The Skeptical Environmentalist

Reviews

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“Defending Science”

The Economist

February 2, 2002

 
 BJORN LOMBORG, a Danish statistician, no doubt hoped to spark controversy with his book, "The Skeptical Environmentalist"--an attack on "the litany", as he calls it, of bogus doom and gloom about the state of the planet. He has not been ignored, which is probably an author's worst fate, but he may be wishing he had been. The response to the book in many quarters has been apoplectic. Mr Lomborg is being called a liar, a fraud and worse. People are refusing to share a platform with him. He turns up in Oxford to talk about his book, and the author (it is claimed) of a forthcoming study on climate change throws a pie in his face.

The Economist is not a neutral in all this. Before Mr Lomborg published "The Skeptical Environmentalist", we ran a signed essay by him which gave a summary. Later we reviewed his book in glowing terms. What has inspired the subsequent fury? Mr Lomborg argues that the environment is not in nearly such bad shape as green activists and their dupes in the media would have the public believe; that technology is improving lives across most of the planet; that western civilisation is environmentally sustainable; and that the Kyoto agreement on carbon emissions is bad policy as it stands. How dare he say that? Mr Lomborg defends these positions on the basis of official data and published science. Environmentalists typically use the same sources, but, as Mr Lomborg lays bare, are much less scrupulous about setting short runs of data in their long-term context, for instance, or about quoting ranges of data, where that is appropriate, rather than whatever extreme of any given range best suits their case. Mr Lomborg diligently piles on the footnotes (2,930 of them) so there is no dispute about where his numbers have come from. His claims, of course, could still be true or false. They are largely true, in our opinion. But what is strangest in all this fuss is the idea that simply by making them he has put himself far beyond the pale of respectable discourse, as so many of his critics appear to believe.

Mr Lomborg, it is important to note, does not say that all is well with the world. And The Economist for that matter does not say that Mr Lomborg is right about every issue he addresses. Environmental policy involves uncertainty, as Mr Lomborg emphasizes; now and then this raises doubts that deserve more attention than he gives them (see page 83; this article also provides web links to Mr Lomborg's essay for us, and to other relevant material). We do believe, however, that he is right on his main points, that his critique of much green activism and its reporting in the media is just, and, above all, that where there is room for disagreement, Mr Lomborg invites and facilitates discussion, rather than seeking to silence it. The same cannot be said for many of his critics.

The January issue of Scientific American devoted many pages to a series of articles trashing "The Skeptical Environmentalist". The authors, all supporters of the green movement, were strong on contempt and sneering, but weak on substance. The arresting thing about Scientific American's coverage, however, was not this barrage of ineffective rejoinders but the editor's notion of what was going on: "Science defends itself against the Skeptical Environmentalist," he announced.

That is amazing. Mr Lomborg's targets are green scare-mongers and their credulous servants in the media. He uses the findings of scientists to press his case. How can using science to criticise the Kyoto agreement, to show that the world's forests are not disappearing, to demonstrate that the planet's supplies of energy and food will suffice indefinitely, and the rest, constitute an attack on science? If that is so, the scholars whose work supports those positions are presumably attacking science too, and had better stand in line for a pie in the face.

More is at stake here than a row about a book or the judgment of a magazine editor. Many of Mr Lomborg's critics are respected scientists. Some seem to think that Mr Lomborg's lack of training in their fields disqualifies him from debating environmental policy. E.O. Wilson, one of the world's most distinguished scientists, and a dedicated green, deplores "the Lomborg scam" because of "the extraordinary amount of scientific talent that has to be expended to combat [him] in the media...[Mr Lomborg and his kind] are the parasite load on scholars who earn success through the slow process of peer review and approval." That would be wrong even if all scientists shared Mr Wilson's fear that the world will become a "hellish place to exist", which they do not. Environmental policy involves politics and economics, compromises and trade-offs, a division of burdens geographically and over time. It could not be left to scientists, even if they agreed on the science. We parasites would even then be right to insist on having our say. Leeches of the world, unite

Mr Wilson's insufferable arrogance is bad enough, but there's worse. The fuss over Mr Lomborg highlights an attitude among some media-conscious scientists that militates not just against good policy but against the truth. Stephen Schneider, one of Scientific American's anti-Lomborgians, spoke we suspect not just for himself when he told Discover in 1989: "[We] are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we'd like to see the world a better place...To do that we need to get some broad-based support, to capture the public's imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have...Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest." In other words, save science for other scientists, in peer-reviewed journals and other sanctified places. In public, strike a balance between telling the truth and telling necessary lies.

Science needs no defending from Mr Lomborg. It may very well need defending from champions like Mr Schneider.

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“Never the Twain Shall Meet”

The Economist

February 2, 2002

 
ACADEMIC disciplines are often separated by gulfs of mutual incomprehension, but the deepest and widest may be the one that separates most economists from most environmentalists. The ferocious row over "The Skeptical Environmentalist", a new book by Bjorn Lomborg, a statistician with a taste for economic analysis, is a case in point. We discuss that fight in detail this week in our leader pages and in the Science and Technology section. What underlies rows like this, as well as the more insidious refusal even to engage with the other side, is not so much disagreements about facts as disagreement about how to think.

Almost all economists are intellectually committed to the idea that the things people want can be valued in dollars and cents. If this is true, and things such as clean air, stable sea levels, tropical forests and species diversity can be valued that way, then environmental issues submit--or so it is argued--quite readily to the disciplines of economic analysis. Trade-offs can be struck between competing ends, in principle at least, and one can begin to think about how the world's consumption of environmental goods can be optimised, as economists say, subject to the constraint that people cannot have everything they want. Most environmentalists object to the very first step in the argument--the idea that environmental goods can be reduced, as they would put it, to a cash equivalent. In fact, most environmentalists not only disagree with this idea, they find it morally deplorable. So tempers on both sides start to be lost at the outset.

Ordinary voters are far more likely to agree with environmentalists on this than with economists. To them it seems absurd and wrong to suppose that a value can be put on, say, the survival of the Indian tiger. Yet the fact remains that choices must be made. Even if environmentalists ruled the world, difficult choices would have to be confronted--and, working backwards from those choices, made according to whatever criteria, it will always be possible to calculate the economic values that were implicitly attached to different environmental goods. Environmentalist rulers might prefer not to know what these implicit valuations were, but that would not alter the fact that trade-offs, measurable in dollar terms, had in fact been struck.

However, this does not prove that moving from values to policy, as economists prefer, will yield better results than working backwards, and deducing (if you care to) values from policy. Suppose that economists are very bad indeed at attaching values to environmental goods. Then it might be better to work the other way round: take a guess at good policy, and leave the economists to do their (pointless) bookkeeping later.

There is a lively debate in economics about valuing the environment, and some strands of the literature do favour, or at least sympathise with, this environmentalist perspective. For instance, a new paper by Philip Graves, a professor at the University of Colorado, suggests that economists systematically undervalue environmental goods, possibly by a lot*.

The standard approach to valuing public goods (including environmental goods) goes back to a classic paper by Paul Samuelson in 1954. It says that, in principle, governments should be guided in providing public goods by what people would be willing to spend on them if the goods could be bought in a market. One difficulty is discovering what people would be willing to spend. But that point is old hat. Mr Graves's idea is that even if you knew how much of their existing incomes people would spend on environmental goods, this would not tell you how much they would spend if they were actually given the choice--because if people could buy environmental goods, they might work harder and earn more, and spend the extra income on them.

Mr Graves guesses that people might work 10% harder on average. (One component of this shift: at least some green activists and drop-outs would get higher-paying jobs, or any jobs, if they could spend their wages on environmental goods.) That number, on which everything depends, looks awfully high. It may seem more plausible in Colorado than it would across the Atlantic in, say, Essex--where, if people had an opportunity to trade less environmental protection for extra leisure and private goods, they would probably take it. Still, if Mr Graves were anywhere near right about this figure, the implied undervaluation of environmental goods by standard methods would be quite enormous.

