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The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World
The Skeptical Environmentalist challenges widely held beliefs that the environmental situation is getting worse and worse. The author, himself a former member of Greenpeace, is critical of the way in which many environmental organisations make selective and misleading use of the scientific evidence. Using the best available statistical information from internationally recognised research institutes, Bjørn Lomborg systematically examines a range of major environmental problems that feature prominently in headline news across the world. His arguments are presented in non-technical, accessible language and are carefully backed up by over 2500 footnotes allowing readers to check sources for themselves. Concluding that there are more reasons for optimism than pessimism, Bjørn Lomborg stresses the need for clear-headed prioritisation of resources to tackle real, not imagined problems. The Skeptical Environmentalist offers readers a non-partisan stocktaking exercise that serves as a useful corrective to the more alarmist accounts favoured by campaign groups and the media.
540 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1998
About the author
Bjørn Lomborg
37 books340 followersBjørn Lomborg is a Danish author and president of his think tank, the Copenhagen Consensus Center. He is former director of the Danish government's Environmental Assessment Institute (EAI) in Copenhagen. He became internationally known for his best-selling and controversial 2001 book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, in which he argues that many of the costly measures and actions adopted by scientists and policy makers to meet the challenges of global warming will ultimately have minimal impact on the world's rising temperature.
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June 6, 2008
The cover of The Skeptical Environmentalist looks promising, a stunning sandstone canyon with lovely pine trees dotting an outcropping. Above the title “a brilliant a powerful book” proclaims Matt Ridley author of Genome. This would lead the casual reader to believe that Ridley is an impartial scientist. These two elements are representative of the problems with this book. Using a pristine setting and an expert quote reminiscent of the slight of hand, a magician’s trick, Lomborg lures the skeptic. Ridley is anything but an impartial scientist, he is a past editor of The Economist magazine and a staunch proponent of economic progress. The packaging certainly had me convinced; the subtitle “Measuring the Real State of the World” promised a scientific refutation of doomsday predictions. I selected this book because I did judge the book by its cover. It is unfortunate that while this book claims to offer a scientifically based appraisal of environmental issues, Lomborg uses not science but cajoling, manipulation and whining to try and convince the audience of the veracity of his claim that “statistics is the only way that we can make a scientifically sound description of the world” (page xx) He argues that the state of the planet isn’t all that dire, “children born today –in both the industrialized world and developing countries will live longer and be healthier, they will get more food, a better education, a higher standard of living, more leisure time and far more possibilities-without the global environment being destroyed. And that is a beautiful world” (page 352) which is in sharp contrast with many of the other books I read this quarter, most specifically Derek Jensen’s Endgame.
Lomborg takes on many of the environmental spheres of concern including; life expectancy, forests, food and hunger, global warming, biodiversity, and some of the myriad aspects of pollution. In each case, he finds a happy conclusion
Even with my limited understanding of statistics, I can find fault with many of his conclusions. I find flaws with his logic. After I finished his book, I found that I was not alone in my distaste for this book. Hundreds of others also find Professor Lomborg’s book to be riddled with flaws. These flaws are so numerous that many readers, including myself, cataloged them. When I reached more than 100 flaws, I categorized them. Other readers did the same. Many of the flaws are minor discrepancies but some of the flaws seemed designed to mislead the reader to a wrong conclusion. This is one of my biggest complaints about this book. As an example, in the chapter about forests he claims that we are not loosing our forests and “since World War Two, not much has changed.” (page 117) My own observation is that the forests of my youth including the Palomar mountains of Southern California and the forests of Northern Colorado is that the acreage might be the same, but the first growth forests, with rich variety of plant and animal life have been replaced in many areas with monoculture of one type of tree with no companion plants or animals. As I walk acre upon acre of these tree farms on a mountain side, I’m not fooled into thinking this is a forest. In addition, Lomborg argues that these tree farms better protect the real forest by decreasing pressure. It’s so irksome, that his arguments seem so very reasonable, yet they reek of oversimplification and the language of denial.
Another significant criticism of this book is that I don’t accept the premise that science and scientific facts build a reasonable foundation of knowing what decisions policymakers and stakeholders should make. Culturally we seem to have grown complacent in accepting that scientists have the unique ability to accurately predict the future. This process of creating a future model depends on many variables the most troubling of which is trying to reduce risk associated with uncertainty. Lomborg arrogantly claims repeatedly that his models “more accurately” and “more plausible” (page 286 for example) represent any given problem and solution. As he scientificates cultural and policy problems, he picks and choices the information and the point of view for presentation and solution.
As a sample of his audacity, on page 91, he writes “by and large all measurable indicators of human welfare show improvement.” This statement has been flaws, specifically the choice of language “by and large” and “measureable”. He also spends a lot of energy discounting both oil and water shortages. Proving, to himself, that we will not run out of either. This is simply preposterous.
Not surprisingly, the Union of Concerned Scientists, a political action group, completed a series of rebuttals to this book. In summation, they concluded that Lomborg’s book is “seriously flawed and fails to meet basic standards of credible scientific analysis.” They specifically blast his assertions where he uncritically cites literature that does not meet the basic standard of having been peer-reviewed. The pervasive use of flawed data is in the words of the UCS, “unexpected and disturbing in a statistician.” (review by Union of Concerned Scientists)
This very flawed books with its many significant factual and conceptual errors is nonetheless worth a read. Read it to know the enemy--the enemy of common sense, right use of will and most important the false use of a scientific style of presentation to falsely placate the public. Reading this book will incense anyone who cares about sustaining human life on earth.
Richard Fisher of the Skeptical Inquirer reviews this book:
http://www.csicop.org/si/2002-11/envi...
Union of Concerned Scientists and Peter Gleick’s review:
http://www.pacinst.org/publications/e...
.
Lomborg takes on many of the environmental spheres of concern including; life expectancy, forests, food and hunger, global warming, biodiversity, and some of the myriad aspects of pollution. In each case, he finds a happy conclusion
Even with my limited understanding of statistics, I can find fault with many of his conclusions. I find flaws with his logic. After I finished his book, I found that I was not alone in my distaste for this book. Hundreds of others also find Professor Lomborg’s book to be riddled with flaws. These flaws are so numerous that many readers, including myself, cataloged them. When I reached more than 100 flaws, I categorized them. Other readers did the same. Many of the flaws are minor discrepancies but some of the flaws seemed designed to mislead the reader to a wrong conclusion. This is one of my biggest complaints about this book. As an example, in the chapter about forests he claims that we are not loosing our forests and “since World War Two, not much has changed.” (page 117) My own observation is that the forests of my youth including the Palomar mountains of Southern California and the forests of Northern Colorado is that the acreage might be the same, but the first growth forests, with rich variety of plant and animal life have been replaced in many areas with monoculture of one type of tree with no companion plants or animals. As I walk acre upon acre of these tree farms on a mountain side, I’m not fooled into thinking this is a forest. In addition, Lomborg argues that these tree farms better protect the real forest by decreasing pressure. It’s so irksome, that his arguments seem so very reasonable, yet they reek of oversimplification and the language of denial.
Another significant criticism of this book is that I don’t accept the premise that science and scientific facts build a reasonable foundation of knowing what decisions policymakers and stakeholders should make. Culturally we seem to have grown complacent in accepting that scientists have the unique ability to accurately predict the future. This process of creating a future model depends on many variables the most troubling of which is trying to reduce risk associated with uncertainty. Lomborg arrogantly claims repeatedly that his models “more accurately” and “more plausible” (page 286 for example) represent any given problem and solution. As he scientificates cultural and policy problems, he picks and choices the information and the point of view for presentation and solution.
As a sample of his audacity, on page 91, he writes “by and large all measurable indicators of human welfare show improvement.” This statement has been flaws, specifically the choice of language “by and large” and “measureable”. He also spends a lot of energy discounting both oil and water shortages. Proving, to himself, that we will not run out of either. This is simply preposterous.
Not surprisingly, the Union of Concerned Scientists, a political action group, completed a series of rebuttals to this book. In summation, they concluded that Lomborg’s book is “seriously flawed and fails to meet basic standards of credible scientific analysis.” They specifically blast his assertions where he uncritically cites literature that does not meet the basic standard of having been peer-reviewed. The pervasive use of flawed data is in the words of the UCS, “unexpected and disturbing in a statistician.” (review by Union of Concerned Scientists)
This very flawed books with its many significant factual and conceptual errors is nonetheless worth a read. Read it to know the enemy--the enemy of common sense, right use of will and most important the false use of a scientific style of presentation to falsely placate the public. Reading this book will incense anyone who cares about sustaining human life on earth.
Richard Fisher of the Skeptical Inquirer reviews this book:
http://www.csicop.org/si/2002-11/envi...
Union of Concerned Scientists and Peter Gleick’s review:
http://www.pacinst.org/publications/e...
.
January 22, 2008
Bjorn Lomborg, The Skeptical Environmentalist (Cambridge University Press, 2001)
I have watched the unfolding controversy over The Skeptical Environmentalist with a cynical amusement not at the combatants, but at myself, for still having some shred of belief that reason, logic, and critical analysis has any place in modern reviews, especially those submitted by readers to amazon.com. You would think that by now I'd know better. More fool you (and me, the biggest fool of all.)
It is blisteringly obvious that the overwhelming majority of critics (and, one is tempted to say, those heaping the book with such lavish praise) have never actually read the thing. Or, if they have, their reviews of the book are geared toward its political agenda rather than its readability, the competence of the proofreaders, that sort of thing. Oh, well, to each his own. I will warn you that, when reading other reviews of this book, proceed with great caution. Withhold judgment until you've read it yourself. Many of the extant reviews exist to further the agendae of the reviewers, rather than cast an unbiased (however jaded) eye over this book.
The main reason for my surmising that most of them haven't read it is because they make pointed, often gleeful, attacks on things that Lomborg specifically addresses in the book. The treehuggers have a penchant for saying the message of The Skeptical Environmentalist is "nothing's wrong," a point which Lomborg specifically addresses many times, far more than he should have to, in this book. (Note to others writing controversial books: it doesn't matter how often and how plainly you state something, the deluded will see the opposite. Not your fault.) Instead, Lomborg's driving purpose in this book is to examine the environmental concerns on which the global economy currently spends many billions of dollars per year to see if there are ways we could better spend that money.
That he comes up with a resounding "yes" is not surprising. That his advice has not only not been listened to, but attacked from all sides, is equally unsurprising. Why? Because we have heard the myths Lomborg attempts to put to rest so many times that we take them as truths. What Lomborg calls The Litany has been inculcated into us as surely as has the idea held by some that man has never gone to the moon, or that the Earth is flat. Just because you hear something a million times, and just because you surround yourself with people who also believe it, that doesn't mean it's true.
