The skeptical environmentalist

Bjorn Lomborg, an associate professor of statistics at Denmark´s University of Aarhus, published his much discussed book The Skeptical Environmentalist some months ago, in which he argues that most sacred cows of the movement are not what they´re taken to be. Says Lomborg: "We will not lose our forests; we will not run out of energy, raw materials, or water.

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

Grist magazine published a few days ago a special issue on Lomborg because he "claims that these and other worries are ´phantom problems´ created or inflated by the environmental movement for its own ends, with the result that time and money are diverted from other, needier causes". Seeing that the mainstream media was praising the book with little or no critical analysis, Grist asked respected scientists and leaders in their fields to address the allegations in The Skeptical Environmentalist.

Edward O. Wilson writes about extinction: two-time Pulitzer prize winner, discoverer of hundreds of new species, and one of the greatest living scientists, he debunks Lomborg´s analysis of extinction rates.

Norman Myers, an Honorary Visiting Fellow of Oxford University, a member of the U. S. National Academy of the Sciences, and a recipient of several of the world´s most prestigious environmental awards, looks at Lomborg on biodiversity and concludes that he lacks even "a preliminary understanding of the science in question".

If you´re interested in these and many other opinions, the address is: www.gristmagazine.com/grist/books/lomborg121201.asp.

"; while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($sql_result)) { $news_id = $row["news_id"]; $title = $row["title"]; $url = $row["url"]; echo "
• $title
"; } echo "

"; //Close connection mysql_close($link); ?>