Does this point the way to detente? Probably not. If Mr Graves is right about the theory and in the ball-park with his number, his analysis favours a very large expansion in efforts to improve the environment. Environmentalists would no doubt applaud that result. But Mr Graves is still, deplorably in their view, trying to attach monetary values to things he ought not. Mr Graves's analysis, and other green-friendly work by economists, is still about economic efficiency, about striking a better trade-off--and, in the end, about finding the point at which further spending on the environment would be too much. How many environmentalists can even imagine such a point?
 

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“The Litany and the Heretic”

The Economist

February 2, 2002

"I'M AFRAID there isn't much scientific controversy about Mr Lomborg. He occupies a very junior position in Denmark (an 'associate professor' does not exactly mean the same thing that it does in the United States), he has one possibly very flawed paper in an international journal on game theory, no publications on environmental issues, and yet manages to dismiss the science of dozens of the world's best scientists, including Nobel laureates, Japan and Crawford prize-winners and the like. As any sensible person would expect, his facts are usually fallacies and his analysis is largely non-existent."

Those contemptuous words from Stuart Pimm, a professor of conservation biology at Columbia University, are fairly representative of the response from many environmental scientists and activists to Bjorn Lomborg's recent book, "The Skeptical Environmentalist". In the weeks since the book's release, virtually every large environmental group has weighed in with a denunciation. Numerous heavyweights of science have penned damning articles and reviews in leading journals. Dr Pimm, for one, railed against Dr Lomborg in Nature, while Scientific American recently devoted 11 pages to attacks from scientists known for their environmental activism.

Dr Lomborg's critics protest too much. They are rattled not because, as they endlessly insist, Dr Lomborg lacks credentials as an environmental scientist and is of no account, but because his book is such a powerful and persuasive assault on the central tenets of the modern environmental movement. Just the facts Curious about the true state of the planet, the author--who makes no claims to expertise in environmental science, only to statistical expertise--has scrutinised reams of official data on everything from air pollution to energy availability to climate change. As an instinctive green and a former member of Greenpeace, he was surprised to find that the world's environment is not, in fact, getting ever worse. Rather, he shows, most environmental indicators are stable or improving.

One by one, he goes through the "litany", as he calls it, of four big environmental fears:

     * Natural resources are running out.

    * The population is ever growing, leaving less and less to eat.

     * Species are becoming rapidly extinct, forests are vanishing and fish stocks are collapsing.

     * Air and water are becoming ever more polluted.

In each case, he demonstrated that the doom and gloom is wildly exaggerated. Known reserves of fossil fuels and most metals have risen. Agricultural production per head has risen; the numbers facing starvation have declined. The threat of biodiversity loss is real but exaggerated, as is the problem of tropical deforestation. And pollution diminishes as countries grow richer and tackle it energetically.

In other words, the planet is not in peril. There are problems, and they deserve attention, but nothing remotely so dire as most of the green movement keeps saying.

Nor is that all he shows. The book exposes--through hundreds of detailed, meticulously footnoted examples--a pattern of exaggeration and statistical manipulation, used by green groups to advance their pet causes, and obligingly echoed through the media. Bizarrely, one of Dr Lomborg's critics in Scientific American criticises as an affectation the book's insistence on documenting every statistic and every quotation with a reference to a published source. But the complaint is not so bizarre when one works through the references, because they so frequently expose careless reporting and environmentalists' abuse of scientific research.

The replies to Dr Lomborg in Scientific American and elsewhere score remarkably few points of substance*. His large factual claims about the current state of the world do not appear to be under challenge--which is unsurprising since they draw on official data. What is under challenge, chiefly, is his outrageous presumption in starting a much-needed debate.

Some argue that scientists who favour stronger policies to improve the environment must use the same tactics as any other political lobby--from steel companies fighting for tariffs on imports to farmers demanding more subsidies. The aim, after all, is to win public favour and government support. Whether such a view is consistent with the obligation science owes to the truth is debatable, at best. If scientists want their views to be accorded the respect due to science, then they must speak as scientists, not as lobbyists.

Dr Lomborg's work has its flaws. He has made some errors in his statistical analysis, as he acknowledges on his website. And there are broader issues, especially to do with the aggregation of data and the handling of uncertainty, where his book is open to challenge. For instance, his approach of examining data at a global level, while statistically sound, tends to mask local environmental trends. Global marine productivity has indeed risen, as he says--but this disguises collapses in particular species in particular places. Dr Lomborg argues that such losses, seen in a long-term perspective, do not matter much. Many would disagree, not least the fishermen in the areas affected.

Allen Hammond of the World Resources Institute (WRI) makes a related point. He accepts Dr Lomborg's optimistic assessment of the environment, but says it holds only for the developed world. The aggregate figures offered in the book mask worsening pollution in the mega-cities of the poor world. Dr Lomborg agrees that there are local and regional environmental pressures, and that these matter a lot, but it is fair to point out that the book has little to say about them, except to argue that rising incomes will help.

The book gives little credit to environmental policy as a cause of environmental improvement. That is a defensible position, in fact, but the book does not trouble to make the case. And another important question is somewhat skated over: the possibility that some environmental processes involve irreversible "triggers", which, once pulled, lead to sudden and disastrous deterioration. Climate scientists believe, and Dr Lomborg does not deny, that too much warming could lead to irreversible bad outcomes such as the collapse of the mid-Atlantic "conveyor belt" (an ocean current that warms Europe). The science here is thin: nobody knows what level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere would trigger such a calamity. But the risk argues for caution.

Dr Lomborg's assessment of the science in this area leads him to venture that warming is more likely to be at the low end of the range expected by leading experts than at the high end. He argues that the most-cited climate models misjudge factors such as the effects of clouds, aerosols and the solar cycle. That is plausible, and there is science to support it, but the conclusion is far from certain. Again, it is reasonable to argue that such uncertainty makes it better to err on the side of caution.

Sensible people will disagree about the course that policy should take. Dr Lomborg--a courteous fellow--seems willing to talk calmly to his opponents. For the most part, while claiming in some cases to be men of science, his opponents do not return the compliment. Homo ecologicus

Despite its limitations, "The Skeptical Environmentalist" delivers a salutary warning to conventional thinking. Dr Lomborg reminds militant greens, and the media that hang on their every exaggerated word about environmental calamity, that environmental policy should be judged against the same criteria as other kinds of policy. Is there a problem? How bad is it? What will it cost to fix? Is that the best way to spend those resources?

This is exactly what Tom Burke, a leading British environmentalist, denied in a debate he had with Dr Lomborg in Prospect, a British magazine. "What I find most egregious [in] your climate-change argument, however, is the proposition that the world faces a choice between spending money on mitigating climate change, and providing access to clean drinking water and sanitation in the developing world. We must and can do both. Such artificial choices may be possible in an academic ivory tower where ideas can be arranged to suit the prejudices of the occupant, but they are not available in the real world and it is dishonest to suggest that they are."

On the contrary, Mr Burke. Only in an ivory tower could choices such as these be called "artificial". Democratic politics is about nothing but choices of that sort. Green politics needs to learn that resources are not unlimited.

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“Doomsday Postponed”

The Economist

September 8, 2001

 
THIS is one of the most valuable books on public policy--not merely on environmental policy--to have been written for the intelligent general reader in the past ten years. Its target is environmental pessimism, the defining mood of the age. By the end, fair-minded readers will find that most of the concerns they had about the future of the planet have given way to fury at the army of dissembling environmentalists who have dedicated themselves to stirring up panic by concealing the truth.