One assumes Lomborg set himself up for the ridicule he has received; you don't tackle topics such as deforestation, global warming, Rachel Carson and the legacy of drooling idiots she has left in her wake, and other such imbecilities without the imbeciles who foster the myths wanting to castrate you. But someone had to do it. Whetehr it would have met with less skepticism coming form Jan Harold Brunvand is anyone's guess. But it came from Lomborg's, and thus, we must look at what we've got.
There is no denying that what is here is valuable information. Even if there is a glimmer of truth in the massive Scientific American criticism (to which Lomborg has already responded, so I will save my words), if the many environmental movements whose horse manure we're subjected to daily use massive amounts of hyperbole to try and get their points across, why shouldn't the other side use a little now and again? (Not that I believe this is in any way the case.) Those who don't believe there's been hyperbole on the part of the environmental movement seem to have very short memories, another point Lomborg brings up in almost every chapter. The doomsayers have held a monopoly on our ears for too long; it's about time someone tried to set us straight.
And thus we come to the problem with the book itself. It's what my college literary criticism professor would have called a "typically German" work of criticism; well over twenty-five hundred endnotes are packed into the three hundred fifty pages here (and a small mini-rant, if I may; the increasing use of endnotes rather than footnotes is highly annoying. Please cease and desist immediately, and put the notes back where they belong, on the pages where the references are found). One cannot argue that Lomborg hasn't done his homework, though many have. There are huge blocks of text that are nothing more than facts, figures, and interpretation. Which, as you may surmise, makes for a book that is at time more boring than it is controversial. Readability here may not be at a minimum; you'll get more pleasure out of this than you will trying to choke down the dreck that, say, Tom Clancy or Danielle Steel releases on a regular basis. But not much. It suffers from the general malady of the belief that what is important must be dry as dust.
There are also a number of questions Lomborg left unanswered, many assumptions he took at face value; did he do so because getting too far into them would have resulted in the book being endless, or because there are certain parts of the litany he believes? It's certainly okay to not question some things, but the professional skeptic will tell you why. Such things do leave questions in the mind of the reader, chinks in the armor that such a controversial book cannot afford.
I cannot recommend it highly enough as a way to balance out the loads of excrement we get fed on a daily basis by people who should know better. But I can't recommend it as an unputdownable bestseller. It's hard work, getting through this thing. But it's worth it. *** ½
I have watched the unfolding controversy over The Skeptical Environmentalist with a cynical amusement not at the combatants, but at myself, for still having some shred of belief that reason, logic, and critical analysis has any place in modern reviews, especially those submitted by readers to amazon.com. You would think that by now I'd know better. More fool you (and me, the biggest fool of all.)
It is blisteringly obvious that the overwhelming majority of critics (and, one is tempted to say, those heaping the book with such lavish praise) have never actually read the thing. Or, if they have, their reviews of the book are geared toward its political agenda rather than its readability, the competence of the proofreaders, that sort of thing. Oh, well, to each his own. I will warn you that, when reading other reviews of this book, proceed with great caution. Withhold judgment until you've read it yourself. Many of the extant reviews exist to further the agendae of the reviewers, rather than cast an unbiased (however jaded) eye over this book.
The main reason for my surmising that most of them haven't read it is because they make pointed, often gleeful, attacks on things that Lomborg specifically addresses in the book. The treehuggers have a penchant for saying the message of The Skeptical Environmentalist is "nothing's wrong," a point which Lomborg specifically addresses many times, far more than he should have to, in this book. (Note to others writing controversial books: it doesn't matter how often and how plainly you state something, the deluded will see the opposite. Not your fault.) Instead, Lomborg's driving purpose in this book is to examine the environmental concerns on which the global economy currently spends many billions of dollars per year to see if there are ways we could better spend that money.
That he comes up with a resounding "yes" is not surprising. That his advice has not only not been listened to, but attacked from all sides, is equally unsurprising. Why? Because we have heard the myths Lomborg attempts to put to rest so many times that we take them as truths. What Lomborg calls The Litany has been inculcated into us as surely as has the idea held by some that man has never gone to the moon, or that the Earth is flat. Just because you hear something a million times, and just because you surround yourself with people who also believe it, that doesn't mean it's true.
One assumes Lomborg set himself up for the ridicule he has received; you don't tackle topics such as deforestation, global warming, Rachel Carson and the legacy of drooling idiots she has left in her wake, and other such imbecilities without the imbeciles who foster the myths wanting to castrate you. But someone had to do it. Whetehr it would have met with less skepticism coming form Jan Harold Brunvand is anyone's guess. But it came from Lomborg's, and thus, we must look at what we've got.
There is no denying that what is here is valuable information. Even if there is a glimmer of truth in the massive Scientific American criticism (to which Lomborg has already responded, so I will save my words), if the many environmental movements whose horse manure we're subjected to daily use massive amounts of hyperbole to try and get their points across, why shouldn't the other side use a little now and again? (Not that I believe this is in any way the case.) Those who don't believe there's been hyperbole on the part of the environmental movement seem to have very short memories, another point Lomborg brings up in almost every chapter. The doomsayers have held a monopoly on our ears for too long; it's about time someone tried to set us straight.
And thus we come to the problem with the book itself. It's what my college literary criticism professor would have called a "typically German" work of criticism; well over twenty-five hundred endnotes are packed into the three hundred fifty pages here (and a small mini-rant, if I may; the increasing use of endnotes rather than footnotes is highly annoying. Please cease and desist immediately, and put the notes back where they belong, on the pages where the references are found). One cannot argue that Lomborg hasn't done his homework, though many have. There are huge blocks of text that are nothing more than facts, figures, and interpretation. Which, as you may surmise, makes for a book that is at time more boring than it is controversial. Readability here may not be at a minimum; you'll get more pleasure out of this than you will trying to choke down the dreck that, say, Tom Clancy or Danielle Steel releases on a regular basis. But not much. It suffers from the general malady of the belief that what is important must be dry as dust.
There are also a number of questions Lomborg left unanswered, many assumptions he took at face value; did he do so because getting too far into them would have resulted in the book being endless, or because there are certain parts of the litany he believes? It's certainly okay to not question some things, but the professional skeptic will tell you why. Such things do leave questions in the mind of the reader, chinks in the armor that such a controversial book cannot afford.
I cannot recommend it highly enough as a way to balance out the loads of excrement we get fed on a daily basis by people who should know better. But I can't recommend it as an unputdownable bestseller. It's hard work, getting through this thing. But it's worth it. *** ½
February 23, 2016
This book is infuriatingly inaccurate. Lomborg (a statistician not a scientist!) takes on many of today's environmental issues and dismisses them almost out of hand with a judicious misapplication of shady statistics and a pervasive tone of smug condescension and arrogance.
The logic and conclusions in the book are fatally flawed and the references are selectively chosen to support his outrageously naive claims that everything's fine with the world.
If the realities of today's environmental crises paralyze you and you need to stick your head in the sand this book will go a long ways toward alleviating your worries and make you feel safe again. If, on the other hand, you are an intelligent reader, concerned with the state of the environment, this book will make you see red.
The logic and conclusions in the book are fatally flawed and the references are selectively chosen to support his outrageously naive claims that everything's fine with the world.
If the realities of today's environmental crises paralyze you and you need to stick your head in the sand this book will go a long ways toward alleviating your worries and make you feel safe again. If, on the other hand, you are an intelligent reader, concerned with the state of the environment, this book will make you see red.
July 12, 2013
Worthy causes, whether religious, political or moral tend to see themselves as above the duty to provide evidence to substantiate both their claims about reality and the suitability of their proposed measures to improve said reality. To their believers, the state of the world is obvious (usually bad), and they are genuinely astonished to find that most people are unconcerned about the grave issues that drive them. Their natural reaction is to become even more feverish about their respective causes and to step up efforts to proselytise and convert the benighted masses.
Bjorn Lomborg started working on the issues that would eventually make up the content of his book by leading some of his statistics students into debunking some claims made by University of Maryland's professor Julian Simon. Julian Simon had claimed that things were actually getting better rather than worse, and that most negative environmental indicators were connected to poverty, violence and bad government rather than consumption or wealth. To their surprise (for he initially took Simon's claims as evidence of typical American arrogance), Lomborg and his students found that Simon was roughly right. It was true that things were getting better, and that many of the claims coming from environmental advocates were contradictory (for example they both dreaded global cooling in the 1970s and global warming in the 1990s as absolutely negative, although clearly both have benefits compared to each other, and neither is all bad), or tendentious (for example, advocates for particular causes often choose particular extreme years to show a negative tendency in a variable, while ignoring the long term trend), or simply shoddy (such as using a report on a tiny plot of slanting land in Belgium to extrapolate the global impact of erosion on land fertility). Lomborg published some articles discussing his findings on a left-leaning newspaper in Denmark, that greenest of countries, and was astonished at the public reaction. He decided to take upon himself a Gargantuan project, one that (I think) he couldn't possibly have thought through before embarking on it, or I predict he wouldn't have done it. He decided to review the state of the world from many, many angles, including humanity, all types of resources, animals and plants, as well as their interactions. The amount of work required to cover all these subjects, and to come up with data to back up his conclusions, must have been staggering. I have sometimes done this type of work, and I am in awe at Lomborg's achievement. It is truly a tour de force.
While I don't claim that everything Lomborg says makes perfect sense, or that all his data are correct (surely he won't deny his readers the right to apply skepticism to his own claims as well, and it is quite easy to use the WWW to check out his opponents' arguments), this is a rare book that attempts seriously to consider all facts from a variety of angles, which tries to answer objections or qualifications from opponents, and which carefully connects all the variables into a global picture, incorporating the temporal dimension both past and future. Lomborg is truly skeptical, in the sense of taking nothing for granted and approaching all the issues dispassionately. These are, as Descartes told us in his Discourse on the Method, some of the conditions for true knowledge. Reading Lomborg one sometimes feels like the light has been turned on or the mists have cleared on many topics. One is surprised to find many catastrophe-peddlers (such as Stanford's Dr. Erlich, who is unrepentant of the obvious failure of his predictions for the 1980s of widespread famine and scarce resources due to population growth) are still around and doing fairly well. At least Lomborg takes them to task, and finds them wanting in logic and veracity.
