Bjorn Lomborg

Milton Berle once appeared for an interview on a morning TV show in New York. After, his interviewer threw to the weather woman. Berle left his seat and took over doing the weather. His analysis? A line of tornados ripped through New Jersey last night, causing $100 million in IMPROVEMENTS. That is the feeling I got with How Much Have Global Problems Cost the World?

Lomborg’s Copenhagen Consensus got a bunch of academics to look at issues from a common denominator. Everything has to be show more evaluated as a percentage of GDP. Everything has to be monetized to make the models work. Lives, disease, biodiversity – everything gets a dollar value in these studies. Lack of historical data is not a problem either; the models “backcast” to 1900. The conclusion is that our worrisome problems are an ever shrinking cost to us, relative to GDP.

But of course, prices have never reflected the ecological cost of production or use, so we’ve been freeloading, with GDP expanding while costs have been controlled. The bill will go to our grandchildren. These models don’t reflect that. Instead, the ballooning GDPs of the last century simply leave the cost centers in their wake, taking an ever smaller share.

There are ten studies, covering a wide swath of life on earth, “humanity’s biggest challenges”. Interestingly, Lomborg presents them not in order of impact, importance, conclusions or even dollar value, but in alphabetical order:
Air Pollution
Armed Conflict
Climate Change
Ecosystems/biodiversity
Education
Gender Inequality
Human Health
Malnutrition
Trade Barriers
Water/Sanitation

Some of the assumptions are worrying. Solid fuel (wood, coal) use is falling according to its study. But everything I’ve read says that coal is booming. It is being used more now than ever, with much more coming onstream. The World Bank is busy funding coal-powered power plants all over the planet – because they’re cheaper and so is coal. The cost of pollution-related health care is set at $70 per outpatient service in developed countries, $159 per illness episode, $200 per bed-day, and a five day average time disabled. Not in this part of the developed world. With those kinds of figures, by 2050, the cost of air pollution will drop from 5.6% of worldwide GDP to just 4%. Congratulations.

Overall, there are three big things wrong with the framework for these studies: 1) their only parameter is as a percentage of GDP, without also seeing how they interact with other facets, 2) they are linear – they assume nothing will affect them and their trajectory, and 3) funding institutions use them all over the world. That is the most frightening aspect of all.

The point that makes the studies the most invalid is the first. In any complex system, singling out one factor is meaningless, and conclusions are pointless. It’s like the Federal Trade Commission and the Food & Drug Administration allowing a new chemical compound without knowing how it interacts with the other 88,000 compounds they also never tested in the air, in soil, in water – or in humans. The result is new, incurable diseases that put the linear trajectory of improving health and longevity off its track. Just when we thought we were entering an era without killer infectious diseases, we’ve invented a new crop of autoimmune diseases. That is the fatal flaw in Lomborg’s approach.

A number of the studies acknowledge that dollar losses are mounting in absolute terms, even as they shrink as a percentage of GDP. Similarly, there are acknowledged problems with health that the studies can’t examine. Cause of death cannot be coal, even if you are hit on the head with it. This is the tobacco defense, and it renders all stats inaccurate. We are only now getting a handle on the true cost of tobacco consumption, though the figures the health study uses are bad enough for now.

The list of caveats and qualifications over assumptions by the authors themselves is both gratifying and nullifying. Drawing conclusions from these houses of cards is at least suspect, if not invalid. But while his authors issue caveats and qualifications, Lomborg himself sees positives far and wide. In his view, it just keeps getting better and better. Longevity is increasing, war is declining (in scale at least), nutrition is up, epidemics are down…. Biodiversity may be down by almost a third (!), but the net benefit to humanity in dollars is up, so everything is good. Seriously.

Milton Berle would appreciate it. Somebody stole his line. show less

I've been paying attention to Lomborg for some time, and have seen his "Cool It" book which was much fun, but a relatively light read. The Skeptical Environmentalist lays out the solid data lying behind lighter presentations of Bjørn's lectures and work.

