On 7 Aug 2001, at 13:54, Ronn Blankenship wrote:
> Bjorn Lomborg: A Chipper Environmentalist
This guy is generally regarded as a total and utter lunatic amoung
basically the entire enviromentalist spectrum, Greenpeace slung
him out in disgust, I believe...
> So it is a surprise to meet someone who calls himself an
> environmentalist but who asserts that things are getting better, that
Stress on "calls himself", we disown him. He's a capitalist
mouthpeace, however he got there.
> the rate of human population growth is past its peak, that agriculture
> is sustainable
Yes, Human population wil be controlled, via wars and famine if
nothing else, the big threat was China, and they have it under
control..
> disappearing, that there is no wholesale destruction of plant and
> animal species and that even global warming is not as serious as
> commonly portrayed.
Well sorry, deforrestation might not be happening in OVERALL
AREA, and it's not, but comparing trash forrests to tropical
rainforrest is laughable. Species vanish every DAY, before we even
learn of them, and global warming, whole debated, is a real threat.
> 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.
Actually, we chide those organisations for not taking our data
seriously enough, for UNDERSTATING the cause. That he calls it
the "Litany" is funny, especially when they're often using different
data to make the same calls.
> 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
Oh, such hotbeds of pro-enviromentalist feeling THEY are!
Geez..all those organisations, except the EPA which is commonly
regarded as well meaning but clueless, are capitalist in the
extreme!
> 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."
Official? Of course not...governments don't publish bad news, the
public tends to shoot the messenger...
We dodged the population bullet, somewhat - I'd still like to see
less Humans, mind you - but the poloution bullet is right on course
to smack us right between the eyes.
> He contends that the internationally agreed Kyoto targets for reducing
> carbon dioxide emissions will impose vast costs for little result. A
True, for little more cost we could achieve far BIGGER decreases
in emissions, but they don't want to see that, they'd rather the
figures rounded nicely on the treaty...
> more effective approach, according to Dr. Lomborg, would be to
> increase research on alternative sources of energy, like solar and
> fusion.
Fusion? He's going off in this dream where theortical technologies
will save us...
> the outlook of a leftist. "I'm a left- wing guy," he says, "and a
> vegetarian because I don't want to kill animals
sorry, I know right-wing, capitalist vegetarians, so that's rubbish.
> 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.
Sure, he's not willing to admit we need to make hard choices, and
hard choices NOW.
> 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."
Yes, and rightly so..we're heading for disaster.
> 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.
Malthus made certain assumptions about populations..which no
longer hold true. We don't need to make assumptions, we can see
in the data we gather that this world is falling appart ever faster.
Andy
Dawn Falcon