The idea that the world is heading for ruin seems to be taken for granted by almost every television news programme and newspaper, whether the subject is poverty in Africa, global warming, trends in population, traffic jams in Manchester or a spell of bad weather in Detroit. This gloom directly affects the debate on environmental policy, of course, but its influence goes wider than that. It supports the conviction that capitalism is self-destructive, and so lurks in the background of many an economic debate, broad or narrow. Yet this faith in looming environmental disaster, Mr Lomborg shows, is false. The author is a professor of statistics at the University of Aarhus. His expertise lies in numbers and sources. So in "The Skeptical Environmentalist" he examines the views of the world's leading environmental pressure groups simply by consulting the sources (if any) they cite, together with other relevant literature. Again and again, he finds that the pessimists' claims are falsified not merely by the available scientific evidence but by their own quoted sources.

The accumulating power of the book lies in the sheer toll of carefully documented examples. Bearing that in mind, consider just one, to get a flavour. The Worldwatch Institute has claimed that the world's forests have "declined significantly" in recent decades. In fact, the longest data series, gathered by a United Nations agency, shows that global forest cover grew between 1950 and 1994. In particular, the institute noted, Canada is losing 200,000 hectares of forest a year. On checking the quoted source, Mr Lomborg finds that Canada's forests grew by 174,000 hectares a year. This is representative: the book exposes countless errors, evasions and distortions of this sort.

As well as insisting on statistical probity, Mr Lomborg brings another intellectual virtue to the task: an interest in feasible alternatives. On global warming, for instance, he shows that standard claims about the extent of the problem are deliberately exaggerated (though he does not deny that some global warming is going on); beyond that, however, he asks about costs. The cost of preventing warming could easily outweigh the harm caused by letting it happen, and by a very wide margin, depending on the method. If concern for developing countries came first (and that is where global warming will cause most harm), there would be much better ways of spending money than on schemes such as the Kyoto plan. Providing universal access to clean water would do more good than the tiny cut in warming envisaged by Kyoto, at about a fifth of the price.

Mr Lomborg is not the first to take a stand of this sort against the excesses of the environmentalist movement. He follows in the footsteps of the late Julian Simon, one of the 20th century's unsung heroes of economics. (Mr Lomborg generously acknowledges Simon's role.) But Simon was a quirky conservative, and therefore ignored by the mainstream media. Mr Lomborg is a soft-left Greenpeace defector, a photogenic blond Dane, a charming self-promoter who understands the importance of, as he puts it, "being seen to be nice". That makes him a story. His findings have caused a furore in Scandinavia and, with this book, show signs of being noticed elsewhere. Good. More power to him. "The Skeptical Environmentalist" is a triumph.

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“Energetic Visionaries”

The Economist

September 1, 2001

 
BACK in 1987, a panel headed by Sweden's Gro Harlem Brundtland defined sustainable development as growth that meets our needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs. This important new book from the International Energy Agency (IEA), a quasi-governmental agency, argues that that vision "has slowly evolved from a slogan for environmentalists into a guiding principle for public policy."

Toward that end, the IEA has produced a how-to manual for pursuing more sustainable energy policies. Smog, acid rain and global warming, for example, are linked at least in part to man's use of fossil fuels. Notably, the work does not gloss over difficulties: it points out that liberalising power markets can make it harder to subsidise renewable energy sources, and that reducing emissions from transport might involve unpopular moves such as raising fuel taxes or ending perks like company cars. LONG before the term became fashionable, Maurice Strong was a leading advocate of sustainability. The charming Canadian has seamlessly woven together a career in business with green activism and global policymaking. Though the book's writing can be plodding, his remarkable career and personal exuberance save it from dullness.

He helped pull together the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. That gathering saw the largest-ever collection of heads of state, including George Bush senior, launch the effort to tackle climate change. Ironically, its culmination--the Kyoto Protocol--has been rejected by Mr Bush's own son. Even so, Mr Strong hopes that the next big Earth Summit, to be held in Johannesburg in September 2002, can revive the goal of sustainable development, and he offers prescriptions for doing so.

KEITH TUTT also worries about the link between energy and sustainable development. His tone is evangelical: we are "fossil addicts", he writes, caught in a "self-destructive spiral" threatening our survival. You do not, though, need to share Mr Tutt's vision of impending cataclysm to be interested in his profiles of inventors and entrepreneurs searching for clean, bountiful sources of energy.

Mr Tutt writes persuasively that these folk are by no means all quacks. His writing is clear, his reporting thorough and his arguments crisp. A good example of what "The Search for Free Energy" has to offer is his account of cold fusion. This was widely ridiculed as the scam of the century. But Mr Tutt lays out the reasoned case for why some version of this approach could play a role in the future of energy production.

THIS gem provides a contrast with those above, which look to a green future. Tim Flannery casts his gaze back. This is a literate, meticulously researched work on the environmental history of North America. Perhaps this book's greatest strength is Mr Flannery's ability to bring ancient, inanimate scenes to life. When he describes the great asteroid that crashed into what is now the Yucatan Peninsula (so ending the era of dinosaurs), he does so in such detail that the reader feels almost afraid.

Mr Flannery worries that a continent which has proved so accommodating and adaptable may have met its match in climate change. Controversially, he holds that North America "will feel its effects more violently and well in advance of other continents." 

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“Green No More; The Education of an Environmentalist”

Charles T. Rubin

The Economist

December 24, 2001

The Skeptical Environmentalist, Measuring the Real State of the World, by Bjorn Lomborg, Cambridge University Press, 540 pp., $ 69.95

In 1997, Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish professor of statistics and a self-professed "old left-wing Greenpeace member," came across a book by Julian Simon, one of the great critics of contemporary environmentalism.

Lomborg set up a study group with ten of his "sharpest students" to refute Simon. But it turned out "a surprisingly large" number of Simon's points "stood up to scrutiny." Lomborg became convinced that "the Litany" -- the cliched collection of beliefs that the world is subject to ever increasing environmental degradation and poised on the brink of destruction -- has it wrong. Most global trends are improving and can be expected to continue improving as the world grows wealthier. Fears of environmental disaster are exaggerated and have little scientific basis. While there is no reason to think the world is already good enough, there is every reason to expect human ingenuity will continue the improving trend. So Lomborg sat down and produced The Skeptical Environmentalist, a critical examination of many of the key issues of contemporary environmentalism, which he hopes will "lead to an appreciable change in attitude about environmental problems." If we "forget our fear of imminent breakdown," we may be able to achieve a "reasonable prioritization" of the measures necessary to improve the well-being of man and nature.

Lomborg deserves the impact for which he hopes, but if past experience is any indication, he won't obtain it. You can catch a hint of that in the publicity which has swirled around The Skeptical Environmentalist so far -- all of it less concerned with the message than with the messenger's betrayal of his old environmentalist faith.

In eighteen careful chapters, Lomborg covers most of the issues environmentalists use to foment panic. Food production is increasing, and a smaller percentage of the globe faces starvation than ever before. Life expectancy is growing in most of the world. More people are prosperous and secure. Water and air pollution trends are improving; indeed, urban air in the developed nations may be cleaner now than it has been in centuries. Our fears of chemicals are greatly exaggerated. In short, we are in a period of "unprecedented human prosperity."

But isn't this prosperity built on an orgy of consumption that sacrifices future generations? Aren't we successful only by undercutting the integrity of nature itself? Lomborg excels in dissecting such examples of the environmentalists' Litany. He demonstrates that statements like "The world is losing 109 species a day" have no basis in empirical research; indeed, the scientists most likely to put forward such claims have the least interest in doing the necessary research. Similarly, in three and a half well-crafted pages, he demolishes the idea that we are running out of room for landfill and points out the link between rising prosperity and improved air quality. Whether he is hunting down the source of claims that provoke environmental alarm or providing the context that was left out in order to heighten fears and grab headlines, Lomborg shows how to evaluate claims about environmental degradation and danger.

The Skeptical Environmentalist is particularly good at recontextualizing environmental problems -- the main focus of its introductory and concluding chapters. Lomborg skillfully uncovers the source of the bias towards bad environmental news in the scientific community, environmental interest groups, and the media. Drawing valuable lessons about tradeoffs and priorities, he makes clear why environmental goods cannot be treated as uniquely privileged -- and he suggests how pernicious it is that over half of America's voters think we cannot do too much to protect the environment. "The expressed dislike of prioritization does not mean that we will not end up prioritizing, only that our choices will be worse."

Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist has so many virtues (to say nothing of its 2,930 endnotes), it seems unfair to predict that the book will not succeed at creating the "appreciable change in attitude about environmental problems" its author desires. But think for a moment about the fate of Julian Simon -- and the parallel fates of Judd Alexander, William Baarschers, John Baden, Ronald Bailey, Robert Balling Jr., Joe Bast, Ben Bloch, Karen Bolander, Alston Chase, George Claus, Leonard Cole, Edith Efron, Gregg Easterbrook, Alan Fitzsimmons, Bernard Frieden, Michael Fumento, Jay Lehr, Marc Landy, Bernard Lewis, Harold Lyons, William Rathje, Dixy Lee Ray, Marc Roberts, Michael Sanera, Jane Shaw, Fred Singer, Stephen Thomas, Elizabeth Whelan, Aaron Wildavsky, and others.

At various times over the past four decades, each of these writers has produced works that attempt to show the shortcomings of contemporary environmentalism. They have not all been as comprehensive as Lomborg's, but taken as a whole they have covered much the same territory. Other than providing valuable updates, The Skeptical Environmentalist breaks little new ground in environmental criticism.

Lomborg's work is no less necessary for being the latest in a string of such works. Still, that leaves the question of environmentalism's extraordinary persistence. Why don't the facts seem to count for much in environmental matters?

The answer needs to go beyond Lomborg's analysis of the Litany. The state of the world as Lomborg sees it depends on a powerful sense of progress -- a justified sense, but one that must remain, in all honesty, uncertain. Past results do not guarantee future performance, as advertisements for investment funds always note, and it is always difficult to see clearly the fragile components of the foundations upon which one lives. Environmentalists exploit this uncertainty, promising in its place complete certainty if only we remake the world as they desire. Lomborg believes things will get better, which seems rather likely. Environmentalists believe things can be made the best, which seems extremely unlikely. You'd think the possibility of Lomborg's vision would easily vanquish the impossibility of the environmentalists' -- but the magic of claiming "the best" always trumps the dullness of claiming "the better."

Similarly, Lomborg sees present problems as opportunities for human ingenuity as capable of achieving increasing security for increasing numbers of people, while environmentalists turn them into apocalyptic presentiments. Here again, Lomborg has only common sense on his side. The environmentalists have the universal human imagination of the end of the world: If things appear to be going well, they are only going well so far, and this or that environmental indicator is a bellwether of future disaster.

As we accumulate experience of disasters not happening, this kind of argument ought to lose its power. But the persistent ability of environmentalists to conjure up the world's end is based on shifting the burden of proof. Somehow, critics of environmentalism have been put in a position of having to prove definitively that something will never happen. This maneuver represents a tremendous rhetorical triumph. When critics are forced -- as they must be -- to admit that proving a negative is impossible, they seem to concede that there is something genuine about the environmental fears.

The real issue in dispute, as Lomborg recognizes in his discussion of global climate change, is what we want the future to look like. Lomborg does not develop this insight into the essentially political nature of the environmentalist program as much as he could have. Reasonable people may disagree about whether the environmental vision stems from "secularized" religious belief, from self-interested behavior within liberal democratic institutions, or from a utopian mindset. But there is little question environmentalism is driven primarily by a vision of the way the world ought to be -- a vision that puts the environment above liberty, self-government, human diversity, and material well-being.

Science is a weapon in advancing this vision, but its use among devoted environmentalists is purely tactical. In The Skeptical Environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg, like his many predecessors, has performed a valuable service in attempting to block the misuse of science for political ends. But until more people understand that the world promised by contemporary environmentalism is not a world in which they would want to live, there will be little change in our arguments about the environment.

Charles T. Rubin is professor of politics at Duquesne University and the author of The Green Crusade: Rethinking the Roots of Environmentalism.

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 “Picking Holes In Litany of Loss”

Eric Neumayer

 The Times Higher Education Supplement

November 16, 2001

Rarely has an essentially academic book created as much media attention as Bjorn Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist. One wished this attention was because the book presented many new insights, facts or ideas. Unfortunately, this is not the case. There is little in this book that cannot be found in earlier works such as The State of Humanity, The Ultimate Resource or Small is Stupid, written or edited by Julian Simon or Wilfred Beckerman -whom Lomborg strangely does not cite. The book's objective is to prove to the reader that environmentalists such as Paul Ehrlich, Norman Myers and Lester Brown from the Worldwatch Institute, as well as environmental activist groups such as Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), are almost always wrong in their warnings about large-scale environmental degradation and the need to take decisive action against it. Lomborg argues that what he calls the "litany" put forward by these people and groups is not based on sound facts and scientific research and is therefore plain wrong. Contrary to the litany, he purports to show that "mankind's lot has actually improved in terms of practically every measurable indicator", and while some environmental problems exist, they have often been vastly exaggerated - environmental quality is rising rather than falling in most instances. He follows the lead of others in denying that an environmental problem exists or, if it does exist, denying that it presents cause for alarm. Acid rain? Does not kill forests. Pollution? The "air and water around us are becoming less and less polluted". Biodiversity loss? Vastly exaggerated. Global warming? Lomborg believes it "will not decrease food production; it will probably not increase storminess or the frequency of hurricanes; it will not increase the impact of malaria or indeed cause more deaths". And so on.

If this argument is not new, why has the book received so much media attention? One reason could be that Lomborg, contrary to Simon, Beckerman and others, once believed in the litany himself and the conversion of a former sinner always makes for good marketing. Lomborg describes himself as an "old leftwing Greenpeace member" who was provoked by reading an interview with Simon in a magazine, tried to refute Simon's arguments with statistical facts and soon resigned himself to accepting that Simon was right and the litany wrong.

One might wonder why millions of people, including many academics, still follow the litany when a sober look at the facts purportedly demonstrates that it is all wrong. To this Lomborg gives the same answer as Simon and Beckerman before him: the media are to blame because they focus on bad and alarmist news. Also, they fail in their duty to distinguish sound science from the errors of the litany. Ironically, environmentalists such as Paul and Anne Ehrlich in their book, Betrayal of Science and Reason: How Anti-Environmental Rhetoric Threatens our Future, also argue that the media give far too much attention to a "body of anti-science".

There are two aspects of Lomborg's book that are different from the earlier debate between what one might call environmental optimists and the environmental pessimists under scrutiny in this book. First, he does not assume the highly aggressive and arrogant tone characteristic of the earlier debate. He does not engage in personal attacks and ad hominem arguments. Second, he is more cautious about dismissing the existence of environmental problems. His optimism is based on arguing that environmental problems are vastly exaggerated rather than that they are imaginary. In addition, his book is marvellously referenced, providing many details with a comprehensive list of all sources of data.

But having said this, it suffers from a number of shortcomings. To begin with, Lomborg is at fault in believing that science can provide a clear answer to the severity of environmental problems and thereby prove that environmental optimism is right. He fails to recognise that the dispute between environmental optimists and pessimists has its roots in science and is a consequence of the scientifically contested nature of environmental problems. Whether, for example, the world really loses biodiversity at a rate of 0.7 per cent per 50 years (as Lomborg firmly believes) is highly contested, and not just by the proponents of the litany.

