Lighter Shade of Green

Is the environment being ruined?

The clear message from the media, many scientists and environmental activists is that the environment is on the verge of collapse.  The debate is not whether but how catastrophic things are.

World Wildlife Fund, for example, recently predicted that we will be forced within the next 50 years into interplanetary travel to escape starvation and resource exhaustion.

Can things be that bad?  After all, governments have put in place extensive regulation and spent billions annually to protect and improve the environment.  Moreover, many of the more prominent predictions of environmental doom have proved to be absurdly inaccurate.

Nonetheless, dissent has been rare and easily marginalised.  That is until two years ago when a little-known Danish professor of statistics, Bjorn Lomborg, entered the debate.

Lomborg started out with the aim of defending the litany but, by following the evidence, ended up producing the most powerful critique of deep-green orthodoxy to date.

His aim initially was to debunk the claim of Paul Simon that the population bomb was a fizzer.  To his surprise, he found that the hard evidence supported Simon.

Being curious, he then set a team of graduate students loose on a range of environmental doom and gloom predictions, including forests, biotechnology, food production, pesticide use, energy supply, global warming, biodiversity, water pollution, acid rain and waste production.  In each case his researchers relied on the data published from authoritative and peer revered sources.

The Lomborg team's main conclusions were very positive.  They found that the environment was getting better across a range of fronts and, importantly, that economic growth was necessary to enhancing the environment.

On a negative front, Lomborg found a systemic tendency to exaggerate doom and gloom, not just by green groups such as WWF, but by scientists themselves.  This tendency not only distorts people's perception of risks but distorts policy priorities.

Unlike previous sceptics, Lomborg was not easily dismissed.  His research was impeccable.  His presentation was outstanding and accessible.  Moreover, his credentials as an environmentalist were beyond question.  As a result his book -- The Sceptical Environmentalist -- became a best-seller.

The reaction of the green groups, many scientists and some science journals was deeply disconcerting.  They demonise him personally, his motivations and character.

The Scientific American, for example, devoted a series of articles to attacking his book.  It then initially refused a right of reply and threatened to sue him when he attempted to publish a detailed rebuttal on his website.  In the end it agreed to a one-page reply published months later.

The Danish academy went further and established a kangaroo court, which ruled his research as unethical.  None of the critics, however, have been able to dent the quality of his claims or the force of its message.

While the debate goes on, Professor Lomborg's contribution has fundamentally changed it for the better.

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