I predict (and it doesn't take Nostradamus to figure this out) that this book will be purchased by many people who normally wouldn't think of reading even a newspaper article on environmental concerns. Many of these probably won't make it through the entire book. In spite of Lomborg's great asides about his debates with WorldWatch and with Danish government ministers and his glee in demolishing yet another sophism, he is sometimes prolix, and there is a point were yet another chart showing that some metal's price has not gone up but down in the past hundred years is one too many. But let's not forget his calling (he is a statistician, although an unusually lively one), and let's not ask him from more than what he offers (which is a rational, dispassionate look at the environmentalist discourse). His chapter on global warming is both exhaustive and exhausting. I predict also that Mr. Lomborg will become a darling of the libertarian think tanks in the US and elsewhere, and a villain in the eyes of environmental organizations and their supporters. Both attitudes are mistaken. The only way to dismiss Mr. Lomborg is by showing that his data or his inferences from them are wrong. And, although roughly aligned with them on most issues, Mr. Lomborg is probably not of the libertarians' perspective (they should be scared if Mr. Lomborg decides to write a book testing many of the libertarian's claims, such as the trickle-down theory of economic development). Everything else is just taking things on faith, something Mr. Lomborg hasn't done. He is entitled to the same treatment.
Bjorn Lomborg started working on the issues that would eventually make up the content of his book by leading some of his statistics students into debunking some claims made by University of Maryland's professor Julian Simon. Julian Simon had claimed that things were actually getting better rather than worse, and that most negative environmental indicators were connected to poverty, violence and bad government rather than consumption or wealth. To their surprise (for he initially took Simon's claims as evidence of typical American arrogance), Lomborg and his students found that Simon was roughly right. It was true that things were getting better, and that many of the claims coming from environmental advocates were contradictory (for example they both dreaded global cooling in the 1970s and global warming in the 1990s as absolutely negative, although clearly both have benefits compared to each other, and neither is all bad), or tendentious (for example, advocates for particular causes often choose particular extreme years to show a negative tendency in a variable, while ignoring the long term trend), or simply shoddy (such as using a report on a tiny plot of slanting land in Belgium to extrapolate the global impact of erosion on land fertility). Lomborg published some articles discussing his findings on a left-leaning newspaper in Denmark, that greenest of countries, and was astonished at the public reaction. He decided to take upon himself a Gargantuan project, one that (I think) he couldn't possibly have thought through before embarking on it, or I predict he wouldn't have done it. He decided to review the state of the world from many, many angles, including humanity, all types of resources, animals and plants, as well as their interactions. The amount of work required to cover all these subjects, and to come up with data to back up his conclusions, must have been staggering. I have sometimes done this type of work, and I am in awe at Lomborg's achievement. It is truly a tour de force.
While I don't claim that everything Lomborg says makes perfect sense, or that all his data are correct (surely he won't deny his readers the right to apply skepticism to his own claims as well, and it is quite easy to use the WWW to check out his opponents' arguments), this is a rare book that attempts seriously to consider all facts from a variety of angles, which tries to answer objections or qualifications from opponents, and which carefully connects all the variables into a global picture, incorporating the temporal dimension both past and future. Lomborg is truly skeptical, in the sense of taking nothing for granted and approaching all the issues dispassionately. These are, as Descartes told us in his Discourse on the Method, some of the conditions for true knowledge. Reading Lomborg one sometimes feels like the light has been turned on or the mists have cleared on many topics. One is surprised to find many catastrophe-peddlers (such as Stanford's Dr. Erlich, who is unrepentant of the obvious failure of his predictions for the 1980s of widespread famine and scarce resources due to population growth) are still around and doing fairly well. At least Lomborg takes them to task, and finds them wanting in logic and veracity.
I predict (and it doesn't take Nostradamus to figure this out) that this book will be purchased by many people who normally wouldn't think of reading even a newspaper article on environmental concerns. Many of these probably won't make it through the entire book. In spite of Lomborg's great asides about his debates with WorldWatch and with Danish government ministers and his glee in demolishing yet another sophism, he is sometimes prolix, and there is a point were yet another chart showing that some metal's price has not gone up but down in the past hundred years is one too many. But let's not forget his calling (he is a statistician, although an unusually lively one), and let's not ask him from more than what he offers (which is a rational, dispassionate look at the environmentalist discourse). His chapter on global warming is both exhaustive and exhausting. I predict also that Mr. Lomborg will become a darling of the libertarian think tanks in the US and elsewhere, and a villain in the eyes of environmental organizations and their supporters. Both attitudes are mistaken. The only way to dismiss Mr. Lomborg is by showing that his data or his inferences from them are wrong. And, although roughly aligned with them on most issues, Mr. Lomborg is probably not of the libertarians' perspective (they should be scared if Mr. Lomborg decides to write a book testing many of the libertarian's claims, such as the trickle-down theory of economic development). Everything else is just taking things on faith, something Mr. Lomborg hasn't done. He is entitled to the same treatment.
February 22, 2016
how did Cambridge University Press publish this book given the statistical methods and sources Lomborg uses to make his claims? ACADEMIA'S CORRUPT. let it be known that this author has zero expertise in climate change modelling and science, and there is little to no merit to what he is saying. I would recommend reading someone who has more credible claims to make (and more credibility to make claims).*~*~*~
January 4, 2011
One of Cambridge Sustainability's Top 50 Books for Sustainability, as voted for by our alumni network of over 3,000 senior leaders from around the world. To find out more, click here.
The Skeptical Environmentalist is an unapologetic and highly controversial challenge to many of the prevailing views on the nature and extent of the so-called environmental crisis we face. The subtitle of the book - 'The Real State of the World' - is an implicit criticism of the Worldwatch Institute's State of the World series of reports, which Lomborg sees as typical of the alarmist and unjustifiably pessimistic approach of much of the environmental movement.
Far from simply presenting a philosophical objection to the conventional wisdom on environmental issues, Lomborg adopts a highly detailed, data-rich approach in which much-cited 'facts' are examined and questioned in the light of competing and, in his view, more accurate data.
Lomborg concludes that 'being presented with the real state of the world makes us realise that, given our past record, it is likely that by humanity's creativity and collected efforts we can handle and find solutions to these problems. Consequently we can approach the remaining problems with confidence and inspiration to create an eve better world.'
The Skeptical Environmentalist is an unapologetic and highly controversial challenge to many of the prevailing views on the nature and extent of the so-called environmental crisis we face. The subtitle of the book - 'The Real State of the World' - is an implicit criticism of the Worldwatch Institute's State of the World series of reports, which Lomborg sees as typical of the alarmist and unjustifiably pessimistic approach of much of the environmental movement.
Far from simply presenting a philosophical objection to the conventional wisdom on environmental issues, Lomborg adopts a highly detailed, data-rich approach in which much-cited 'facts' are examined and questioned in the light of competing and, in his view, more accurate data.
Lomborg concludes that 'being presented with the real state of the world makes us realise that, given our past record, it is likely that by humanity's creativity and collected efforts we can handle and find solutions to these problems. Consequently we can approach the remaining problems with confidence and inspiration to create an eve better world.'
February 2, 2008
Lomborg, the anti-environmentalist that all greenies love to hate, actually makes some very interesting arguments backed by a lot of "facts," (debunked later almost universally). If you are an environmentalist, this is a must read - it shows what the "other side" can use as arguments against your cause. A very intelligent read, even if you disagree with his views and some of his unscientific leaps of faith. He is a much better statistician than scientist.
September 20, 2021
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The Skeptical Environmentalists :
Measuring the Real State of the World
(originally published in 1998, over 300 pages, but with the extensive end notes & reference info the book totals 500 + pages).
This is Bjørn Lomborg's phenomenal, 500-page work on the 'False Alarm' over global warming and other alleged environmental disasters. Climate change being a sacrosanct subject of the sky-is-falling leftists, they immediately attacked Bjørn's book, but his scholarly findings have been defended by honest reviewers and the criticism proven baseless.
One example of this dishonesty and hypocrisy is found in a book written to discredit Bjørn's book and Bjørn decisively responded in a 27-page piece detailing that author's deception.
A Response by Bjorn Lomborg to Howard Friel’s ‘The Lomborg Deception’
The respose begins with the following:
"Howard Friel’s book The Lomborg Deception (LD) focuses on two of my books, The Skeptical Environmentalist (TSE) and the U.S. edition of Cool It (CIUS). It is heartening to write books that engage others, and I welcome his critique. Unfortunately, it is obvious that Friel has no interest in fair-minded criticism or honest disagreement.
Rather, he seems determined to portray me as devious, deceptive, and intellectually dishonest. Ironically, in his zeal to do so, he repeatedly commits the very sins he accuses me of—selective or incomplete quotation, misrepresentation of source material, and even outright fabrication. Rather than engaging with my books on their own terms, he caricatures my work and then attacks it..."
The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) is another faux-science activist group pushing climate-scare nonsense and dishonestly trashed Bjørn's work.
.
The Book Blurb
"Bjorn Lomborg, a former member of Greenpeace, challenges widely held beliefs that the world environmental situation is getting worse and worse in his new book, The Skeptical Environmentalist. Using statistical information from internationally recognized research institutes, Lomborg systematically examines a range of major environmental issues that feature prominently in headline news around the world, including pollution, biodiversity, fear of chemicals, and the greenhouse effect, and documents that the world has actually improved. He supports his arguments with over 2900 footnotes, allowing readers to check his sources.
Lomborg criticizes the way many environmental organizations make selective and misleading use of scientific evidence and argues that we are making decisions about the use of our limited resources based on inaccurate or incomplete information. Concluding that there are more reasons for optimism than pessimism, he stresses the need for clear-headed prioritization of resources to tackle real, not imagined, problems.
The Skeptical Environmentalist offers readers a non-partisan evaluation that serves as a useful corrective to the more alarmist accounts favored by campaign groups and the media. Bjorn Lomborg is an associate professor of statistics in the Department of Political Science at the University of Aarhus.
When he started to investigate the statistics behind the current gloomy view of the environment, he was genuinely surprised. He published four lengthy articles in the leading Danish newspaper, including statistics documenting an ever-improving world, and unleashed the biggest post-war debate with more than 400 articles in all the major papers. Since then, Lomborg has been a frequent participant in the European debate on environmentalism on television, radio, and in newspapers."
Bjørn regularly writes articles on these issues which are currently published in a variety of newspapers and languages.
..
This book presents a great deal of facts, charts, various views and supporting research, etc. on the state of our world past and present and a likely positive future outlook.
It's laid out in 6 parts:
In the preface Bjørn tells how his left-wing, doomsday beliefs were challenged by another scholar which compelled him to examine his assumptions, conduct research, write about it and present the actual facts.