Second, Lomborg ignores the politically and socially contested nature of environmental problems. He does not appreciate that individuals can have divergent views on what the correct political and social response to an environmental problem should be. Lomborg assumes a welfarist position: environmental problems are one of many that humankind faces, and environmental protection must be subjected to a stringent cost-benefit analysis. Only if the benefits outweigh the costs (including opportunity costs) should environmental protection be initiated. Otherwise, scarce resources are wasted. While this is one possible view of how mankind should treat nature, it is certainly not a position one would call "environmentalism". Lomborg does not seem to understand that environmentalists want to give priority to certain environmental protection measures independent of any estimated cost-to-benefit ratio, because with environmental destruction something unique may be irreversibly lost. Whatever Lomborg might be, he is not an environmentalist because he regards the environment as he does any other commodity. His "environmentalism" is one of the "we all care for the environment" kind, which paints over the fact that some people actually benefit from environmental degradation and that there are real conflicts between environmentalists and non-environmentalists on how far efforts to protect the environment should be pursued. Consequently, he fails to understand that, for example, from an environmentalist perspective, even a loss of tropical forests at an annual rate of "only" 0.46 per cent, which Lomborg suggests is the true rate as opposed to the 1.5 to 4.6 per cent put forward by the litany, is cause for alarm.

Third, in his focus on the litany, Lomborg neglects the fact that many environmentalists have a more sophisticated perspective on the changing welfare of humankind and the environmental problems it faces. While, for example, drawing time and again on data provided by the World Resources Institute, Lomborg fails to appreciate the good research and policy work undertaken by this particular environmentalist institution as well as many others, including many environmentally concerned academics all over the world. It is too easy to refer time and again to Ehrlich, Myers, Brown and their followers while ignoring the existence of an entirely different strand of environmentalism. Those who are more sophisticated than the proponents of the litany in their arguments, appreciate that in a world of scarce resources, not all claims for any and every environmental protection effort can be satisfied.

Fourth, Lomborg fails to give credit to environmentalists whose frequent and sometimes unfounded alarms about imminent environmental destruction have mobilised policy-makers into bringing about the many environmental improvements he correctly celebrates in his book. Whatever the fault of the strand of environmentalism under attack in this book might be, its often exaggerated claims have historically been important in waking up a dormant public and community of policy-makers. While he is right in arguing that policy decisions should not be based on exaggerated claims, he could give some credit to the proponents of the litany here.

So far no attempt has been made to refute any of Lomborg's claims in this review. There are two reasons for this. In many, but by no means all instances I share Lomborg's view. Where I disagree, there is not enough space here to attempt a substantive engagement with his detailed arguments. Instead, I have tried to put Lomborg's book into context as part of a much older debate between environmental optimists and pessimists.

One lesson to be learnt from this book is that one might want to differentiate between different aspects of the environment. If one agrees with one side of the debate in some respects, one does not need to agree with it in all respects. For example, if one shares the environmental pessimists' view on global warming or biodiversity extinction, there is no need to share their view on non-renewable mineral and energy resources too. The world economy has exhibited a remarkable capability to overcome natural resource constraints via substitution and technical progress. The false alarms about the running out of essential resources are a case in point, as Lomborg says. Global environmental resources, such as the global atmosphere or biodiversity, on the other hand, lack a defined property-rights system and functioning markets; therefore prices cannot play the role of a self-correcting feedback loop. These environmental resources are more vulnerable and, because they are more important to mankind, one needs to be cautious about a threat to them even if the existence of the threat is contested. Such resources often need collective action by countries to provide for the global public good.

It is the failure to suggest a way out of the old trenches in the debate between environmental optimism and pessimism that is disappointing about this book. Which environmental problems are non-existent or relatively harmless, and which provide cause for real concern from an environmentalist's point of view? Lomborg does not tell us. In the end his book is essentially just another contribution to environmental optimism. But to his credit, he has written probably the most comprehensive, up-to-date and provocative contribution to environmental optimism so far, and a book that is accessible to academics, students and virtually anybody interested in environmental issues. Given that what the book calls the litany is all too often taken as incontestable truth in the literature on the environment, agriculture and conflict, this is no small achievement.

Eric Neumayer is lecturer in environment and development, London School of Economics and Political Science.

*   *   *   *   *

“A Bright Green”

David Pearce

New Scientist

September 22, 2001

HALF-BAKED, ill-researched and designed to capture the moral high ground rather than to advance the cause of knowledge, says Bjorn Lomborg. He's been scrutinising environmental statistics. He should know: he's a statistics professor at Aarhus University in Denmark. "The Skeptical Environmentalist" came out in Danish three years ago. Its translation into English has caused a sensation. Lomborg looks at a huge range of statistics on environmental change, globally and locally. He says things are getting better, refuting the doomsday environmentalists.

Part of the problem is that doing a bit better doesn't set things right. Concern about the state of the environment does have a lot to do with adverse trends, such as the rapid loss of bird populations in Britain - an indicator not mentioned by Lomborg. But it also has something to do with the widening gap between the state of the environment and the state that many people want, their aspirations fed by better education and rising incomes. So Lomborg's chapter on global extinctions comes as scant reassurance to, say, salmon anglers who not only lament the decline of the salmon but demand more fishing as we get richer. Arguing that total forest cover in the world is increasing (it is) is less than reassuring if expanding temperate forests do not compensate for declining tropical forests.

But the greatest ire is going to be reserved for Lomborg's chapter on global warming. The science is clear; it is not rational policy to proceed as if the probability of induced warming is zero. Lomborg asks an economist's question: do the benefits of controlling warming outweigh the costs ? He agrees that global warming will damage the world, but says that human misery would be greatly reduced if the huge cost of dealing with global warming went to solve the immediate problems of the poor.

Those who take a moral view about intergenerational equity will want to challenge this cost-benefit thinking, but Lomborg has identified a basic truth of economics moralists often ignore: you can't spend money twice. Money is not just money, it is hospitals and schools, water and clean air. Just as compelling is the fact that the Kyoto Protocol, even if the US had signed up, will postpone reaching the predicted warming levels for 2100 by only 6 years if we spend the estimated dollar 5 trillion now. Lomborg's view is that it's far better to invest in adaptation than pretend we can hold back warming.

I doubt if his conclusion needs to be so extreme. Targeting carbon should accelerate the switch to renewable fuels, rather than market forces as Lomborg advocates. This brings lots of dividends - reduced congestion and lower pollution from non-CO2 gases. Perhaps the mistake in the debate has been to get too hung up about warming itself, rather than focusing on the need to get technology moving.

If readers can't quite square Lomborg's optimism with what they see around them, this is no surprise. Even 178 graphs and 3000 footnotes can't cover all the issues that people worry about. If he has debunked some doomsters, good. The only risk is that people will confuse the "things are getting better" message with a Panglossian "things are as good as they can be" message. But all scientists have a duty to tell it as it is.

David Pearce is professor of environmental economics at University College London
  

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“Debate: Tom Burke & Bjorn Lomborg”

Prospect

September 20, 2001
 

Dear Bjorn

1st September 2001

I welcome your challenge to the environmental movement. There is too much self-righteousness and, indeed, self-satisfaction within the green ghetto. Unchallenged ideas always become tired and irrelevant. Your book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, has been written to dispel a collection of false beliefs propagated by greens, a collection you call "the litany." The core of your argument is that this combines with four other factors to cause "a disjunction between perception and reality," which you have set out to remedy. The four other factors are: lopsided scientific research; the need of environmental groups to generate revenues; the media's preoccupation with bad news and something you call "poor individual perception."

The trouble is that the litany you describe is a caricature of your own creation, which is perhaps why you cite a science fiction writer as its most compelling exponent.

It is true that some environmentalists play on people's fears in order to generate headlines and revenues. But, in doing so, they are only following a well-trodden path established by the business world and those seeking political office. Wrongs never add up to rights and I would certainly prefer to live in a world with a more rational public discourse but, sadly, this is no easier to find than the one lived in by better people. It is, however, a gigantic leap of logic to go from here to the idea that the whole environmental community, of some tens of millions of professional and volunteer members, has colluded in a conspiracy with the mass media to gull most people into thinking the environment is in a much worse state than it actually is. There is indeed an environmental litany. It is a litany of tragedy. It reads: DDT, Bhopal, Torrey Canyon, Sveso, Exxon Valdez, Flixborough, CFCs, Chernobyl, BSE...

