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Skeptical about Environmentalist Solutions
Guest Column | By Nicholas Guariglia | February 8, 2008
Cool It is a breath of fresh air because rather than proving a point, per se, is serves a function as an entire literary work playing the role of devil’s advocate.
In Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming,
Bjorn Lomborg expands on previously written firestorm articles
regarding the state of the environment. His central thesis is
contentious, to say the least. Lomborg's writings prior to Cool It had already spawned over 400 articles in major metropolitan papers, and
his latest work was no less controversial. But what precisely is it
about this Greenpeace-advocate, self-described environmentalist Dane
that so irks the so-called environmentalist community?
With
regard to the environment, I guess one could say Lomborg espouses a
lackadaisical prose, albeit one his readers find admirable. As senior
editor of The Atlantic Monthly Clive Cook phrased
it, "Lomborg affirms that the planet is warming, but questions why so
much of the policy debate is framed around the idea of imminent
catastrophe." It is a style which could only be intertwined with the
orientation Lomborg begins at: a consistent theme we find throughout
his entire career.
Although he's Danish, Lomborg studied as an undergraduate at the University of Georgia.
He went on later to earn his Master's degree in political science in
1991 at the University of Aarhus, Denmark's second largest university
(behind the University of Copenhagen, where Lomborg would receive his doctorate in political science three years thereafter).
After
reading his work, it comes as no surprise that he lectured on
statistics as an assistant (and later an associate) professor at Aarhus. Many of his ethical propositions come in the form of utilitarian standards. For example, Lomborg references the western coast of the Hudson Bay,
which happens to be the most-studied polar bear site in the world.
Since 1987, its polar bear population has declined from 1,200 to 950.
What is not mentioned, however, is that since 1981 the population had
soared from just 500, thereby eradicating any claim of a serious
decline. Nor is it mentioned, Lomborg reminds us, that an annual
average of 49 bears are killed by hunters, whereas an average of 15
bears are killing by "global warming." This kind
of rationale is questioned by some of his more Kantian critics, who
challenge his "greatest good for the greatest number" proposal as
simplistic. Nevertheless, his work as a statistician has led to a
certain kind of "by-the-number" ethics.
Lomborg's 1996 paper Nucleus and Shield: Evolution of Social Structure in the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma was published in the American Sociological Review, a highly respected
academic journal. On the heels of this work was his most famous book, The Skeptical Environmentalist,
which claims short-term and overly pessimistic claims regarding the
environment are made by UN agencies and nation-states, which in turn
results in bad policies which are poorly implemented. The book was not without controversy. The Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty (DCSD), a body under Denmark's
Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation, filed a complaint
against Lomborg which claimed the author had deliberately
misrepresented data and had "flawed conclusions."
Lomborg
resisted the decision in February 2003, and in December of that year
the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation, which oversees the
DCSD, concluded that the DCSD made several procedural errors in its
conclusion, therefore determining the Ministry's previous findings as
invalid.
After
the entire episode, over 300 scientists (mostly from the social
sciences) signed a petition in support of Lomborg and in condemnation
of the DCSD's tactics. Another group of scientists (mostly from the
natural sciences) formed a counter-petition with some 640 signatures
supporting the DCSD.
So as you can see, in Denmark, this is a politicized issue. All of this controversy spurred
the Copenhagen Consensus, which Lomborg organized himself. It was (and
is) a project sponsored by the Danish government to establish
priorities while advancing an environmentalist agenda.
In
a sense, it clarifies a long-held belief by many suspicious onlookers
that fighting Third World poverty or disease - in and of themselves -
would do more for humanitarian interest, as well as the environment,
than low cost-benefit ratio solutions like an optimal carbon tax. So
influential was the Copenhagen Consensus, The Economist co-sponsored
it and the Copenhagen Consensus Center was crated at the Copenhagen
Business School to organize another round of theorizing in 2008.
As with his previous works, Cool It provides
the environmentalist community with a contrarian view of global
warming. His primary disputation is not with the science and empiricism
of climate change or global warming, but rather with the overly
political response methods which are conducted in the wake of such
"findings."
The policy debate on CO2 is a locus classicus.
Over the next year, two "soccer moms" will drive their kids back and
forth to school and emit a ton of CO2, and 125 people are going to
leave their cell phone chargers plugged in 24/7 (and the utilities will
emit an extra ton of CO2). Three people will have hot showers for four
minutes each day and an extra ton of CO2 will pollute the atmosphere.
So, taking these hypothetical examples into account, Lomborg poses the
question... Which ton should we cut first?
It
is a prosaic proposition that governments ought not to be proposing to
their citizenry. Not only is such a micro-centric view of climate
change disobliging, but is almost impossible (and not preferable) to
micromanage individual lifestyles to this accord. If we placed a tax of
one dollar on a ton of CO2, the price of gasoline would go up about a
cent per gallon. Each of the soccer moms would have to pay 50 cents
more each year to drive their kids to school (or soccer). Electricity
bills would go up, and showering would cost 33 cents more. Similarly,
if we only cut emissions, industries would have to switch to more
expensive fuels and procedures.
