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The planet is alright, no need to worry!

kma | 16.08.2001 23:15

no need to protest, or at least that what the Guardian says here is something i found on another site.

At least according to scientist Bjorn Lomberg it is. We're getting
ourselves all steamed up over nothing, we're not cooking ourselves to
death and "as we have used ever more we still have even more left."
Also not all that many people are really going hungry nowadays.
In a three part essay (or three essays over three days) in the British
liberal newspaper `The Guardian' beginning today 15th August,
Mr. Lomberg throws down the gauntlet to the green movement. He accuses
environmentalists, aided and abetted by the media, of needless and
irresponsible scaremongering.

He quotes figures and statistics to back up his case,
e.g. "Agricultural production in the developing world has increased by
52% since 1970, daily food intake in developing countries increased
from 1,932 calories in 1961, barely enough for survival, to 2,650
calories in 1998." And according to him is set to rise even further to
3,020 by 2030. Despite the increases in population the proportion of people
hungry in these countries has dropped "from 45% in 1945 to 18% today
and is expected to fall even further.. food in other words is not
becoming scarcer but ever more abundant" this is reflected in a 90%
drop in food prices.
Don't worry about air pollution, apparantly our air has never been
more pure, it was a lot worse in the days of ancient Rome. Concerns
about coral reef destruction, falling fish stocks, disappearing
forests and wild life and so on are greatly exaggerated too. The
losses are greatly outweighed by the gains. The El Nino storms of last
year brought more economic benefits than losses for instance and all
over the place things are looking up!

So, should we start rejoicing then? Is George Bush right, natural
resurces can be exploited as much as we like and we're not going to
run out any time soon? Should Oxfam and UNICEF and all the rest put
their feet up and relax? Who is Bjorn Lomberg anyway and does he have
an agenda? After all Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth and all
their other environmenatal agencies have their agenda too, plenty of
people are making a living out of scaring us to death. But who is
right really? Are people better off as he asserts, are the forests
not in any great peril, is air and water quality improving over all,
and are the seas not laced with pollutants? Are we all really rather
thrilled by all the bad news and distinctly bored by more optimistic
reports?

Or is Mr.Lomberg speaking on behalf of corporate interests?
I'd appreciate clarification on these issues please from people who
know the score.

Thanks,

Peace and regards,

you can read the full article and make comment at this Guardian web site:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/globalwarming/0,7368,395145,00.html

kma

Comments

Hide the following 5 comments

WHO THE FUCK IS BJORN LOMBERG ?????

17.08.2001 00:08

I`m becoming extinct . in the UK , so is my old mate the Sparrow ,(house and Tree)
you know what they say about The Birds and the Bee`s.

Bumble Bee

not so clear

17.08.2001 00:44

he's asking differant questions from the 'norm'.
do we expect anything else?
what do you really expect?
a nice, comfortable, middle class, eco exsistance?
get real, (cliche)
we know who's wrong, do we not?
where is the problem?

opacity

Rubbush!

17.08.2001 09:34

Lomberg is a slick writer and he does bring up some important points but look how he glosses over issues he doesn't want people to think too hard about:

'global warming will not decrease food production' Says who? of course it will! The desertification of much of southern Europe and North Africa is happening already and is only going to increase more rapidly this century.

'It is even unlikely that it [global warming] will cause more flooding, because a much richer world will protect itself better.' This is rubbish! Of course global warming will cause flooding, protection isn't prevention. What does he mean by the 'richer' world? I'm sure Western countries will be able to protect themselves but what about everyone else.

'Reasonable analysis suggests that renewable energy sources - especially solar power - will be competitive with, or even outcompeting, fossil fuels by the middle of the century' - Whose analysis? This is only going to happen if people fight for it, against the likes of Esso and George Bush.

Lombergs work is full of half truths and generalisations like these. The only reason he's been given so much prominence by the corporate media is because he one of the very few people in the entire scientific community willing to take such a stance.

Bakunin

Lomberg is wrong

17.08.2001 13:03

Bjorn Lomberg has made a good attempt to rubbish the environmental movement. The question I have is why did he want to do this? what has motivated him (apart from money)?
Anyway, he is wrong for the following reasons:
1. His claims that pollution levels are decreasing are completely misleading. The examples he uses are compounds such as lead and organochlorines such as lindane. Their concentrations in the biosphere are decreasing, but this is because the use of lead in petrol is being phased out and the more persistant pesticides such as lindane have bee banned due to pressure from environmentalists. If you look at other polluting chemicals, new ones such as the 'gender-bending' plastics and 'old' ones such as carbon dioxide you will see a diffrent pattern.
2. It is true that in parts of the world forests are expanding. However, there is a definite change from ancient, species rich forest wildernesses to primary growth forests with little species richness, and the trees and other species that spring up are invasive species that are more successful at colonisation. You will not find mahogany trees and Bengalese tigers in new forests.
2 Agricultural rpoduction has increased in many parts of the world, but how much use is a field of coffee beans to a poor farmer if your food security is a daily issue.
3. Coral reefs can be destroyed by touching or a 1 degree change in temperature, and take many, many years to grow back. They may not shrink in size but the species they support e.g. a quarter of all the worlds fish are in decline
4. Most importantly, Where is his support from the scientific community?
5. why is the environmental movement across the world growing?
6. Where are all the shanty towns and environmental refugees coming from if the environmentis improving?

goose

a few tings

17.08.2001 14:19

basically the bloke has a couple of valid points and has elaborated them with a lot of bullshit into an excuse for fame and fortune from the corporates desperate for legitimation.

scientifically he is totally up the creek because he does that old political trick of averaging out figures and neglecting those which don't fit in. for example, on global warming he ignores the likelihood that northern europe will lose the gulf stream and get bloody freezing. so his sums don't account for any costs of that. then he assumes that everyone in the south will get richer, providing no evidence whatsoever. he has no apprent interest in distribution of wealth and benefits - i.e. WHO gets richer by how much, and where that leaves everyone else.

plus of course his whole analysis seems to be based on the assumption that money measures value - again, totally meaningless not only culturally and humanely but scientifically. for example, if you say that climate change will 'cost' this much, this assumes there is a meaningful market for the benefits lost, and that the analyst can prejudge what price it would establish for that benefit. to try and overcome this difficulty, economists often talk about people's willingness to pay to preserve a benefit, or the price they would accept for its destruction. but if even one person says that a benefit is priceless, all the calculations go out the window. because as we all know, any sum which attempts to factor in a zero produces a zero as an answer.
I could rant on for ages here. suffice to say that environmentalists do over hype stuff and there are a lot of NGOs whose livelihood depend on there being ever more problems to solve (might explain some of their reluctance to become involved in actions that might really change the world for the better...).

as a result of this over hype unconvinced people are open to taking on perspective's like Bjorn's (especially since he is former greenpeace I think). to me this suggests we have to be more critical, more intelligent and in the end more scientific too in our education and campaigns.
the other side may have the money and publishers for this kind of bullshit but we have the hearts and brains to know and say what's really going on. as long as we don't get lazy and use them to grasp at the professional do-gooders' life and salary, these are our best tools.

cheers

zoe

UK Indymedia