The Skeptical Environmentalist

Over the years, Mr. Brown has sounded the alarm over and over again, warning that the world is going to hell. Fire, flood, famine, thirst...Mr. Brown's hallucination leaves nothing out:

"Forests are shrinking, water tables are falling, soils are eroding, wetlands are disappearing, fisheries are collapsing, range-lands are deteriorating, rivers are running dry, temperatures are rising, coral reefs are dying, and plant and animal species are disappearing," fantasizes Brown's Worldwatch Institute.

Brown preaches environmental calamity every time he steps up to the pulpit. A typical sermon invokes eternal damnation and all the torments of Beelzebub himself - the fiery furnace of global warming...sea-levels rising fast enough to worry Noah...and two-headed beasts with tails, born as a result of chemical pollutants.

Brown is not alone. Paul Ehrlich and a whole industry of Jeremiahs predict that unless modern civilization repents soon - the earth is finished.

But why worry about it? According to Brown and Paul Ehrlich you'll be dead of cancer, starvation and thirst long before rising tides float the bloated bodies of Ted Kennedy and Trent Lott out of their opulent offices along the Potomac.

"It seems certain that energy shortages will be with us for the rest of the century, and that before 1985 mankind will enter a genuine age of scarcity in which many things besides energy will be in short supply... Such diverse commodities as food, fresh water, copper, and paper will become increasingly difficult to obtain and thus much more expensive...starvation among people will be accompanied by starvation of industries for the materials they require."

In the 1970s the scare-mongers were already warning of climate change. But, it was global cooling that worried them. A 1975 Newsweek Magazine article entitled "The Cooling World," told readers that "meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity."

Newsweek, Ehrlich, and Brown, were wrong about everything. Farmers produced more food than ever before. Commodities became so abundant that by the time the century ended many were selling for record low prices. In China, calorie intake per capita doubled in the last 30 years. And in America, rare is the man who starves to death in 2002, while there are enough fat ones to elect a president.

We recall these things, dear reader, not to embarrass the poor humbugs in the environmental industry...nor even to amuse ourselves. Instead, we write today with good news: The world as we know it will be around long after we are gone.

We had a copy of Bjorn Lomborg's controversial book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, with us on our trip to Aspen; we'll now give you the essential summary. Lomborg, a professor of Statistics at the University of Aarhus, Denmark, so upset the environmentalist's end-of- the-world industry that the man received death threats. We figured he must have something interesting to say. He did.

"Everyone knows the planet is in bad shape," began an article in TIME magazine two years ago. Another TIME piece told readers that "for more than 40 years, earth has been sending out distress signals..." yet "the decline of the Earth's ecosystems has continued unabated."

What "everyone knows" is usually wrong, we've noticed. For in order for everyone to know it, an idea has to be reduced to such a low common denominator that the sum sinks below zero. Whatever insight was contained in the original idea is stripped out so that the husk - light and portable - can be carried around like a campaign slogan.

An idea taken up by a mob of people is almost sure to be as empty-headed as a journalist and usually as dishonest as a psychologist. Environmentalism is no different. Flogged by Brown and Ehrlich, sensible people were soon eschewing disposable diapers and sorting their trash so it could be recycled. (Your editor recalls the smell of diaper pails in his bathroom in the hot Baltimore summers).

In nearby Washington, D.C., residents were encouraged to separate their trash even though it was all tossed into the same common landfill on the grounds that sorting - like praying, we imagine - was good for the soul.

People were even urged to alter their family plans by a puerile jingo - "2 for 2" - in order to avoid crowding the steppes of North Dakota or the back alleys of Baltimore with their own children.

"We are not running out of energy or natural resources. There will be more and 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 the UN we have reduced poverty more in the last 50 years than we did in the preceding 500, and it has been reduced in practically every country."

