomborg displays little of the convert's zeal. His aim
is not to preach free-market solutions for every problem or to deny that
threats to the environment exist.
His motive, he says, is simply to document that the facts, in his view,
tell a far brighter story than the Litany. Thomas
Malthus argued in 1798 that population growth was certain to outrun food
supply. As Dr. Lomborg sees it, Malthus's gloomy predictions still hold an
iron grip over many minds, and are still wrong.
Copyright � 2001 The New York Times Company
--Ronn! :)
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I always knew that I would see the first man on the Moon.
I never dreamed that I would see the last.
--Dr. Jerry Pournelle
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