The
book's theme is admiringly consistent throughout the chapters. First,
according to Lomborg, it is in fact true that there has been some
human-created increase in temperate. Our best estimate is the UN's
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which says global
temperature will rise by approximately 4.7ºF by 2100. Lomborg suggests
that "simpler, smarter, and more efficient solutions" are more likely
to work rather than "large and very expensive (emissions) cuts," which
would only have a "rather small and insignificant impact far into the
future."
For
instance, let's say all of the countries approached had actually
ratified the Kyoto treaty - and let's pretend each nation-state
disregarded human nature and state behavior and abided by these
provisions for the next 92 years - the temperature, according to this
own very estimate, would only fall by about 0.3ºF. Rather,
Lomborg insists reducing greenhouse gases and emissions at the tune of
trillions of state-subsidies is "one of the least helpful ways of
serving humanity or the environment," and therefore our goal should be
to "improve the quality of life and the environment," which may mean
addressing more prudent and pressing issues like famine, educational
indoctrination, and rampant poverty and government corruption.
In
addition, the cost of combating global warming would be
disproportionately shouldered by poor developing countries. Precisely
because there are countries who suffer from pollution due to the state
of their economic activities, this is grounds for placing greater
emphasis on helping developing countries get out of
their rut and current state of economic paralysis. In a sense, helping
those who help themselves will be better not only for humans but for
the environment as well - and aren't the two mutually inclusive to begin with?
Needless to say, Cool It has been met with a great deal of strife as well as praise. Bruce
Thorton liked it for its pragmatism and apolitical "outsider"
interpretation of the debate. Lomborg frames the issues entirely
contrary to how we have been trained to frame them, and for this, he
earned Thorton's praise. "Lomborg's analysis of the Kyoto
provisions is alone worth the price of the book," he says, continuing
by quoting Lomborg who states that the "Kyoto Protocol is a bad deal:
for every dollar spent, it does the world only about thirty-four cents'
worth of good."
Thorton
credits Lomborg for writing a "fact-based" book and starting the
"rational discussion we should be having today, one supported by over
80 pages of notes and bibliography."
Jonathan H. Adler for the National Review liked what he saw in Lomborg's divergent tone. "In Lomborg's view, the
dominant climate-policy prescription - draconian emission controls -
would likely do more harm than good, particularly in the near term, so
other options must be considered." In essence, doing too little about climate change is not the right thing to do; neither is doing too much.
Lomborg tries to clarify his point during an interview with Kevin Berger of Salon:
"If you don't so something about global warming, of course it will
become a bigger problem... On the other hand, doing too much about it
means we are focusing too much effort on climate change and forgetting
all the other things that we have a responsibility to death with, like
HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and malnutrition."
Talking with Bill Steigerwald of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review,
he tries to elucidate this argument: "There's a huge difference in
telling us the sea level rise is going to be a foot over the next 100
years or it's going to be 20 feet. One is a problem; the other one is a
catastrophe. But it's the problem that will
actually happen. To put it in context, remember over the last 150 years
sea levels also rose a foot. Yet was it something we noticed very much?
Ask a very old person... (they'll) likely talk about the two world wars...
maybe the I.T. revolution, but it's very unlikely they'll say, ‘Oh, and
sea levels rose.'"
Cool It wraps up the entire debate nicely. Namely, we must look at issues
concerning climate change and global warming empirically and
apolitically, with a pragmatic concentration. We cannot allow the
argument to devolve into expedient talking points for either side. If
we are aware that there is a problem - and it is pretty much confirmed
that there is one - we need to know why there is a problem, what the problem is, and how best to solve it. Cool It is a breath of fresh air because rather than proving a point, per se,
is serves a function as an entire literary work playing the role of
devil's advocate. Despite his detractors, Lomborg readily admits he is
not an environmental scientist, but a social scientist, and he does
not, nor does anyone else, have the final answer to this highly
Disneyland-like fictionalization of environmental policy many advocacy
groups present to us.
Can
we address climate change simply by telling states to limit their
productivity? Or must we tap into our people's ingenuity (as opposed to
exclusively tapping into sand dunes), enhance educational procedures,
and seek the greatest good for the greatest amount of people? Can we
not make it economically viable (and in fact profitable) for
governments and NGOs alike to work in a fundamental "green" manner?
Isn't this the answer which seems to delve more in tune to human nature and self-interest?
That
is the point of Lomborg's work and he accomplishes his goal by
reframing the debate. He seeks to "cool our conversation, rein in the
exaggerations, and start focusing on where we can do the most good.
This does not mean doing nothing about climate change, but it does mean
having an open dialogue about its effects and solutions, a conversation
about what our priorities should be." Sounds pretty familiar to his
ongoing Copenhagen Consensus Center, does it not?
The original article can be found at http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Nicholas Guariglia is a polemic and essayist who writes on Islam and Middle Eastern geopolitics. He is a student at the John C. Whitehead School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University, where he is studying U.S. foreign policy. He also contributes to http://www.globalpolitician.com and http://www.worldthreats.com He can be reached at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Guest columns do not necessarily reflect the views of Accuracy in Media or its staff.
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