There's a radio show I listen to every sunday morning, called Freud & Maquievel, where a psychoanalyst and a journalist/philosopher debate the week's occurences, from sports to politics, from death to life itself. It's one of the best shows I've ever heard, and sure beats anything on tv.

In the last week, they recommended a book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, by a Dr. Bjorn Lomborg, an associate professor of statistics at Denmark's University of Aarhus. Nothing like a good quote to tell you what the book is about:

"We will not lose our forests; we will not run out of energy, raw materials, or water. We have reduced atmospheric pollution in the cities of the developed world and have good reason to believe that this will also be achieved in the developing world. Our oceans have not been defiled, our rivers have become cleaner and support more life. ... Nor is waste a particularly big problem. ... The problem of the ozone layer has been more or less solved. The current outlook on the development of global warming does not indicate a catastrophe. ... And, finally, our chemical worries and fear of pesticides are misplaced and counterproductive."

Uh? WTF?

The interesting part is that he backs it all up with 3000 footnotes, taken from several official reports and studies. Things like most of the species that disappear every year are bacteria, etc.

I found a site that explains what the fuss s all about:

http://www.etext.org/Zines/Critique/article/lomborg.html

And a SUPERB site that gets testemonies from several experts, all of them firing back on Lomborg's book:

http://www.gristmagazine.com/books/lomborg121201.asp


What's your take on all this?

Originally posted by INFESTA

"We will not lose our forests; we will not run out of energy, raw materials, or water. We have reduced atmospheric pollution in the cities of the developed world and have good reason to believe that this will also be achieved in the developing world. Our oceans have not been defiled, our rivers have become cleaner and support more life. ... Nor is waste a particularly big problem. ... The problem of the ozone layer has been more or less solved. The current outlook on the development of global warming does not indicate a catastrophe. ... And, finally, our chemical worries and fear of pesticides are misplaced and counterproductive."

I don't have time to read the links right now. But from that quote, I'd say he's on crack.

Originally posted by INFESTA
"We will not lose our forests; we will not run out of energy, raw materials, or water. We have reduced atmospheric pollution in the cities of the developed world and have good reason to believe that this will also be achieved in the developing world. Our oceans have not been defiled, our rivers have become cleaner and support more life. ... Nor is waste a particularly big problem. ... The problem of the ozone layer has been more or less solved. The current outlook on the development of global warming does not indicate a catastrophe. ... And, finally, our chemical worries and fear of pesticides are misplaced and counterproductive."

Ok, I just finished a semester class called "Conservation of the Environment, so I can verify a few facts, but I have to think that there is some crap in there. Air pollution IS going down in the developed world, Rivers ARE getting cleaner (both relative to the 60s and 70s), the global warming problem is pretty much solved because it's illegal to produce CFC's in most developed countries; production of them is down by a massive amount compared to the 70s. Now, waste at least in the US is a major problem, every state has a Mt. Trashmore, which is just a mountain of trash converted into a ski hill or something like that, and since we don't recycle or incinerate anything, that problem isn't going away. In places like Portugal and Japan however, the waste problem has been handled in a very effective way. And finally, pesticide runoff is always a problem, but I assume that with the banishment of DDT from many developed countries I can see where he's coming from, although I don't agree.

Probably some parts are true, some are false. Yet with debates such as these, either sides can produce facts contradicting the other.

Probably, the case is that the problems are slowly becoming less prevalent, but they still exist, and won't be fully eradicated for some time.

The problem I have with guys like this is not what they are saying, for I agree with some of it, but the fact that they are picked up by the rabid neo-lib capitalists and the neo-cons as proof that we should do nothing. I mean, they always love it when something like this is released because they can then use it as evidence that we are on the right track etc.

So I guess my real issue with it is the political outcomes, rather than the scientific basis of his approach, because as we are well aware this scientific debate is split right down the middle. But those that use his stuff to promote the idea that nothing is wrong are very selective in their reading of his work. Because he also suggests that the money saved from not following the Kyoto protocol should instead be invested in the alleviation of poverty in developing nations. Now can you imagine the right-wing buying that one?

As for the environment, well my experience tells me that I would rather suffer 40 degrees C in Melbourne, Brisbane or Sydney, than be outside in 30 degree C in my own City. Why? Because the Ozone hole is basically right over my country (NZ), and the ultra-violet rays are therefore much more powerful this time of year. I know where I am going to get burnt worse, and it is not going to be Australia. Skin cancer is a huge killer here, so anything that can be done to reduce the hole is fine by me, regardless of what the reasons for it are.