I. The Litany.
It's the litany of the alarmists: resources are running out / over population with less to eat / air & water polluted / species going extinct in record numbers / forests are disappearing / people have defiled the earth / we will all die off / etcetera. Fortunately it's just fear-mongering and inaccurate.
Things are getting better and have been for a long time.
Reality, exaggeration & myths.
Bad news is easily believed.
II. Human welfare and unprecedented human prosperity.
There's more food than ever before and lower prices.
Catastrophes and deaths are significantly less.
III. Can human Prosperity continue?
IV. Population: does it undercut human prosperity?
Air and water pollution are decreasing.
V. Tomorrow's problems.
Chemicals, cancer, pesticides, extinction exaggerations, global warming, the climate 1856 to 2100, the ozone hole, scares and sound policy.
VI. The Real State of the World.
Basically, there are plenty of problems, but we're not going extinct anytime soon - not even close. The developing world needs help which will also improve the overall environment. Plenty of money is wasted on nonsense solutions and the alarmists seem to have their own disaster-promoting agenda.
..
.
The Skeptical Environmentalists :
Measuring the Real State of the World
(originally published in 1998, over 300 pages, but with the extensive end notes & reference info the book totals 500 + pages).
This is Bjørn Lomborg's phenomenal, 500-page work on the 'False Alarm' over global warming and other alleged environmental disasters. Climate change being a sacrosanct subject of the sky-is-falling leftists, they immediately attacked Bjørn's book, but his scholarly findings have been defended by honest reviewers and the criticism proven baseless.
One example of this dishonesty and hypocrisy is found in a book written to discredit Bjørn's book and Bjørn decisively responded in a 27-page piece detailing that author's deception.
A Response by Bjorn Lomborg to Howard Friel’s ‘The Lomborg Deception’
The respose begins with the following:
"Howard Friel’s book The Lomborg Deception (LD) focuses on two of my books, The Skeptical Environmentalist (TSE) and the U.S. edition of Cool It (CIUS). It is heartening to write books that engage others, and I welcome his critique. Unfortunately, it is obvious that Friel has no interest in fair-minded criticism or honest disagreement.
Rather, he seems determined to portray me as devious, deceptive, and intellectually dishonest. Ironically, in his zeal to do so, he repeatedly commits the very sins he accuses me of—selective or incomplete quotation, misrepresentation of source material, and even outright fabrication. Rather than engaging with my books on their own terms, he caricatures my work and then attacks it..."
The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) is another faux-science activist group pushing climate-scare nonsense and dishonestly trashed Bjørn's work.
.
The Book Blurb
"Bjorn Lomborg, a former member of Greenpeace, challenges widely held beliefs that the world environmental situation is getting worse and worse in his new book, The Skeptical Environmentalist. Using statistical information from internationally recognized research institutes, Lomborg systematically examines a range of major environmental issues that feature prominently in headline news around the world, including pollution, biodiversity, fear of chemicals, and the greenhouse effect, and documents that the world has actually improved. He supports his arguments with over 2900 footnotes, allowing readers to check his sources.
Lomborg criticizes the way many environmental organizations make selective and misleading use of scientific evidence and argues that we are making decisions about the use of our limited resources based on inaccurate or incomplete information. Concluding that there are more reasons for optimism than pessimism, he stresses the need for clear-headed prioritization of resources to tackle real, not imagined, problems.
The Skeptical Environmentalist offers readers a non-partisan evaluation that serves as a useful corrective to the more alarmist accounts favored by campaign groups and the media. Bjorn Lomborg is an associate professor of statistics in the Department of Political Science at the University of Aarhus.
When he started to investigate the statistics behind the current gloomy view of the environment, he was genuinely surprised. He published four lengthy articles in the leading Danish newspaper, including statistics documenting an ever-improving world, and unleashed the biggest post-war debate with more than 400 articles in all the major papers. Since then, Lomborg has been a frequent participant in the European debate on environmentalism on television, radio, and in newspapers."
Bjørn regularly writes articles on these issues which are currently published in a variety of newspapers and languages.
..
This book presents a great deal of facts, charts, various views and supporting research, etc. on the state of our world past and present and a likely positive future outlook.
It's laid out in 6 parts:
In the preface Bjørn tells how his left-wing, doomsday beliefs were challenged by another scholar which compelled him to examine his assumptions, conduct research, write about it and present the actual facts.
I. The Litany.
It's the litany of the alarmists: resources are running out / over population with less to eat / air & water polluted / species going extinct in record numbers / forests are disappearing / people have defiled the earth / we will all die off / etcetera. Fortunately it's just fear-mongering and inaccurate.
Things are getting better and have been for a long time.
Reality, exaggeration & myths.
Bad news is easily believed.
II. Human welfare and unprecedented human prosperity.
There's more food than ever before and lower prices.
Catastrophes and deaths are significantly less.
III. Can human Prosperity continue?
IV. Population: does it undercut human prosperity?
Air and water pollution are decreasing.
V. Tomorrow's problems.
Chemicals, cancer, pesticides, extinction exaggerations, global warming, the climate 1856 to 2100, the ozone hole, scares and sound policy.
VI. The Real State of the World.
Basically, there are plenty of problems, but we're not going extinct anytime soon - not even close. The developing world needs help which will also improve the overall environment. Plenty of money is wasted on nonsense solutions and the alarmists seem to have their own disaster-promoting agenda.
..
.
September 26, 2007
The fundamental problem with this book is that the author is a statistician, not a scientist. And when writing this book, there is no evidence he even tried to consult or talk to the scientists he comes down on in his book. He has taken numerical data out of context and ran statistical tests on them. It’s no wonder the scientific community openly criticized his work as unscientific and misleading.
Of course many of his ideas are interesting and important: environmental problems are exaggerated by some lobbists, the world has gotten a lot better in many ways, and the environment's future is highly uncertain. However, he takes his statistical methods too far. It's ironic, because in the very beginning of his book, he mentions a popular saying/quote, "there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics". But instead of refuting this saying, he has supported it with this book.
Another point against the book and Lomborg’s others (newer), he doesn't address the fundamental difference between problems of today with problems of the future. His current stance is that we should spend our valuable resources on problems plaguing our world today, like AIDs, world hunger etc, and not on climate change because climate change is uncertain. This might be so, but if we only spend resources fighting problems of today, while ignoring potential problems of the future, we will always be on the passive and reacting to problems. We will never be active in preventing problems or addressing issues before they get large, unwieldy and expensive.
The climate change issue today is about prevention - doing something today to prevent large disasters in the future. Of course some techniques for addressing climate change can be expensive and seem unreasonable, but those that don't make sense probably won't stand up to economic and scientific analysis of public policy anyway. However, the point of climate change policy is to spend now to prevent spending more in the future. But Lomborg seems to dismiss any action aiming at prevention, claiming it is uneconomic. Why? It seems only because the future in uncertainty. This is silly of course, because we make policies and decisions about the future everyday. Just because uncertainty exists does not mean we should be paralyzed to act.
Lomborg's views on climate change can actually be part of a larger debate, that between prevention and adaptation. The first emphasizes taking small investment risks today with the intent and hope of affecting the future and preventing large costs in the future. This is kind of like investing in a safer car (airbags, crash-tested, etc). You pay more today so that during an accident you are more protected and are less likely to get hurt. In contrast, adaptation emphasizes investing in ways to deal with the future and disasters after they happen. It is like buying car insurance; you pay small amounts now so you will be covered during an accident. There are pros and cons to both techniques, and it is always best to do both. However, Lomborg’s view takes adaptation another step. He advises us not to invest at all today and hold on to our money until after some event has happened for sure. That means not buying car insurance because you don't know if a car accident will happen. And when the accident happens, you pay for a good lawyer (aka. moving humanity to the moon).
I like to think that Lomborg hates insurance companies. But, I really don’t think scientists are trying to scam us into buying insurance we don’t need…
Of course many of his ideas are interesting and important: environmental problems are exaggerated by some lobbists, the world has gotten a lot better in many ways, and the environment's future is highly uncertain. However, he takes his statistical methods too far. It's ironic, because in the very beginning of his book, he mentions a popular saying/quote, "there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics". But instead of refuting this saying, he has supported it with this book.
Another point against the book and Lomborg’s others (newer), he doesn't address the fundamental difference between problems of today with problems of the future. His current stance is that we should spend our valuable resources on problems plaguing our world today, like AIDs, world hunger etc, and not on climate change because climate change is uncertain. This might be so, but if we only spend resources fighting problems of today, while ignoring potential problems of the future, we will always be on the passive and reacting to problems. We will never be active in preventing problems or addressing issues before they get large, unwieldy and expensive.
The climate change issue today is about prevention - doing something today to prevent large disasters in the future. Of course some techniques for addressing climate change can be expensive and seem unreasonable, but those that don't make sense probably won't stand up to economic and scientific analysis of public policy anyway. However, the point of climate change policy is to spend now to prevent spending more in the future. But Lomborg seems to dismiss any action aiming at prevention, claiming it is uneconomic. Why? It seems only because the future in uncertainty. This is silly of course, because we make policies and decisions about the future everyday. Just because uncertainty exists does not mean we should be paralyzed to act.
Lomborg's views on climate change can actually be part of a larger debate, that between prevention and adaptation. The first emphasizes taking small investment risks today with the intent and hope of affecting the future and preventing large costs in the future. This is kind of like investing in a safer car (airbags, crash-tested, etc). You pay more today so that during an accident you are more protected and are less likely to get hurt. In contrast, adaptation emphasizes investing in ways to deal with the future and disasters after they happen. It is like buying car insurance; you pay small amounts now so you will be covered during an accident. There are pros and cons to both techniques, and it is always best to do both. However, Lomborg’s view takes adaptation another step. He advises us not to invest at all today and hold on to our money until after some event has happened for sure. That means not buying car insurance because you don't know if a car accident will happen. And when the accident happens, you pay for a good lawyer (aka. moving humanity to the moon).
I like to think that Lomborg hates insurance companies. But, I really don’t think scientists are trying to scam us into buying insurance we don’t need…
March 18, 2012
Riddled with errors and misrepresentations, The Skeptical Environmentalist is probably the definitive work of the Cornucopian and techno-optimist genre since Julian Simon died. While I by all means agree with Lomborg (and most other sane people) that technological progress will be necessary to solve environmental problems, this does not amount to some amazing revelation. Lomborg's main goal appears to be self-promotion, positioning himself at some median between the Greenpeace-niks and the villains from the Captain Planet cartoon. Nevertheless, this book represents a classic case of bashing its readers over the head with a massive amount of citations (a large number of which are to articles in the popular media, not even peer-reviewed literature) and rightfully presuming they won't have the time or will to actually check them. Fortunately, there is an entire site devoted to debunking the nonsense Lomborg has cranked out: http://www.lomborg-errors.dk/skeptica...
