A few weeks ago I received a loan copy of Cool It by Bjorn Lomborg, aka the Skeptical Environmentalist. This books reads pretty easily, is full of sources for all the claims it makes, but has been met with some pretty stiff opposition in the environmental camp.
Debunking Bjorn Lomborg: Part I | Gristmill: The environmental news blog | Grist
But Lomborg believes by cutting greenhouse-gas emissions, “probably we can save about 0.06 bears per year.” Seriously. As we’ll see, Lomborg suffers from an inability to even imagine the possibility of thresholds or tipping points, beyond which irreversible and catastrophic change occur.
The main problem with many popular science books is that you have to pick and choose your sources to defend the arguments you are holding to. It’s not like a peer reviewed paper where critical thought is necessary to be published. Another issue is that Bjorn is not a scientist, rather an economist, and just about everyone who holds economics as the ultimate truth is in some way deluded into thinking that everything has a price and well some things are just too expensive to consider viable.
However, I am convinced that the problems that the world faces are bigger than global warming and that some of the money we collectively are set to spend on reducing carbon emissions in the coming decade may be better spent elsewhere.
The book hasn’t changed my position on the importance of considering these issues, and even though he cites the issues of Malaria, AIDS and poverty as greater challenges than Climate Change, he’s totally missed the Peak Oil issue that may be set to trump every other effort mankind could undertake to improve humanity and the planet.
I say keep an open mind, but make every effort to reduce your impact on the world.
Thanks for the book Wandering Coyote.
- Cool It
- Bjorn Lomborg Again
- Global Warming Podcast
- BC Climate Action Revenue for Local Governments
- Poverty and Global Priorities - Blog Action Day 2008
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I’m glad you got something I’m glad you got something out of it.
What I took away from it is his point that there is a lack of rational debate about many environmental issues. It’s almost as if there is only ONE way of looking at solutions, and if you dissent at all, you’re maligned.
I didn’t agree with everything he claims either, and I don’t think he’s giving license to consume and pollute at will, but I wonder about some of the things he said. For instance, polar bears: more are hunted every year than would be lost to global warming. I think that’s a rational point, though arguable in some spheres. Would it be better for the planet to not hunt polar bears (and obviously better for the polar bears!) in the first place rather than assume that a model is going to tell us how many we MIGHT lose to global warming?
Which leads me to my other point: all the “models” he quotes. I don’t know a thing about models, I’m not a scientist, but a model is a model - it’s not REAL. I understand that scientists need models in order to project possibilities, but, as you allude to in your post, whose model is better, whose do we believe?
The whole, “whats worse, The whole, “whats worse, people dying from heat or people dying from cold?” type of analysis is tough to respond to. Rationally you want to do it all, fix it all, make it so that no one dies from either, but in Lomborg’s main point, at what cost?
I think skepticism is healthy in group discussions and decisions, it’s just hard to know which of his arguments are justifiable, when some of them appear to be easily challenged. Does it come down to track record when dealing with people like Lomborg? How often has he been “right” in the past?
Unfortunately most of the discussion around climate change and carbon reduction rests on impacts measurable in tens or hundreds of years, not days.
Bjorn will be interviewed on Bjorn will be interviewed on The Hour on Sept. 5, CBC Newsworld, 5pm. It’s a repeat from an earlier broadcast, but if you haven’t seen it, check it out.