Doom and Gloom

There is a lot of hand-wringing about the environment. It was therefore refreshing to read Bjorn Lomborg’s book. He had been a member of Greenpeace, but picked up the gauntlet flung down by an extreme right wing US anti-environmentalist to check the facts. As a professor of statistics in Denmark, he was well qualified to do so. The result surprised him and is described in his fascinating book “The Skeptical Environmentalist”. No doubt Lomborg can be challenged in detail, but he is right to challenge the Doom Mongers, and he clearly demonstrates that widely held fears of impending disaster are just not supported by the facts.

Lomborg suggests that fervent environmentalists promulgate a Litany of Doom that is unsupported by the facts. His the book addresses these issues, and more.

It would be invidious to select specific items, but the statement in his summary gives the flavour:

“We are not running out of energy or natural resources. There will be more food per head of the world’s population. Fewer and fewer people are starving. In 1900 we lived for an average of 30 years; today we live for 67. According to UN, we have reduced poverty more in the last 50 years than we did in the previous 500, and it has been reduced in practically every country. Global warming, though its size and future projections are unrealistically pessimistic, is almost certainly taking place, but the typical cure of early and radical fossil fuel cutbacks is way worse than the original affliction, and moreover its total impact will not pose a devastating problem for our future. Nor will we lose 20-25% of all species in our lifetime – in fact we are losing probably 0.7%. Acid rain does not kill forests, and the air and water around us is becoming less polluted.

Mankind’s lot has improved in terms of practically every measurable indicator”

This gives a very different flavour to that purveyed by many NGOs. No doubt many of his assertions are open to challenge, but it does suggest we should question the more serious predictions of doom and gloom that we so often hear.

Having said that, there is no doubt that Lomborg’s arguments are at their weakest when dealing with the marine environment. So perhaps we need to take special care until we know more.