And if that's still not enough, check out Howard Friel's The Lomborg Deception: Setting the Record Straight About Global Warming.
And if that's still not enough, check out Howard Friel's The Lomborg Deception: Setting the Record Straight About Global Warming.
Read
March 27, 2019I did it. I can't believe that I've become the type of person that could, can, and did read this book. It's a thick, dense, textbook style tome with tiny text and a preponderance of graphs. I feel like I need to celebrate one more time that I DID IT!*
This book was recommended to me by someone I consider to be a rogue philosopher, someone who knows better than to be satisfied with the overly simplistic messages we get in the media. As with so many issues, we can find loud voices shouting "the planet is on death's door" and "the planet has always been changing, nothing to see here." And neither of those facile positions comes close to touching the complexity of the phenomena.
The first half of the book is the scientific equivalent of Pinker's central premise in Our Better Angels: the world is getting much better for almost everyone. Lomborg acknowledges that we shouldn't be satisfied with the status quo and that the fact that most of the world now has access to clean water doesn't help the people who still don't. His point is that we can resist the "humanity is going down the drain" argument that we all encounter.
The next half of the book is more focused on direct environmental indicators: pollution, resources, chemicals, climate change, etc. The message is the same here as above: the cultural critics who are shouting that we have X number of years left before we're out of Y do not have the evidence on their side. There is a big gap between the data and the narrative.
There are some flaws in the book (it feels crazy for me to even be able to say that), and they mostly have to do with the materialist assumptions that underpin the scientific method as we know it. The name of the game is quantification, and that doesn't always give the most informative picture of wellbeing, either of humans or of ecosystems. Some of the other shortcomings seem accidental (or maybe incidental?), and some are both. For example, for Lomborg, pesticides are safe because they don't have a significant impact on cancer deaths. They have also had the effect of making food cheaper, which tends to save lives. Therefore, bring on the pesticides! But cancer is obviously not the only way that living things are harmed by noxious chemicals, and there is strong evidence that the subsidies, not the technology, is what made food cheaper, so we could theoretically achieve the same salvific effects by subsidizing other agricultural models instead.
The part that was hardest for me to understand was about climate change. His baseline assumption is that anthropogenic greenhouse gases are accelerating climate change, notably in the form of warming. But it's not the catastrophe we've been sold in the media and therefore would do well to put off writing that blank check to fix it. He supports more funding in research in order to make renewable energy most efficient and therefore we will naturally transition away from fossil fuels. His contention is that it is more cost efficient to do it that way than to tax, regulate, or anything else. I don't really under all the Kyoto Protocol stuff, the carbon trading, and the parts about dividends. However, at the very least, I can line up Lomborg's points against the claims in the "liberal cannon" books about how the environment; it's clear that, since at least the 1970s, none of the doomsday predictions have come to pass.
But honestly, who has time to read books like this, on top of staying abreast of the news? I wish it were easier to know what to do and when. A girl can dream...
*I didn't read the footnotes. The THOUSANDS of footnotes. But I'm still counting this as a win!
This book was recommended to me by someone I consider to be a rogue philosopher, someone who knows better than to be satisfied with the overly simplistic messages we get in the media. As with so many issues, we can find loud voices shouting "the planet is on death's door" and "the planet has always been changing, nothing to see here." And neither of those facile positions comes close to touching the complexity of the phenomena.
The first half of the book is the scientific equivalent of Pinker's central premise in Our Better Angels: the world is getting much better for almost everyone. Lomborg acknowledges that we shouldn't be satisfied with the status quo and that the fact that most of the world now has access to clean water doesn't help the people who still don't. His point is that we can resist the "humanity is going down the drain" argument that we all encounter.
The next half of the book is more focused on direct environmental indicators: pollution, resources, chemicals, climate change, etc. The message is the same here as above: the cultural critics who are shouting that we have X number of years left before we're out of Y do not have the evidence on their side. There is a big gap between the data and the narrative.
There are some flaws in the book (it feels crazy for me to even be able to say that), and they mostly have to do with the materialist assumptions that underpin the scientific method as we know it. The name of the game is quantification, and that doesn't always give the most informative picture of wellbeing, either of humans or of ecosystems. Some of the other shortcomings seem accidental (or maybe incidental?), and some are both. For example, for Lomborg, pesticides are safe because they don't have a significant impact on cancer deaths. They have also had the effect of making food cheaper, which tends to save lives. Therefore, bring on the pesticides! But cancer is obviously not the only way that living things are harmed by noxious chemicals, and there is strong evidence that the subsidies, not the technology, is what made food cheaper, so we could theoretically achieve the same salvific effects by subsidizing other agricultural models instead.
The part that was hardest for me to understand was about climate change. His baseline assumption is that anthropogenic greenhouse gases are accelerating climate change, notably in the form of warming. But it's not the catastrophe we've been sold in the media and therefore would do well to put off writing that blank check to fix it. He supports more funding in research in order to make renewable energy most efficient and therefore we will naturally transition away from fossil fuels. His contention is that it is more cost efficient to do it that way than to tax, regulate, or anything else. I don't really under all the Kyoto Protocol stuff, the carbon trading, and the parts about dividends. However, at the very least, I can line up Lomborg's points against the claims in the "liberal cannon" books about how the environment; it's clear that, since at least the 1970s, none of the doomsday predictions have come to pass.
But honestly, who has time to read books like this, on top of staying abreast of the news? I wish it were easier to know what to do and when. A girl can dream...
*I didn't read the footnotes. The THOUSANDS of footnotes. But I'm still counting this as a win!
June 24, 2013
Slightly dated but a great book. You can follow the author on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/bjornlomborg) where he does post updates on various figures (mostly focused on global warming). This book is a more technical book (that is, tables/figures/math) in family with Diamandis' "Abundance", Zubrin's "Merchants of Despair" and Matt Ridleys' "Rational Optimist". Bjorn discusses various environmental and health issues (pesticides, feeding the world, saving the rainforests, global warming, etc.), describing the perceived problem, looks at swaths of historical data, looks at scientific models, looks at the alternatives of 'do everything', 'do nothing' and ultimately in most cases shows the status quo is the correct approach. The one point of contention people will have is his arguments tend to be economic - that is, the right answer is the lowest cost or highest profit - but then backs out from those answers the expected result which is often the best. He also makes a good point of driving home its not 'all or nothing' for example with chlorinated water: you have a very low expectation that some people will have negative side effects but that those effects are orders of magnitude lower than not chlorinating the water. Similarly with pesticides, carbon trade, etc. One of the things he does very well is to pit all the options against each other and explain conservatism/nonconservatism in various models and methods, for example EPA and DHA testing of chemicals on lab rats - the levels which trigger cancer are automatically reduced by 100x to 10,000x to cover 'errors' in human application before any other reductions are considered. All in all a very good book on a diverse range of environmental issues which again is in family with other lighter reads but provides a much deeper understanding. Highly recommended.
November 17, 2008
Dan suggested I read this a few years ago, only just got round to it. Lomborg is unrelentingly upbeat about the state of the world and the progress that is generally being made tackling everything from pollution to starvation. He makes the point several times that even if the trend is in the right direction it doesn't mean that we're doing well enough. Despite this he's drawn a lot of vitriol for this book. The central point is that we need to weigh up the costs and benefits associated with solving a problem - say global warming - and that our money might be better off spent elsewhere. He argues in favor of development - better to improve the quality of life for the third world now rather than spend the same money on a problem that is likely a century or more out.
Lomborg does seem to have something against British cats. In several sections of the book he compares numbers of animal deaths to the number caused by cats in the UK. Are Danish cats vegetarian, or are statistics just not available?
Lomborg does seem to have something against British cats. In several sections of the book he compares numbers of animal deaths to the number caused by cats in the UK. Are Danish cats vegetarian, or are statistics just not available?
January 10, 2009
This book deals with the statistics, thus the subtitle. The latest dire threat I hear about from alarmist types has to do with population, since more and more say man did not destroy the earth with climate change.
In this book, with voluminous footnotes for reference, we can see that global population is not increasing in a Malthusian fashion but is leveling its growth rate. Go to US Census site and see for yourself.
That is the point of this book-be skeptical and look for yourself.
This is something we all need to do anyway it seems.
I hope no one out there really trusts any government to make things better for them.
There are way too many agendas pushing personal programs, some of which have truly dubious origins and/or outcomes.
If you hear a "consensus" that the sky is falling, it does not make it so.
In this book, with voluminous footnotes for reference, we can see that global population is not increasing in a Malthusian fashion but is leveling its growth rate. Go to US Census site and see for yourself.
That is the point of this book-be skeptical and look for yourself.
This is something we all need to do anyway it seems.
I hope no one out there really trusts any government to make things better for them.
There are way too many agendas pushing personal programs, some of which have truly dubious origins and/or outcomes.
If you hear a "consensus" that the sky is falling, it does not make it so.
November 6, 2014
An interesting book which uses statistics rather than science to investigate questions concerning the environment. Lomborg is, at times, guilty of his own rhetoric in terms of jumping to conclusions and reading to much in to a set of figures, but he is a mathematician rather than a scientist. It's very useful to see some of the figures around global warming and how they are used by the media and from a political standpoint. Right or wrong Lomborg attempts to break apart complex issues and allows you to judge them without any bias (assuming you can separate the authors own bias)
April 10, 2018
Dated. The question stands as to how many of the ideas and charts would stand up modern scrutiny. Aside from that the book is super interesting and organized the reverent information veeerry well. I found this to be a great introduction to "paying attention to the globe" with a defense of some optimism for the ability to change. This has a much different and fully opposition position to naomi klein's fiery "this changes everything". I highly recommend as an antithesis to reading that book
August 31, 2017
Many people would consider this a book about the environment. No. This is a book about the environment, economics and management. A wonderful (and factual) discourse on how to approach the problems of the future with the resources of today. Well substantiated with facts! I would give it a 5/5!
October 17, 2021
Decision-makers all over the world should be forced to read this book before expending money to “nice to have” environmental programs or developed countries' assistance programs. Developing countries should prioritize just that: developing.
September 21, 2007
this book is shameless crap. If you want to read it, please prepare to be annoyed. My doctoral seminar wrote and published a critique of the environmental health aspects of this book. go us!
