"Skeptical Environmentalist" Unleashes Storm
Copyright 2001 Inter Press Service
October 4, 2001
By Danielle Knight
WASHINGTON, Oct. 4 - A new book by a former member of the environmental group Greenpeace is drawing cheers from industry groups and brickbats from greens because it claims the world's environment is improving.
Author Bjorn Lomborg, an associate professor of statistics at the University of Aarhus in Denmark, says at one time he thought the world was "going to hell." But after he started investigating environmental trends, he says he was genuinely surprised.
According to his analysis of global statistics, "we have more leisure time, greater security, less pollution, fewer accidents, more education, more amenities, higher incomes, and fewer starving people," he says. Lomborg's 352-page book, "The Skeptical Environmentalist" makes the case that the problems of deforestation, global warming, poor air and water quality, and endangered species have been overblown by advocacy organizations in search of funding.
"It doesn't mean that there are no problems, but things are getting better and better, despite what media and environmental organizations say," says Lomborg, a self-described politically left-leaning vegetarian.
The book, which contains almost 3,000 footnotes, has unleashed a furious debate within the environmental community in Europe and the United States. Lomborg's publicists say the book has been the subject of more than 400 articles in newspapers and magazines.
Industry organizations and conservatives here praise the book, especially for expressing doubts about scientific predictions on global warming. Lomborg asserts that implementing the Kyoto Protocol on climate change would be too expensive and that this money would save more lives if, instead, it went toward ensuring that poor people in developing countries have access to safe, clean drinking water.
The Cooler Heads Coalition, a right-wing group against the Kyoto Protocol, has sponsored a Congressional briefing on Lomborg's book.
Lomborg "has added his name to the ever-growing number of skeptics who are debating how much the earth's temperature is rising and to what extent, if any, man is involved," says a promotional flyer released this week by the Washington-based Competitive Enterprise Institute.
On the other hand, Allen Hammond, chief information officer and senior scientist at the World Resources Institute, says that while the book contains some interesting ideas, it largely distorts environmental issues and the efforts of conservationists.
"There is a fair amount in the book that is interesting and accurate," says Hammond. "But it also contains a fair amount that is wrong and distorted."
The real question, he adds, is why the book is getting so much publicity. Ultimately, he says, the book only "gives credence to those who want to roll back environmental regulations."
Prominent environmentalists argue that the book fails to address several crucial points concerning global warming.
"He misses the issue of equity, mainly that those who have caused climate change are not those who will suffer from it," says Gerd Leipold, executive director of Greenpeace International, based in the Netherlands.
Leipold says the book overlooks examples of how heat-trapping greenhouse gases -- which most scientists say cause global warming -- can be reduced while benefiting the economy.
Lomborg's home country Denmark, for example, has reduced carbon dioxide emissions during the last 10 years while thriving economically, says Leipold.
Government programs there, adds Svend Auken, the Danish energy and environment minister, have encouraged investment and research on renewable energy. As a result, the country is less dependent on fossil fuels and has generated some 15,000 jobs in the wind energy industry.
Environmentalists also take issue with the book's emphasis on global trends and say it pays little attention to regional and local environmental issues, especially as they affect developing nations.
Air pollution has improved in some industrialized cities over the past hundred years, says Leipold, but "to say that water and air quality is not a problem in Beijing and Mexico City is absurd."
"The Skeptical Environmentalist" takes aim at the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), known as the World Wildlife Fund in the United States. Lomborg argues that the international organization wrongly over-emphasizes how much forest cover is being destroyed worldwide.
He says the group's report on fires in the rainforests of Indonesia and Brazil in 1997 ignored larger forest fires that same year in Russia.
David Sandalow, executive vice president of World Wildlife Fund-U.S., stands by his organization's study, arguing that fires in Russia, while larger, were in temperate forests where fires normally occur and have a less devastating impact.
Sandalow also takes issue with Lomborg's characterization of the extinction rate of flora and fauna worldwide as a small problem. Many wildlife biologists and ecologists say the current extinction rate is catastrophic, commonly comparing it to the era when dinosaurs, and many other species, disappeared.
"I found the book disappointing and found some obvious errors and sloppy sourcing," he says.
Some conservationists in Europe have become so angry with "The Skeptical Environmentalist" that they've launched anti-Lomborg websites in Britain and Denmark.
One frustrated British activist, Mark Lynas, threw a pie in the author's face during a book promotion event in Oxford Sept. 5.
"I wanted to put a Baked Alaska on his smug face," Lynas said in a statement, "in solidarity with the native Indian and Eskimo people in Alaska who are reporting rising temperatures, shrinking sea ice and worsening effects on animal and bird life."