Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
often involves a conflict of values and ultimately political decision-making and
action, the controversy over the publication of Bjørn Lomborg's (2001)
The Sceptical
Environmentalist
raises a number of interesting issues. With a ringing endorsement
on the back cover from the distinguished British scientist Lewis Wolpert - 'at last
a book that gives the environment the scientific analysis it deserves' - the topic is
a direct reply to the Worldwatch Institute's State of the World reports. Lomborg
questions that understanding of the environment, which states that the planet is in
bad shape, that resources are being exhausted, air and water quality worsening, fish
stocks collapsing, and the biosphere being destroyed and human life with it. These
arguments were for a time amplified by the media, becoming a conventional wisdom
that, for Lomborg, needs to be overturned. To this end, Lomborg attempts to
demonstrate that in many respects things have actually got better in recent years -
we are not running out of energy or natural resources, food production is increasing,
fewer and fewer people are starving, literacy rates are increasing, average life
expectancy has increased, we are losing only 0.7 per cent of the planet's species,
air and water pollution is not worsening, acid rain does not kill forests, and the
total impact of global warming will not be as dire as many predict. We are not
overexploiting our renewable resources - for example, global forest coverage has
been more or less constant since 1945 and water is plentiful, although admittedly
scarce in some places. There are not serious problems with non-renewables either,
since, despite increases in consumption, supply has been increasing and many of
these resources have reserves of 200 years or more. 'Consequently, there does not
seem to be any foundation for the worried pessimism which claims that our society
only survives by writing out ever larger checks without coverage' (Lomborg, 2001:
159-60). Indeed, early cutbacks in fossil fuel consumption will actually make people's
lives worse. Problems do exist, but they are usually smaller than many environ-
mentalists suggest. Lomborg recognizes there is room for improvement, that although
many more people now have access to clean drinking water, a billion more in the
developing world need this too. However, he argues that an improved environment
will be the product of improved economic welfare, since, in general, higher income
correlates with higher levels of environmental sustainability. Thus, when developing
nations reach a certain level of economic development, as have countries in the
North, these nations will be able to afford cleaner production methods, pollution
controls and so forth. When Bangladesh is as affluent as the Netherlands, it will be
time for Bangladesh to deal with the effects of global warming and the rise in sea
levels. Environmentalists, he goes on, tend to extrapolate their pessimistic scenarios
from short-term rather than long-term trends, basing their views on inadequate
economic analyses and relying more on faith than reasoned judgement. By contrast,
Lomborg states that his own view is based firmly on published statistics, often the
official ones of the UN and its subsidiary organizations such as the Food and
Agricultural Organization, the United Nations Development Programme, the World
Health Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme. His topic is
also laden with 1,800 references, which the reader is invited to check.
Lomborg's argument continues that, by positing an ideal situation with which to
compare the current state of affairs, environmentalists tend to make misguided
political and moral judgements. A certain realism is required, he suggests. The
Earth's resources are finite, we can't do everything and the world could be a better
place, but this means that we have to prioritize our policies and actions, dealing