June 5, 2008
Marcelo this is an interesting book. Recently a bit controversial but in general it is correct. Things are getting indeed better.
April 30, 2009
this book should called "the Naive Optimist" or "the Polyanna Statistician" or perhaps "the Unqualified Critic of Environmental Science."
May 18, 2014
Tremendous. The world is not doomed. Backed by 2200 footnotes.
October 14, 2016
This is a very ambitious tome of data to support the position that environmentalists are wrong about many things. It is true that there are environmental problems, it argues, but the situation is improving, not worsening. This is not global warming denial, right wing bullshit. It spells out all the numbers, the statistical trends, of the improvement in all areas. Not only is the environment improving, but so is our quality of life, which was the point of all this environmental destruction. It doesn't argue that we should stop trying to make progress, but to be honest about the trouble areas and focus our limited resources fixing the bigger problems. It argues for prioritizing, rather than fear-mongering.
As a former environmentalist, this book was refreshing to read. A lot of environmentalists (including me, at one time) are more ideological than knowledgable. It's like a religion, with environmental "sins" that must be repented. I kind of knew, at some level, that I was full of shit. It seemed like the science agreed with me, but the truth is I didn't know much about the science. Only the science as presented by other environmentalists agreed with me. This book asks, why not be skeptical of their biased claims, just as we are of business-funded think tanks? Do they not have an agenda too? Environmental organizations have a financial incentive to paint an overly bleak picture, to get more donations.
A lot of the arguments were pretty persuasive, and the facts seem to support his arguments, but I kept feeling like all these hundreds of pages of facts and statistics were in support of limited premises, based on simplistic assumptions. I couldn't always put my finger on it, but I did feel a little skeptical of the Skeptical Environmentalist. Here are some thoughts I had as I read it:
A lot, even most of his arguments can be summarized as, "look at how good we are at buying time!" Yes, I agree, we have proven remarkably adept at buying time. The conclusion, implied but not proven, is that this ingenuity and time-buying can go on indefinitely. Buying time IS important, since it means that things that look bleak may prove much better than anticipated because we haven't accounted for our future ingenuity. But it seems rather naive to assume that this ingenuity is endless.
We see Moore's Law show up in a lot of areas of technology. We are consuming resources, true, but our capacity for increasing efficiency is breathtaking, and has thus far outpaced our limited resources. But Moore's Law has already reached its limits in silicon efficiency that it originally referred to. It's good to account for Moore's Law, even celebrate it, but it's important to be honest that infinite growth is not physically possible. Unless we innovate our way into brains-in-jars, we need those resources to survive. There IS a limit.
He says that there's a myth of limited growth among environmentalists, which seems very intuitive but is false: that we live on a finite, spherical planet, and therefore there must be limits to our growth. But he doesn't actually disprove this obvious fact. All he does is show that SO FAR, we have been able to beat the system.
This book likes to show how environmentalist doomsday predictions of the past have proven false. "They've been wrong before" is a very common anti-science argument based on the fallacy that someone being wrong in the past discredits them entirely. Predicting the future is a very tricky business, so it shouldn't be surprising that there were false predictions. But just because the predictions haven't come true doesn't mean they won't.
The only area that he conceded things are not improving is global warming, and thus devotes the longest section of the book to it. But the vast majority of it addresses the relative costs in GDP terms. This many dollars for curbing global warming, this many dollars if we wait. Either way, it just comes down to a one-time, financial cost for him. That our current lifestyle is sustainable is taken for granted. He assumes that, although things are getting worse, there's no doubt that, at some point in the near future, the trends will reverse. The only argument he makes for this is the dropping costs of solar technology.
So little time is spent on that assumption, and yet I think it's the most important argument of environmentalism to address: if things are getting worse, and we are not doing enough to reverse this trend, then there must be a point in the future where it's game over. Not just high costs, but UNABLE TO SUSTAND HUMAN LIFE. This should be the point, not how expensive it's going to be. Maybe cheap solar technology will save us, but it seems naive to pin our survivability on technology that doesn't exist yet and we just assume will be invented. I've heard elsewhere that nuclear energy will save us. Maybe it will. But make a case. Don't just assume it and then build your argument on its relative costs.
He's arguing to his strengths. He understands statistics and cost/benefit analyses. He's keen on economics. It's all about the bottom line. What gives us the most profit for the lowest cost? All of his effort is spent weighing these arguments, and so precious little is spent on tackling the enormous complexity of the problems, not all of which can be tallied on a balance sheet. I do appreciate the importance of considering trade-offs, and I think it's the right approach to environmentalism, rather than moralizing. But in our attempt at quantifying every issue with numbers, many flawed assumptions about reality are made.
For example, one of his favorite arguments is a rebuttle against the claim that the third world, developing nations will be hit the hardest, so we as wealthy nations have a moral responsibility to curb our energy usage. His argument is, sure, this is nice and all, but there are other ways of helping these nations. We could take that money we want to use to curb global warming to provide food and clean water for those countries RIGHT NOW. They'll benefit and their decendents will benefit, the very decendents we're so worried about suffering from the effects of global warming. Wouldn't they be better off with a better lifestyle and economy now, and then they'll be much better able to tackle the effects of global warming when they do strike?
This is the kind of argument someone can make in the cool world of numbers, wearing your suit and tie and discussing how to help disenfranchised people you will never meet. In this world, it's simple arithmetic. But you can't just send people food and clean water and expect that to fix their problems. Their problems go so much deeper. Many of them have to do with very local issues that don't factor into the arithmetic, such as their cultures, traditions, economies, governments, geography, politics, and leadership. You can spend trillions of dollars to help a country and just make their situation worse. The U.S. has a long history of doing just that.
The argument for helping developing countries by curbing global warming is simply that we shouldn't let our first world addiction to way more than our fair share of the energy reserves make the difficult lives of the third world even worse. We are ALREADY spending a huge amount of money trying to actively help them now, but this has proven an intractible problem. The point is that we have a moral obligation to prevent our first world ways make third world lives even harder than they already are.
Despite these misgivings, I did find much of this book quite persuasive. I felt a little snowed, but I also raised my eyebrows at data that I simply didn't know about. I am now convinced that things are getting better in most areas, but I'm still concerned about climate change. Still, arguments this book makes are extremely important to counter to all the environmentalist bullshit out there. It's very important that we use the facts to weigh the opportunity costs of our environmental solutions. I think the panic and shame of environmentalists is dangerous and problematic, but hubris is not the answer either.
As a former environmentalist, this book was refreshing to read. A lot of environmentalists (including me, at one time) are more ideological than knowledgable. It's like a religion, with environmental "sins" that must be repented. I kind of knew, at some level, that I was full of shit. It seemed like the science agreed with me, but the truth is I didn't know much about the science. Only the science as presented by other environmentalists agreed with me. This book asks, why not be skeptical of their biased claims, just as we are of business-funded think tanks? Do they not have an agenda too? Environmental organizations have a financial incentive to paint an overly bleak picture, to get more donations.
A lot of the arguments were pretty persuasive, and the facts seem to support his arguments, but I kept feeling like all these hundreds of pages of facts and statistics were in support of limited premises, based on simplistic assumptions. I couldn't always put my finger on it, but I did feel a little skeptical of the Skeptical Environmentalist. Here are some thoughts I had as I read it:
A lot, even most of his arguments can be summarized as, "look at how good we are at buying time!" Yes, I agree, we have proven remarkably adept at buying time. The conclusion, implied but not proven, is that this ingenuity and time-buying can go on indefinitely. Buying time IS important, since it means that things that look bleak may prove much better than anticipated because we haven't accounted for our future ingenuity. But it seems rather naive to assume that this ingenuity is endless.
We see Moore's Law show up in a lot of areas of technology. We are consuming resources, true, but our capacity for increasing efficiency is breathtaking, and has thus far outpaced our limited resources. But Moore's Law has already reached its limits in silicon efficiency that it originally referred to. It's good to account for Moore's Law, even celebrate it, but it's important to be honest that infinite growth is not physically possible. Unless we innovate our way into brains-in-jars, we need those resources to survive. There IS a limit.
He says that there's a myth of limited growth among environmentalists, which seems very intuitive but is false: that we live on a finite, spherical planet, and therefore there must be limits to our growth. But he doesn't actually disprove this obvious fact. All he does is show that SO FAR, we have been able to beat the system.
This book likes to show how environmentalist doomsday predictions of the past have proven false. "They've been wrong before" is a very common anti-science argument based on the fallacy that someone being wrong in the past discredits them entirely. Predicting the future is a very tricky business, so it shouldn't be surprising that there were false predictions. But just because the predictions haven't come true doesn't mean they won't.
The only area that he conceded things are not improving is global warming, and thus devotes the longest section of the book to it. But the vast majority of it addresses the relative costs in GDP terms. This many dollars for curbing global warming, this many dollars if we wait. Either way, it just comes down to a one-time, financial cost for him. That our current lifestyle is sustainable is taken for granted. He assumes that, although things are getting worse, there's no doubt that, at some point in the near future, the trends will reverse. The only argument he makes for this is the dropping costs of solar technology.
So little time is spent on that assumption, and yet I think it's the most important argument of environmentalism to address: if things are getting worse, and we are not doing enough to reverse this trend, then there must be a point in the future where it's game over. Not just high costs, but UNABLE TO SUSTAND HUMAN LIFE. This should be the point, not how expensive it's going to be. Maybe cheap solar technology will save us, but it seems naive to pin our survivability on technology that doesn't exist yet and we just assume will be invented. I've heard elsewhere that nuclear energy will save us. Maybe it will. But make a case. Don't just assume it and then build your argument on its relative costs.
He's arguing to his strengths. He understands statistics and cost/benefit analyses. He's keen on economics. It's all about the bottom line. What gives us the most profit for the lowest cost? All of his effort is spent weighing these arguments, and so precious little is spent on tackling the enormous complexity of the problems, not all of which can be tallied on a balance sheet. I do appreciate the importance of considering trade-offs, and I think it's the right approach to environmentalism, rather than moralizing. But in our attempt at quantifying every issue with numbers, many flawed assumptions about reality are made.
For example, one of his favorite arguments is a rebuttle against the claim that the third world, developing nations will be hit the hardest, so we as wealthy nations have a moral responsibility to curb our energy usage. His argument is, sure, this is nice and all, but there are other ways of helping these nations. We could take that money we want to use to curb global warming to provide food and clean water for those countries RIGHT NOW. They'll benefit and their decendents will benefit, the very decendents we're so worried about suffering from the effects of global warming. Wouldn't they be better off with a better lifestyle and economy now, and then they'll be much better able to tackle the effects of global warming when they do strike?