These are not words that people have written, but events that have happened. These events, and many more, were brought to the public's attention by the carelessness or ignorance of businesses and governments, not by environmentalists. In my 30 years as an environmentalist, nothing I or my colleagues have ever said or written has had as much influence on the public as these events.

The central thrust of your argument is that environmentalists, and Lester Brown in particular, have ignored the dramatically rising trajectory of human wellbeing throughout the 20th century, in order to promote a message of doom. You, together with your British soul mate, Matt Ridley, believe that all will be well in humanity's future.

This sunny enthusiasm leads you not only to misrepresent Brown but also to miss the point. This is illuminated in your discussion of his views on food. Brown, you say, keeps on "telling us that food production is going down the tubes." He does no such thing. He did write, in the passage you quote from 1965, "the food problem emerging in the less developing regions may be one of the most nearly insoluble problems facing man over the next few decades." He was right. It has been a nearly insoluble problem. In 1974, Henry Kissinger promised the world food conference that by 1984 no one would go to bed hungry. In 1996, governments at the world food summit in Rome cut this target in half and doubled the time it would take to reach it. Three years later they agreed that even this goal was unlikely to be achieved.

You rightly point out that food production has greatly increased and that the proportion of people starving has gone down. Brown agrees and has said so often. You also both agree that the absolute number of people starving has remained almost constant because of population growth. The point you miss here is whether production growth can continue to outpace population growth.

A broader point you miss is that environmentalists are not arguing that life has not got better for many people in many places, but that it has got better in ways that cannot be maintained if it is to be enjoyed with everyone-that is to say all of the 9 billion or so people that we expect to be sharing our economy and our ecology later in the 21st century. The point is not to stop things getting better, but to ensure that they get better in smarter ways.

In setting out to storm unoccupied positions and slay already dead dragons, you have committed all of the offences that you so robustly, and occasionally correctly, criticise in the environmentalists. You exaggerate for effect, substitute forceful assertion for weight of argument, sometimes make sweeping generalisations from particular instances, are inconsistent in your use of logic and selective in using evidence and quotation. These are the familiar and allowable features of polemic. They are only illegitimate in scholarship. What renders your book dishonest is its claim to scholarship.

Yours

Tom Burke

* * * * *

Dear Tom

4th September 2001

You claim that what I call the litany-the oft-repeated claim of an ever deteriorating environment-is a caricature, and that I am forced to quote a science fiction writer because true environmentalists do not express such views.

In fact, Isaac Asimov's influential book (described by Michael McCloskey, former director of the Sierra Club, as "the one ecology book to read") is only mentioned in my footnotes. My main examples of the litany are from the American Time magazine and the British New Scientist. In 2000, Time tells us how "everyone knows the planet is in bad shape" and how "the decline of the earth's ecosystems has continued unabated" over the past 40 years. And in its 2001 global environment supplement, New Scientist describes the impending environmental "catastrophe" and how our thoughtless actions risk consigning "humanity to the dustbin of evolutionary history." This may not characterise the environmental debate in which you are engaged, but it certainly characterises the debate which most people read and believe. Denying this is implausible, and leads to neglecting the litany's real impact on public policy. In any case, you do not have to look too far to find similar statements coming from reputable environmental organisations. The Worldwatch Institute, for example, says "the key environmental indicators are increasingly negative," noting how "local ecosystems are collapsing at an accelerating pace" and repeatedly uses phrases like "the environmental decline of the planet."

You accept that many people have a poor perception of the environment but surely the solution is for greens to provide better information. We need to curb the sweeping statements of the litany and instead provide useful knowledge, both of real problems and success stories.

Curiously, you then go on to confirm my claim of a litany-you say that there is a litany of environmental tragedy and list examples such as DDT, oil spills from Torrey Canyon and Exxon Valdez, and CFCs damaging the ozone layer. Because these are actual events, they somehow show that the environmental decline is real and not just the creation of environmentalists. But singular events cannot reliably be used to describe general trends. It is as incorrect as noting that one's grandfather chain-smoked and yet lived to be 97, thus concluding smoking to be harmless.

You also neglect to put these problems in perspective-DDT has helped wipe out endemic malaria in both Europe and north America, and its cheap protection still works wonders for third world malaria, while its risks to humans are minimal. Since malaria is one of the top killers, with more than 1.1m deaths a year, surely this information is also necessary for people to get a truer perception of the world? Likewise, CFC gasses have been almost completely phased out and the ozone layer is projected to heal over the next 50 years. Isn't that important information, too? Equally, you find time to mention two large oil spills, but you do not put them in perspective. Though the Exxon Valdez oil spill killed at least 250,000 birds, this is roughly equivalent to the number of birds that die in one day from colliding with plate glass in the US or two days' death toll from domestic cats in Britain. The total spill was less than 2 per cent of the pollution caused by powerboats in the US every year. The ecology of the sound has almost completely recovered. Perhaps most important, the number and mass of oil spills has declined dramatically over the past three decades, despite much increased oil transport.

Your last point on Lester Brown is remarkable. You say that he was right when he said the world food problem would be nearly insoluble. Insoluble is a vague term but, since Brown said this, more than two billion more people have been fed properly, the percentage of hungry people has declined from more than 35 per cent to 17 per cent and even the absolute number of hungry people has declined from about 1,000m to 760m. (You can't seriously argue that because Kissinger's over-optimism didn't hold, things have got worse.)

The UN (in line with the World Bank) expects the proportion of hungry people to decline even further to 6 per cent in 2030, down to some 400m. While this is still not good enough, it represents a dramatic improvement. You claim that Brown can legitimately interpret the future more pessimistically, but that neglects one of the central points of my book: Brown does not have models supporting his pessimism, while the only world-wide models addressing the long-term issues of food and population (UN, World Bank) show more food per person, despite more people. Moreover, you evade the overwhelming evidence presented in my book, which shows how Brown's previous claims of pessimism have been entirely wrong. In 1998, Brown predicted that the 1996 wheat price spike was an indicator of a long-term upward price trend, caused by scarcity. In 2000, the wheat price hit a new all-time low. Equally, in 1995 Brown thought that China's grain imports would topple the world food market and his predictions were more than six times gloomier than anyone else's. In 2001, China is still exporting grain.

Yours

Bjorn Lomborg

 * * * * *

Dear Bjorn

6th September 2001

The environmental debates into which you jump with such abandon are full of complex issues contested by hundreds of thoughtful and informed participants. Their positions on unresolved matters are carefully nuanced, in the recognition that reality is often elusive and a little humility helpful in its pursuit.

Take Norman Myers. You robustly criticise his 1979 estimate of a loss of biodiversity of some 40,000 species a year, and are quick to take him to task for not providing "other references or argumentation." But you omit to point out that Myers himself made it clear that this was a first cut assessment, exploratory in character, and you seem to have forgotten the 80-odd papers he has written in the 20 years since 1979. Even more surprising, you seem to have forgotten the 1994 publication of a detailed account of the long running debate between Myers and your mentor Julian Simon on this very issue.

And it is not just Myers who is overlooked. You make much of the work of Ariel Lugo on Puerto Rico, but say nothing about Storrs Olson's repeated rebuttal of those findings. You rest great weight on the views of Ian Heywood and Neil Stuart on scientific uncertainty, but say nothing about the work of Peter Raven, Michael Soule and David Woodruff, among dozens of others on the same theme. You are confident in your belief that there is a natural extinction rate of about two species a decade, but fail to mention the work of David Jablonski, Douglas Erwin, David Raup and a host of others who take a different view.