When will the earth run out of energy? Not for 5,000 years, says Lomborg. When will the globe become so crowded with humans that it can no longer support them all? Probably never, estimates Lomborg, pointing out that if current trends continue, in 100 years, most of the earth will have no more people than it has now. The huge mega-cities will get bigger...but the Alps, the Great Plains and other rural areas will remain about the same.

"The forests have not been eradicated," Lomborg writes. "Since WWII the global forest coverage has been almost constant." And, "water is a plentiful and renewable resource."

All the garbage produced in the U.S. during the entire 21st century could be put in a single little corner of Woodward Country, Oklahoma, he says, taking up less than 26% of the county's surface area.

And what about global warming? Lomborg thinks the earth really is getting hotter. But it "will not decrease food production," he guesses, "it will probably not increase storminess or the frequency of hurricanes, it will not increase the impact of malaria or indeed cause more deaths." For much of the world, global warming might even be a good thing, he concludes.

I've read both. Essentially, the Sciam article addressing Lomborg's work is a hit piece. They used three different experts to attack one particular part of his book each. None of them read the entire book. They did NOT refute his arguments- they sneered a lot and tried to leave the impression that the "real scientists" say we shouldn't give Lomborg's book any consideration. What they wound up doing was simply showing their own bias in the matter. "How dare anyone question them?"

You see, they proved Lomborg's point- environmentalism has become a "Litany" and cannot be viewed as being an objective branch of study at all.

Which part of Lomborg's findings do you disagree with? Are resources getting more plentiful or not? Certainly our oil reserves have increased over time. With the exception of a very few, the same can be said for precious metals. There are less people starving and suffering from malnutrition. We are living longer. Which part do you disagree with? These are all facts.

Lomborg's conclusion is not to say global warming isn't happening but simply that it probably won't be as bad as the doomsayers would have us believe and also that our money could be much better spent on things we can really make a difference on. Things could definitely be improved, but on the bright side we have improved much and there is less real suffering in the world than at any time in human history and there is no reason to believe this trend will not continue. He's a bean counter- that's what bean counters do. But just because he's a bean counter doesn't mean he isn't correct.

Folks, I don’t like to hit and run, but I don’t have a lot of time to post here, so I generally stay out of the discussions. But, I feel compelled to answer some of your comments.

liberally: You didn't read Lomborg's reply to the "experts" and Scientific American
No, I missed his reply. Can you point me to it or at least tell me which issue it was in? I’m very interested in his reply.

CafraudPI:Does common sense and logic mean nothing to you? Of course the earth is warming but it has nothing to do with man.
Yes, the earth is warming. Is it natural or man-caused? How can you dump 25%more carbon dioxide, plus methane and assorted hot house gasses into the atmosphere and not have an effect? You are the one who needs to use common sense.
If you don’t think that man has a major impact on the atmosphere just look at the “hole” in the ozone. (Yes, I know it is healing, but the CFC’s have a very short life in the atmosphere compared to the other stuff that we have been dumping in.)

Prodigal Son:Which part of Lomborg's findings do you disagree with? Are resources getting more plentiful or not? Certainly our oil reserves have increased over time. With the exception of a very few, the same can be said for precious metals. There are less people starving and suffering from malnutrition. We are living longer. Which part do you disagree with? These are all facts.

Our resources have gotten more plentiful over time because of technological innovations. Can this pace really be maintained?

Bjorn Lomborg is the most optimist commentator I have ever read on the environment. But taking the past performance of technological progress and projecting it into the future is s risky business.

Most experts project that we will run out of “cheap” oil between 2020 and 2050. After that the price of oil will probably double as we begin to extract oil from the oil shales and tar sands. At what cost will that be, torn up mountains, more pollution/depletion of the aquifers? Is this worth it?

People around the world are eating better than at any time in history. How has this been accomplished? By the addition of new improved crops and the additional of fertilizers. But at what cost? The fertilizers run off and kill our rivers and, lakes and yes even impact the ocean. (Look at the dead zone at the mouth of the Mississippi or Chesapeake Bay for examples).