This is the kind of argument someone can make in the cool world of numbers, wearing your suit and tie and discussing how to help disenfranchised people you will never meet. In this world, it's simple arithmetic. But you can't just send people food and clean water and expect that to fix their problems. Their problems go so much deeper. Many of them have to do with very local issues that don't factor into the arithmetic, such as their cultures, traditions, economies, governments, geography, politics, and leadership. You can spend trillions of dollars to help a country and just make their situation worse. The U.S. has a long history of doing just that.
The argument for helping developing countries by curbing global warming is simply that we shouldn't let our first world addiction to way more than our fair share of the energy reserves make the difficult lives of the third world even worse. We are ALREADY spending a huge amount of money trying to actively help them now, but this has proven an intractible problem. The point is that we have a moral obligation to prevent our first world ways make third world lives even harder than they already are.
Despite these misgivings, I did find much of this book quite persuasive. I felt a little snowed, but I also raised my eyebrows at data that I simply didn't know about. I am now convinced that things are getting better in most areas, but I'm still concerned about climate change. Still, arguments this book makes are extremely important to counter to all the environmentalist bullshit out there. It's very important that we use the facts to weigh the opportunity costs of our environmental solutions. I think the panic and shame of environmentalists is dangerous and problematic, but hubris is not the answer either.
June 30, 2008
This has the potential to be an interesting read, and I totally agree with the author's alleged premise -- that environmentalism should be based on the real state of the world, not on panicky unfounded fears. So I'm glad he started this conversation.
But this is definitely not the final word, not by a long shot. He is a statistician, not a scientist, and there are so many places where he misinterprets important things that he must either be too naive or too dishonest for me to trust him. For example, he states that the world's forests are fine because forest cover is currently increasing worldwide. In that whole chapter I couldn't find any discussion of the fact (as I understand it) that old-growth forests are being lost and the net growth in forest cover is presumably coming from monocultures planted by loggers. I've heard that these new forests are much less effective as animal habitats, erosion control, etc. If he disagrees, it is still a distinction that many people think is important, so he should justify why he does not think it matters. Of course, if he doesn't realize there is such a distinction, then he should get his book proofread by someone who actually knows the subject.
Similarly, he puts up many straw men. For example, when discussing fertilizers in our rivers and such that are suffocating the sealife at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, he implies that the only argument against killing off this life is ethical. Then he argues it's no worse than killing a cow for steak or leather. Besides the fact that I disagree with his view on the ethics here, I wish he'd also considered the practical side of it: We do know a heck of a lot about cows and we understand the impacts of the planned death of a cow, but we just don't know much about those bottom-dwelling critters (many of which probably play an important role in cleaning the water or feeding the fish we eat). We don't know how much their demise will impact our environment and economy.
He does bring up questions that I'd love to read more about. For instance, he claims that spending money on global warming right now is a waste: it'd be better to spend that money helping the world's poor countries develop strong economies and healthy, educated citizenries, so that we'll have more smart people to work on this problem, the impacts will be smaller, and it'll be cheaper to solve in the future. That's an interesting take and although I don't buy many of his arguments, I'm open to hearing more. I would hate to waste money solving global warming now if it's really not the best way to do things... but from what other people say, if global warming will cause massive floods and droughts that create millions of refugees, then there's no point hoping it's easier to solve later -- we're kinda screwed if we don't solve it NOW.
So, you know, going through this book is a good exercise to get you to think critically about your beliefs and about the environmental issues we face. He raises some really important questions; I just don't think he answers them well. I'd love to see a similar book with more thought (and honesty?) put into it... but everyone always has an agenda these days :-(
But this is definitely not the final word, not by a long shot. He is a statistician, not a scientist, and there are so many places where he misinterprets important things that he must either be too naive or too dishonest for me to trust him. For example, he states that the world's forests are fine because forest cover is currently increasing worldwide. In that whole chapter I couldn't find any discussion of the fact (as I understand it) that old-growth forests are being lost and the net growth in forest cover is presumably coming from monocultures planted by loggers. I've heard that these new forests are much less effective as animal habitats, erosion control, etc. If he disagrees, it is still a distinction that many people think is important, so he should justify why he does not think it matters. Of course, if he doesn't realize there is such a distinction, then he should get his book proofread by someone who actually knows the subject.
Similarly, he puts up many straw men. For example, when discussing fertilizers in our rivers and such that are suffocating the sealife at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, he implies that the only argument against killing off this life is ethical. Then he argues it's no worse than killing a cow for steak or leather. Besides the fact that I disagree with his view on the ethics here, I wish he'd also considered the practical side of it: We do know a heck of a lot about cows and we understand the impacts of the planned death of a cow, but we just don't know much about those bottom-dwelling critters (many of which probably play an important role in cleaning the water or feeding the fish we eat). We don't know how much their demise will impact our environment and economy.
He does bring up questions that I'd love to read more about. For instance, he claims that spending money on global warming right now is a waste: it'd be better to spend that money helping the world's poor countries develop strong economies and healthy, educated citizenries, so that we'll have more smart people to work on this problem, the impacts will be smaller, and it'll be cheaper to solve in the future. That's an interesting take and although I don't buy many of his arguments, I'm open to hearing more. I would hate to waste money solving global warming now if it's really not the best way to do things... but from what other people say, if global warming will cause massive floods and droughts that create millions of refugees, then there's no point hoping it's easier to solve later -- we're kinda screwed if we don't solve it NOW.
So, you know, going through this book is a good exercise to get you to think critically about your beliefs and about the environmental issues we face. He raises some really important questions; I just don't think he answers them well. I'd love to see a similar book with more thought (and honesty?) put into it... but everyone always has an agenda these days :-(
March 9, 2020
Lomborg, a former member of Greenpeace, challenges the very widely-held view that the world-wide environmental situation, including climate change, is getting worse, and that it requires urgent global action, including significant lifestyle changes. He asks that such matters be put in a correct perspective and that resources of finance and time be allocated to economic and social development of the world’s poorest, rather than to making radical changes to the way we all live, or aspire to live. Such changes, he suggests, would not be cost-effective and could well be unnecessary. Invest in the developing world, he says, and in seeking low-carbon energy solutions, rather than trying to stop global warming as a ‘partial insurance premium’. He argues that it is good sense to regard things with a sceptical sense of what is real, to decide on priorities, and spend money where it will do most good. Being too pessimistic, he says, comes with a hefty price tag.
This is a very large book, in both size and scope. In 352 pages, it covers almost every relevant topic that one can think of. The text is well-written, well-argued and loaded with data (Lomborg is a statistician), and is heavily referenced (there are almost 3000 cross-references to endnotes, and a bibliography some 70 pages long). It was originally published in 1998; I read a revised and updated version, translated from the Danish original and published in 2001. At least, I read parts of it. A self-proclaimed sceptic must expect to be treated with scepticism, and as I read, I felt a growing sense of ‘there is something wrong here’, but had difficulty in putting my finger on what it was.
So what is the problem – wherefore my sense of disquiet as I read? Part of this came from a general sense that Lomborg’s inferences and conclusions about many topics conflict too much with almost everything else that I have read and heard, and in some cases, seen. (This is, of course, exactly what he sets out to do). For example, it is widely stated that large areas of the rainforest in Amazonia and south-east Asia are being clear-felled, and I have seen pictures and maps that support this contention. Lomborg, however, states (p.117) that ‘our forests are not under threat’. He believes that where ‘people in developing countries often exploit their forests in a … injudicious fashion’, this is due to individual poverty and poor government finances. Nothing is said about the expansion of oil palm plantations in south-east Asia or of the clearance in Amazonia for cattle ranching and animal fodder crops.
In addition to these generalities, when I came to read about topics on which I have some professional experience, then I found misunderstandings of detail. This comes about, I think, because Lomborg is not an expert on most of the topics that he writes about – few people could have such universal expertise – and also that he tends to look at the big, global picture. While in many ways this is a strength, it also has the effect of glossing over some of the real problems, which are regional or local in extent, but which have real consequences and which form part of a global trend and which together add up to a global problem.
For example, he argues that globally there is no shortage of fresh water. There are instead local problems of distribution and supply, but these can be addressed by developing modern, efficient systems (which is true: England’s water supply problems would be greatly alleviated by a ‘national water grid’, and by the more effective domestic use of ‘grey water’ and rain water). However, in at least two African countries, Botswana and Libya, a large part of the national water supply is being mined from underground sources: those sources are not being replenished from rainfall and although they are enormously large, they are finite; they will, eventually, run dry. If there are such flaws in the discussion of topics on which I have knowledge, it is reasonable to expect that there will be similar flaws elsewhere in the book, that I (like Lomborg, possibly) have insufficient knowledge to recognise.
Elsewhere, Lomborg asks the wrong question, and so diverts attention from the real problems. For example, like so many other people in the later part of the 20th century, he addresses the matter of crude oil as a resource and supply problem: are reserves sufficient for our future needs? Now, however, the pertinent question is: can the known reserves of hydrocarbons (and coal) be safely extracted and burnt, given their probable impact on the global carbon budget and so on climate change? Likewise with other kinds of raw material – viewed globally, there are few genuine shortages of natural raw materials. But when resources of materials of critical economic importance (such as rare earth elements, as used in many modern electronic devices) are concentrated in small numbers of powerful countries such as China, then other countries do well to make contingency plans.
Lomborg is not a climate change denier but he questions the reliability of computer models, and of the predictions derived from them, and therefore questions the need to spend large sums of money on climate change mitigation. However, 20 years after this book was written, the collective understanding of earth systems has improved – now including a better recognition of the extent of warming and acidification of the oceans, for example, and the sense of urgency has grown to the extent that many national and local governments are actively planning for a low-carbon economy.
It would be unkind to dismiss this book as a typical neo-capitalist justification of ‘business as usual’, although parts of it read like that – and it is likely that they will be seized on by vested interests. Rather than being fixated on environmental problems, Lomborg says, we should concentrate on economic and social development where it is most required. He argues (p.327) that only when poverty and hunger are alleviated in the developing world can those peoples be expected to deal with environmental problems. This seems a reasonable and compassionate view, but it also seems likely that it is unduly idealistic. Within developed countries, such as the UK and the USA, the contrast between the extremely wealthy and the rather poor tends to increase, year-by-year. And while some development occurs in the developing world, the condition of the rich, developed nations does not stand still. The global north-south divide shows little sign of closing. The poor, it seems, will always be with us – and meanwhile the deterioration of the environment does not stand still, either.