A final point. Models are not reality, as you point out in your chapter on climate change. So it is inconsistent to criticise Lester Brown's judgements on the basis that they are unsupported by a model. Further-more, not all models are equally good approximations of reality-climate models are like Rolls-Royces compared to those we have for the economy. Different modellers build different models of the same reality and even when different people use the same model they often come to different conclusions because they start from different assumptions. A World Resources Institute study, for example, found that different modellers, using different assumptions, estimated the impact of tackling climate change on the US economy as ranging from +3 per cent of GDP to -7 per cent. As a statistician I would expect you to be more conscious of the limitations of the mathematical modelling of trends.

Yours

Tom

* * * * *

 

Dear Tom

7th September 2001

I put forward a fairly straight argument about the environment in my book, documenting most of the important facts and figures, using more than 1,800 references and almost 3,000 footnotes. Naturally, we cannot cover all of these issues here, but presumably you picked out some of my most obviously mistaken arguments for your first letter. You found three general objections. First, you claimed that my litany was a caricature of my own creation, second that tragedies like DDT, CFC and oil spills shaped the environmental perception of the general public and third, how I was wrong to attack Lester Brown for his consistently incorrect track record.

The first point you appear to accept is untenable, and the latter two you seem to have given up defending. When criticised, you do what most of my opponents have done-you change the subject. Such tactics are hard to handle, since you can just throw up lots of new issues. Let me answer two.

You mention how I appear to have forgotten a 1994 publication detailing the long running debate between Myers and Simon. I know the book, but didn't include it because it added nothing new to the debate. (Indeed, perhaps you could tell me what weighty point this book presents that would undermine my argument.) You also claim that I only mention a natural extinction rate of about two species per decade and fail to take into account other estimates. I do indeed give several references to this estimate (including the UN), but you have to show that the other evidence would change my conclusion.

The environmental debate should be based on facts. Despite my best efforts, I may have got some of them wrong, in which case I would be happy to have them corrected. But offering weak objections, dodging criticism and constantly throwing up new issues is not very constructive.

Yours

Bjorn

* * * * *

Dear Bjorn

9th September 2001

The following headlines appear in the latest issue of the Worldwatch Institute's publication Vital Signs: "Soybean Harvest Sets Record"; "Fossil Fuel Use Falls Again"; "Milk Production Maintains Momentum"; "Global Temperature Steady;" "Solar Power Market Surges"; "Carbon Emissions Continue to Decline." This hardly supports your view that greens never report good news.

You are right about one thing, I am not quarrelling with your facts-how could I? What I am quarrelling with is your selection of subsets of the facts, with the interpretation you put on that selection and with your judgement as to the significance of those interpretations. Nowhere is this more important than on climate change, and particularly the economics of climate change, the issue to which you devote most attention in your book.

You blithely assert: "Economic analyses clearly show that it will be far more expensive to cut carbon-dioxide emissions radically than to pay the costs of adaptation to the increased temperatures." As I have pointed out before, some do and some do not. But our understanding of the impact of climate change is limited not only by the uncertainties about the climate change itself-which you point out at some length-but also by the even larger uncertainties about the ecological, social and political responses to those changes.

Uncertainties in this context mean that the errors could go either way-things could be better or they could be worse. If we are not sure what is going to happen and we are as unsure about how we will react to what does happen, you have to be very brave, or an economist, to try and calculate costs and benefits. No one is in a position to make a reliable estimate of the costs either of the temperature rises or of any adaptations that might be made to those rises. Calculating the true costs of things in the past is very difficult, as was pointed out by William Nordhaus. Predicting costs in the future is even more difficult.

Furthermore, the whole art of economic modelling is, as yet, so immature as to make such estimates relatively useless as a guide to public policy. Your economic argument relies heavily on the outputs of an economic model developed by the same William Nordhaus who pointed out how difficult it was to estimate costs that had occurred in the past. His work has been criticised in the technical literature for exaggerating the costs and ignoring the benefits of acting on climate change-something you omit to mention.

What I find the most egregious element about your climate change argument, however, is the proposition that the world faces a choice between spending money on mitigating climate change and providing access to clean drinking water and sanitation in the developing world. We must and can do both. Such artificial choices may be possible in an academic ivory tower where ideas can be arranged to suit the prejudices of the occupant, but they are not available in the real world and it is dishonest to suggest that they are.

By the way, Bjorn, I would be most grateful if you would let me know where I might find any of your arguments in a peer reviewed journal.

Yours

Tom

* * * * *

 

Dear Tom

10th September 2001

You make three main points on global warming. First, you claim that some models show cutting carbon emissions would be a bad deal, some a good deal. This is incorrect. The conclusion of the latest meeting of all the cost-benefit modellers was: "Current assessments determine that the optimal policy calls for a relatively modest level of control of CO2." Even major cuts will only marginally change warming. The Kyoto protocol, proposing 30 per cent carbon cuts in 2010, will only postpone warming in 2100 by six years. The six years' delay is based on the physical (not economic) global warming models and are accepted by everyone. Thus, the real policy question is marginal: "How much are we willing to spend on postponing (not avoiding) global warming for six years?" The models show that Kyoto will cost $150-350 billion annually. But even if we pay this amount throughout the 21st century, we will still have to pay the costs associated with global warming, a mere six years later.

Second, this undermines much of your uncertainty principle argument. Even if global warming would cause the Gulf Stream to stop (which currently no models forecast) the question is still marginal: would we pay $150-plus billion annually throughout the 21st century just to postpone its shutdown for six years?

Third, you say that you find it egregious that I dare ask if we could not use our resources better. I merely point out that handling global warming is about helping the third world (which will bear the brunt of its disadvantages). The cost of Kyoto for just one year could permanently solve the single biggest problem on Earth: we could provide clean drinking water and sanitation to every person on the planet, saving 2m lives every year. What makes cutting carbon emissions so holy that we must not question a better use of our resources? You glibly suggest that we should do both, but linking a good use of resources (drinking water) to a bad use (Kyoto) does not make the bad use magically good.

Your concluding attack distracts from your arguments, but begs a short answer. Cambridge University Press (my British publisher) does peer review its books. But, honestly, this is a terrible argument from authority-even if it was not peer reviewed, would it matter? If I am wrong, you have had a chance to point out where and have singularly failed to do so. Clutching at peer review makes it sound as if you want to exclude my arguments from public debate on a technical objection.

Yours

Bjorn

*   *   *   *   *

“The Naive Optimist”

Fred Pearce

The Times Higher Education Supplement

August 24, 2001

 
Bjorn Lomborg (right) has grabbed headlines by questioning the value of the Kyoto Protocol. But while Lomborg might be a skeptical environmentalist, he is no Bushite propagandist, argues Fred Pearce

I'm not sure what I expected of Bjorn Lomborg, the new hero of the anti-greens. A crusty, pedantic reactionary of the English school, maybe, or a sharp-suited rightwing Bushite. But Anglo-Saxon cultural stereotypes do not work for Danes. In Denmark, environmentalism is so much the mainstream that youthful rebellion requires some scepticism about the hand-me-down green dogma. So no tweed jackets or sharp suits for Lomborg. More jeans, a cowboy shirt and the rucksack he dumps in the corner as -in keeping with the politically uncorrect nature of our enterprise -we meet over coffee at Starbucks to discuss his book, The Skeptical Environmentalist.

"I find it uncomfortable that this book could help George W. Bush," he begins. "It is the last thing that I want." How come? With Matt Ridley and Lewis Wolpert giving the back-cover citations, I would expect to see it sitting on plenty of bookshelves next to root-and-branch anti-green texts such as Julian Simon's The Ultimate Resource. But Lomborg is as rude about Simon and his band of American free-marketeers as he is about the greens. "With Simon, the politics comes first. Sometimes he is right, but sometimes he is wrong. It is the same with Bush. Some of the things he says about the Kyoto Protocol -how much it would cost and how little it would achieve -are right. But he is saying it because of his oil buddies. I start with the science. If, as a scientist, you put politics first, you are doomed."

Who would argue with that? "All I am saying is that there are lots of problems in the world that need solving -such as poverty and development and wealth distribution -as well as environmental issues. We have to address the most important things first, to get our priorities right. I think environmentalists usually get their priorities wrong."