Major aquifers in the world are being depleted. Many of the major farming areas rely on fossil water that will not be replenished. Can GM foods really continue the “Green Revolution? And where will the water come from?

Every major fishery in the world is in danger. Many have already collapsed. Already the fish that were once considered to be “trash” fish and were thrown back as wasted by-catch are making it to market. (Fish sticks were once made out of cod and halibut, they are now made of “whitefish”.)

The sea level is rising. How much and how fast will it rise? The estimates run from 1 to 3 meters, and probably a century or two. At one meter you can say goodbye to Bangladesh and all your favorite beaches. At 5 meters you can say goodbye to most of Florida. Who is right?

The most dire prediction is that the Gulf Stream could shut down. This is not a very popular theory at the moment, but it is down right scary. If this happens it could shut down in as little as 10 years. All the other changes should be slow enough for us to adjust to. This one would be too fast and too big to adjust to without some major upheavals.

This whole environmental business reminds me of the way I handle my credit cards. We have been making advances at some environmental cost and increasing our standard of living. We have paid a bit here and there, some pollution here, some extinction there. But like my credit card, the debt keeps getting bigger. As we try to increase the overall world standard of living, the debt just keeps getting bigger and bigger.
The “wacko” environmentalists say that there is a big balloon payment coming that will effectively bankrupt the world. Are you sure that they are wrong?

The big problem is that we don’t know what will happen. We have only limited data from ice cores, lake bottoms, etc. on the history of the earth’s climate. We don’t understand the overall ocean/atmosphere heat and water circulation enough to make absolute predictions. Our computers are not fast enough to run the most sophisticated models, and the models are not even complete.

We had better slow down and rethink the way we do business. In the past we were living for today, not understanding the long-term implications of our actions. Now, everywhere you look you find negative impacts and you have to question sustainability. For the sake of the future we must start to consider what will happen 20, 50 and 100 years from now.

It would be a damn shame if chicken little was right and we didn’t spend the time and money to change what we could – before its too late to change.

Our resources have gotten more plentiful over time because of technological innovations. Can this pace really be maintained?

In a word- yes. As long as people who want to stop progress are left out of the equation. And there's a lot more "cheap" oil left in the ground than your sources say. UAE has over 150 yrs left using current extraction methods. Every ten years since the oil age began, the naysayers have been saying the same thing- "cheap oil will run out in 30 yrs". It has never happened and in fact reserves have increased over time.

Agriculture can continue- of course it can. Well, not if I listen to WWF or the Paul Ehrlichs of this world but yep, we will continue to have more and more food- so long as people that want to destroy progress are not allowed a say in the matter.

If you let the free market work, and you let the market put a fair price on a resource and you allow private ownership of land/resources it is basically impossible to run out of a resource. When it becomes scarce, the price will rise until it becomes an annoyance and then a prohibitive expense- people move on to a different cheaper resource or they invent one.

The thing the chicken littles of this world never factor in is- it's not a zero sum game and they honestly cannot grasp human innovation because they are not innovative people. They do not understand the process of creation of wealth at all. They believe that the most efficient way to manage human affairs is through strict regulation and planning of every step of human progress. That this has been demonstrated again and again to be a false belief and that they will only wind up making the environment worse makes not a dent on them. They don't get it, that's their problem, though, not mine. The world isn't even in as bad a shape as you say it is. Not even close to what the doomsayers claim.

BTW, the oceans are literally full of water. We already know how to desalinize it and in several countries this is the way it is done. Make people and industry pay a fair price instead of gov't subsidized water and you could have a lot more desalination plants and agriculture and industry would also figure out how to make do with a lot less water than they currently waste. It's capitalism, yes it works and I'll be damned if I'll live under a UN- Kyoto- Totalitarian type gov't. If the rest of the world wants to live like that- let the stupid lemmings run off the cliff. But I'll die before I see the Greens take over in the USA, but I'll die fighting.

Things are getting better, not worse.

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