I suspect that there is a further flaw in Lomborg’s arguments. It appears that he assumes that the majority of national governments, worldwide, are competent and benign, in that (whether democratic or not) they will do their best for the interests of their own people, and therefore (because these will often coincide) for the rest of the world. Experience of the late 2010s shows that the opposite is the case. Incompetence, belligerence, self-interest, corruption and short-termism are the general conditions.
Lomborg has a point when he speaks of priorities, and of devoting to resources where they can do most good – but I think that his fundamental premise, that what he calls ‘the Litany’ of perceived environmental problems is false, is itself mistaken. It is all very well to be sceptical, but when it turns out that you are the ‘only one marching in step’, then perhaps it might be appropriate to consider whether one might be misguided. Moreover, when it comes to climate change, and the loss of ecological diversity in the natural world, the medium to long-term consequences for human society are so dire that no sensible person should take the risk of behaving as if things are not as bad as they are said to be.
This is a very large book, in both size and scope. In 352 pages, it covers almost every relevant topic that one can think of. The text is well-written, well-argued and loaded with data (Lomborg is a statistician), and is heavily referenced (there are almost 3000 cross-references to endnotes, and a bibliography some 70 pages long). It was originally published in 1998; I read a revised and updated version, translated from the Danish original and published in 2001. At least, I read parts of it. A self-proclaimed sceptic must expect to be treated with scepticism, and as I read, I felt a growing sense of ‘there is something wrong here’, but had difficulty in putting my finger on what it was.
So what is the problem – wherefore my sense of disquiet as I read? Part of this came from a general sense that Lomborg’s inferences and conclusions about many topics conflict too much with almost everything else that I have read and heard, and in some cases, seen. (This is, of course, exactly what he sets out to do). For example, it is widely stated that large areas of the rainforest in Amazonia and south-east Asia are being clear-felled, and I have seen pictures and maps that support this contention. Lomborg, however, states (p.117) that ‘our forests are not under threat’. He believes that where ‘people in developing countries often exploit their forests in a … injudicious fashion’, this is due to individual poverty and poor government finances. Nothing is said about the expansion of oil palm plantations in south-east Asia or of the clearance in Amazonia for cattle ranching and animal fodder crops.
In addition to these generalities, when I came to read about topics on which I have some professional experience, then I found misunderstandings of detail. This comes about, I think, because Lomborg is not an expert on most of the topics that he writes about – few people could have such universal expertise – and also that he tends to look at the big, global picture. While in many ways this is a strength, it also has the effect of glossing over some of the real problems, which are regional or local in extent, but which have real consequences and which form part of a global trend and which together add up to a global problem.
For example, he argues that globally there is no shortage of fresh water. There are instead local problems of distribution and supply, but these can be addressed by developing modern, efficient systems (which is true: England’s water supply problems would be greatly alleviated by a ‘national water grid’, and by the more effective domestic use of ‘grey water’ and rain water). However, in at least two African countries, Botswana and Libya, a large part of the national water supply is being mined from underground sources: those sources are not being replenished from rainfall and although they are enormously large, they are finite; they will, eventually, run dry. If there are such flaws in the discussion of topics on which I have knowledge, it is reasonable to expect that there will be similar flaws elsewhere in the book, that I (like Lomborg, possibly) have insufficient knowledge to recognise.
Elsewhere, Lomborg asks the wrong question, and so diverts attention from the real problems. For example, like so many other people in the later part of the 20th century, he addresses the matter of crude oil as a resource and supply problem: are reserves sufficient for our future needs? Now, however, the pertinent question is: can the known reserves of hydrocarbons (and coal) be safely extracted and burnt, given their probable impact on the global carbon budget and so on climate change? Likewise with other kinds of raw material – viewed globally, there are few genuine shortages of natural raw materials. But when resources of materials of critical economic importance (such as rare earth elements, as used in many modern electronic devices) are concentrated in small numbers of powerful countries such as China, then other countries do well to make contingency plans.
Lomborg is not a climate change denier but he questions the reliability of computer models, and of the predictions derived from them, and therefore questions the need to spend large sums of money on climate change mitigation. However, 20 years after this book was written, the collective understanding of earth systems has improved – now including a better recognition of the extent of warming and acidification of the oceans, for example, and the sense of urgency has grown to the extent that many national and local governments are actively planning for a low-carbon economy.
It would be unkind to dismiss this book as a typical neo-capitalist justification of ‘business as usual’, although parts of it read like that – and it is likely that they will be seized on by vested interests. Rather than being fixated on environmental problems, Lomborg says, we should concentrate on economic and social development where it is most required. He argues (p.327) that only when poverty and hunger are alleviated in the developing world can those peoples be expected to deal with environmental problems. This seems a reasonable and compassionate view, but it also seems likely that it is unduly idealistic. Within developed countries, such as the UK and the USA, the contrast between the extremely wealthy and the rather poor tends to increase, year-by-year. And while some development occurs in the developing world, the condition of the rich, developed nations does not stand still. The global north-south divide shows little sign of closing. The poor, it seems, will always be with us – and meanwhile the deterioration of the environment does not stand still, either.
I suspect that there is a further flaw in Lomborg’s arguments. It appears that he assumes that the majority of national governments, worldwide, are competent and benign, in that (whether democratic or not) they will do their best for the interests of their own people, and therefore (because these will often coincide) for the rest of the world. Experience of the late 2010s shows that the opposite is the case. Incompetence, belligerence, self-interest, corruption and short-termism are the general conditions.
Lomborg has a point when he speaks of priorities, and of devoting to resources where they can do most good – but I think that his fundamental premise, that what he calls ‘the Litany’ of perceived environmental problems is false, is itself mistaken. It is all very well to be sceptical, but when it turns out that you are the ‘only one marching in step’, then perhaps it might be appropriate to consider whether one might be misguided. Moreover, when it comes to climate change, and the loss of ecological diversity in the natural world, the medium to long-term consequences for human society are so dire that no sensible person should take the risk of behaving as if things are not as bad as they are said to be.
February 27, 2016
Lomborg has been very clever with the use of statistics and facts in addressing Scientists favourite topics, from fuels to biodiversity to the infestation of natural pesticides in your coffee. The author seems to waive every issue on the environment and seems to be overloaded with optimism. I enjoyed reading some of the solutions he offered and it was certainly an eye opener to tactics used by the media and activists for their own agendas. However some of his arguments are rather absurd. For instance, he claims air pollution has been uplifted from the world with data shown only of developed countries. He simply neglects the large contribution from countries such as China, Brazil and India. Also, he later claims that the usage of lead in petrol has declined over the years but does not take into account the fact that the number of vehicles also has drastically increased. Is he only talking about the developed world again? Multiple times in the text he justifies the deaths of birds and sea organisms by wind energy in Denmark or spilling of crude respectively to be ethical. Why can’t we as humans work on every issue rather than give weighting or priority-given a country is economically prosperous? Every life on Earth matters and it is our obligation to resolve every issue. Overall, the book is full of facts and I loved that aspect of it. Definitely worth a read!
March 28, 2016
So refreshing to read a data-driven analysis of environmental issues.
Bjorn Lomborg describes himself as a left-wing former Greenpeace member who is trained in statistics and political science. His book takes a step back from the hyperbole (on both sides of the debate) and looks at the data. His conclusion: things are generally getting better and the situation isn't nearly as dire as you're being led to believe, although there's still work to do.
He starts off with a great quote, from Julian Simon:
"This is my long-run forecast in brief:
The material conditions of life will continue
to get better for most people, in most countries
most of the time, indefinitely. Within a century or two,
all nations and most of humanity will be at or above
today's Western living standards.
I also speculate, however, that many people will continue
to think and say that the conditions of life are getting worse."
Bjorn Lomborg describes himself as a left-wing former Greenpeace member who is trained in statistics and political science. His book takes a step back from the hyperbole (on both sides of the debate) and looks at the data. His conclusion: things are generally getting better and the situation isn't nearly as dire as you're being led to believe, although there's still work to do.
He starts off with a great quote, from Julian Simon:
"This is my long-run forecast in brief:
The material conditions of life will continue
to get better for most people, in most countries
most of the time, indefinitely. Within a century or two,
all nations and most of humanity will be at or above
today's Western living standards.
I also speculate, however, that many people will continue
to think and say that the conditions of life are getting worse."
March 21, 2020
I read this cover to cover. It was a painful experience. I am no economist or statistician, but I know a little about environmental matters and am willing to check sources. This book cleverly uses a mix of information taken out of context, selective time periods, straw man arguments and cherry-picked data.
There’s def a case that the environment movement over-states concerns from time to time, but this book represents a deliberate hit on the whole sector, and represents a response well out of proportion to the problems it is purporting to fix.
More worryingly of course is that this has become a bible for climate skeptics ever since, and as a result Mt Lomborg will I’m afraid not have a very nice place in the history books.
I gather that it has been republished several times. I’m not surprised, he must be having to constantly revise his predictions as the reality of climate change dawns on even the most Neanderthal brow.
There’s def a case that the environment movement over-states concerns from time to time, but this book represents a deliberate hit on the whole sector, and represents a response well out of proportion to the problems it is purporting to fix.
More worryingly of course is that this has become a bible for climate skeptics ever since, and as a result Mt Lomborg will I’m afraid not have a very nice place in the history books.
I gather that it has been republished several times. I’m not surprised, he must be having to constantly revise his predictions as the reality of climate change dawns on even the most Neanderthal brow.
August 11, 2014
I picked up this book unaware of the controversy behind it, hoping that it would indeed provide a "non-partisan stock taking exercise" of the state of the environment. Indeed it starts off well, describing how statistics are frequently misrepresented to support authors' points of view, and how this approach should be avoided at all costs. Unfortunately once one begins to read further it quickly becomes clear that Lomborg is presenting data not in an impartial manner, but in order to back up his own opinions. For example in many of his graphs which show a particularly favourable trend he does not distinguish graphically between data and projections (usually indicated by a dashed line), and as the author is a statistician I would expect better.
February 14, 2010
At last, a statistician analyzes the true state of our environment and how it compares to the last several centuries. How do we determine how to spend our limited dollars? Lomborg shows how to calculate cost per life saved when spending money for clean air, clean water, universal vaccinations, organic produce and many other scenarios. As a former member of GreenPeace he began this journey to prove opponents wrong but as an intellectually honest academic he has followed the data wherever it went. Every single citizen should read this book. It will not only enable you to weigh various environmental concerns and avoid being ensnared by specious arguments. It changed my mind and my life.
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