One of Lomborg's prime concerns is our sometimes obsessive desire to rid the world of even the smallest residues of toxic chemicals. "There is just a blanket fear of chemicals. But the world is made up of chemicals. And we forget that while pesticides may carry risks, they also save lives by providing more and cheaper healthy food. Think of all the fruit and vegetables that pesticides have helped put into the shops and all the cancers that people have avoided by eating them."

Environmentalists ignore that, he says. They never draw up a balance. "Without that you can reach a false conclusion. In Europe, there is a great tendency to spend huge amounts of money on such false problems."

The same is often true of air pollution, he says. "In Denmark, the feeling is that anything that you can measure has to be dealt with. Will we save more lives by investing in hospitals in developing countries or in pollution prevention?"

I waited for some blanket assertion about how air pollution didn't matter. But Lomborg surprised me again. "When you look at it, there are some forms of pollution that we have to address. Investment in cutting particulate pollution would pay off."

The evidence, he says, is growing that particulates, especially the smaller carcinogenic particles that come from diesel engines and lodge deep in the lungs, are extremely damaging to health. They are causing epidemics of lung and heart disease across many urban areas. Investing in removing that pollution would help clean out hospital wards.

Lomborg's argument is not just a forensic point-by-point analysis of green claims. He goes further. He says the green world view is permeating all our lives and getting in the way of clear, scientific thinking. "As long as we have the moral picture that everything is going to hell, we cannot make the prioritisation that is necessary," he says. We are hooked on doomsday scenarios.

But Lomborg has gone the other way. If greens are the new Marxists, then he is a new Whig. A former member of Greenpeace, he is now an environmental optimist that is at least as perverting as green pessimism. "Since the industrial revolution we seem to have hit on a way of improving the world and there seems no end in sight," he says.

And he believes that greens are failing to address the real needs of the poor. Environmentalism, he believes, is part of the caution of the rich, who have more to lose, and has little to offer the poor, who are prepared to take more risks with their environment and who, above everything, need to get rich. "Why would a Bangladeshi be worrying about sea level rising when there are so many more day-to-day concerns?" It is a fair question. And in this analysis, his complaint seems to be as much as anything about the new colonialism of ideas -about green imperialism. It occurred to me afterwards that he was offering a new version of Graham Greene's famous novel of Indo-China, The Quiet American. Just replace the spook from the CIA, whose naive idealism caused such havoc, with a campaigner from Greenpeace.

I think there is something in that. But he seems to go astray when he addresses climate change. He accepts that this is a big global environmental issue. But his analysis of why the Kyoto Protocol is not worth pursuing seems to me reckless and illogical.

Choosing the most pessimistic economic projections, he says that to bring the protocol into force will cost 2 per cent of the gross national product of industrialised nations. Yet, "all it will do is postpone climate change for five or six years". Therefore, it is not worth it, he says. "We say we are doing it to stop Bangladeshis being flooded out. But maybe there are better ways to spend money on helping Bangladeshis -such as giving them clean drinking water." The cost of fulfilling the Kyoto Protocol would be enough to give the whole world clean drinking water, he says. It would bring big benefits now, not theoretical benefits far into the future.

But the comparison is facile. Meeting the Kyoto Protocol would be a down payment on survival. Think of the cost of not doing it. It would bring climatic disruption far into the future. He says that there is unlikely to be a long-term climate problem -not because he does not believe climate science, but because he believes the problem will solve itself, or that we will solve it inadvertently by adopting renewable-energy technologies.

"My argument would be incorrect if we were going to use fossil fuels for ever," he says. "It hinges on the fact that renewables will take over. They will become cheaper. They are close to that now. By the middle of the century we will be generating huge amounts of power from the sun."

But who would have been investing in renewable energy technologies over the past decade -bringing down the price of wind and solar power -without the expectation of legal limits on fossil fuels of the kind included in the Kyoto Protocol? Lomborg was not sure -he just thinks someone would have.

The greens may not always be right. But the green view is the stimulus for much of what even Lomborg acknowledges needs to be done. You have, surely, to will the means as well as the ends? He half agrees.

"I'm happy that we have organisations such as Greenpeace to speak against power and money. We needed them as a corrective back in the 1960s and 1970s." The problem is not them, he says. "They are special-interest groups with an argument to make. The problem is more with the rest of us, with those who do not realise that the green groups are a special-interest group, with their own agendas, just like industry. We treat them uncritically, rather than sceptically."

Grabbing his rucksack, he concludes: "Science should be about going against the grain. I feel awkward about what I am saying politically, but great about it intellectually."

It is tempting to call Lomborg not so much sceptical as confused. But his book contains insights and useful correctives amid the naivety and pedantry. I enjoyed it in places. But I think he should feel awkward about it intellectually as well as politically.

The Skeptical Environmentalist is published by Cambridge University Press, Pounds 17.95. Fred Pearce was a principal contributor to the AAAS Atlas of Population and Environment (California University Press), Pounds 45.00.

*   *   *   *   *

“The Truth about the Environment”

The Economist

August 4, 2001

  
ECOLOGY and economics should push in the same direction. After all, the "eco" part of each word derives from the Greek word for "home", and the protagonists of both claim to have humanity's welfare as their goal. Yet environmentalists and economists are often at loggerheads. For economists, the world seems to be getting better. For many environmentalists, it seems to be getting worse.

These environmentalists, led by such veterans as Paul Ehrlich of Stanford University, and Lester Brown of the Worldwatch Institute, have developed a sort of "litany" of four big environmental fears:

    * Natural resources are running out.

    * The population is ever growing, leaving less and less to eat.

     * Species are becoming extinct in vast numbers: forests are disappearing and fish stocks are

       collapsing.

    * The planet's air and water are becoming ever more polluted.

Human activity is thus defiling the earth, and humanity may end up killing itself in the process.

The trouble is, the evidence does not back up this litany. First, energy and other natural resources have become more abundant, not less so since the Club of Rome published "The Limits to Growth" in 1972. Second, more food is now produced per head of the world's population than at any time in history. Fewer people are starving. Third, although species are indeed becoming extinct, only about 0.7% of them are expected to disappear in the next 50 years, not 25-50%, as has so often been predicted. And finally, most forms of environmental pollution either appear to have been exaggerated, or are transient--associated with the early phases of industrialisation and therefore best cured not by restricting economic growth, but by accelerating it. One form of pollution--the release of greenhouse gases that causes global warming--does appear to be a long-term phenomenon, but its total impact is unlikely to pose a devastating problem for the future of humanity. A bigger problem may well turn out to be an inappropriate response to it.

Can things only get better?

Take these four points one by one. First, the exhaustion of natural resources. The early environmental movement worried that the mineral resources on which modern industry depends would run out. Clearly, there must be some limit to the amount of fossil fuels and metal ores that can be extracted from the earth: the planet, after all, has a finite mass. But that limit is far greater than many environmentalists would have people believe.

Reserves of natural resources have to be located, a process that costs money. That, not natural scarcity, is the main limit on their availability. However, known reserves of all fossil fuels, and of most commercially important metals, are now larger than they were when "The Limits to Growth" was published. In the case of oil, for example, reserves that could be extracted at reasonably competitive prices would keep the world economy running for about 150 years at present consumption rates. Add to that the fact that the price of solar energy has fallen by half in every decade for the past 30 years, and appears likely to continue to do so into the future, and energy shortages do not look like a serious threat either to the economy or to the environment.

The development for non-fuel resources has been similar. Cement, aluminium, iron, copper, gold, nitrogen and zinc account for more than 75% of global expenditure on raw materials. Despite an increase in consumption of these materials of between two- and ten-fold over the past 50 years, the number of years of available reserves has actually grown. Moreover, the increasing abundance is reflected in an ever-decreasing price: The Economist's index of prices of industrial raw materials has dropped some 80% in inflation-adjusted te