Challenged by the claim of the great economist, Julian Simon, that the world was actually getting better whilst the masses were being led astray into believing otherwise, Lomborg undertook to research the real numbers and statistics lying show more behind the great crises and social problems in our world today. The result is a masterful assembly and presentation of the kind of information professors hide from undergraduates likely to question the political party line. With 2930 endnotes and a 70 page bibliography (in a 7" x 9.5" book!) Lomborg gives ample data on Human Welfare, Pollution, forestry, biodviersity, energy and resources, and much more. This book is a definitive must read for anyone hoping to interact intelligently with the greatest debates of our time. show less

Lomborg alaposan megadatolt, mégis rövidke vitairatában szembeszáll a „zöld alarmizmussal” – vagyis azzal, hogy a globális felmelegedés kapcsán folyton csak a katasztrofikus forgatókönyveket vesszük számba, de kizárjuk az értelmes vita lehetőségét. Sorra cáfolja meg az olyan toposzokat, mint a jegesmedvék kihalásának veszélye, az új jégkorszak, vagy a Kilimandzsáró hósipkájának eltűnése. Közben azért nem szabad elfelejtenünk, hogy Lomborg nem a show more globális felmelegedést vitatja, egyszerűen elfogadhatatlannak tartja, hogy a pánikgombot nyomogatjuk ahelyett, hogy racionális megoldási alternatívákat keresnénk. Végső soron felhánytorgatja az olvasónak, hogy „ösztönösen úgy érezte, hogy meg kell kérdőjeleznie azt az állítást, hogy a globális felmelegedés pozitív hatással is járhat. Ugyanez az ösztön valamiért nem működik, amikor a negatív hatásokról hallunk.” Amely sajátosság amúgy nem csak környezetvédelmi kérdésekben jellemző, hiszen minden évtizednek megvan a maga apokalipszise: az ötvenes-hatvanas éveknek az atom, az ezredfordulónak az üvegházhatás, korunknak pedig az új népvándorlás. Aminél mi sem természetesebb, hisz az ember valószínűleg evolucionálisan van pesszimizmusra kódolva – gondolom, az óvatos ősembernek nagyobbak voltak a túlélési esélyei, mint az optimistának, aki így szólt a barlang előtt: Á, biztos már nincs itt az a benga nagy barnamedve, akit a múltkor láttam. Viszont az utóbbi évszázadokban ragadhatott volna ránk annyi, hogy legalább a sorsfordító kérdéseket alaposabban körüljárjuk, és objektív adatokra épülő döntést hozunk.

Egyetlen bajom a könyvvel, hogy túlságosan az Al Gore & tsai által feldobott állításokra koncentrál – bár szó se róla, azokkal eredményesen kel birokra. Nyilván tudatos szerzői cél ez, Lomborg ezt érzi prioritásnak: a tévhitek felszámolását. Viszont ezzel feladja annak lehetőségét, hogy koherens, jól felépített tanulmányt írjon az „igazi” globális felmelegedésről. Elmondja ugyan, hogy mi nem igaz, de arról kevesebbet beszél, hogy mi igen. Másrészről azzal, hogy ilyen mértékben hozzáláncolja magát ellenfele érveihez, paradox helyzetet hoz létre: azokra a problémákra javasol megoldási alternatívákat, amiknek a létét amúgy megkérdőjelezi. Sajátos helyzet. Ettől függetlenül ez egy tárgyilagos és fontos könyv, amit mindenképpen javasolt átfutni azoknak, akik a téma iránt érdeklődnek. És nem árt, ha közben mindenki tisztában van azzal: Lomborg csak jót akar. És egy termékeny dialógus megnyitására kiválóan alkalmas ez a kis pamflet. show less

Concerns about climate change have in the past 30 years moved from the periphery of national and international politics much closer to the center, thanks in large part to the work done by a new generation of environmentally minded journalists. The author of this book criticizes contemporary reporting on climate change for excessive alarmism and for a limited capacity to understand and compare problems. He also argues that the default assumptions of current policies - especially that emission show more reductions must always be the main goal, at any cost - are misguided. Finally, he offers a set of alternative policies that could lead to a better future.

I agree on his points about overly pessimistic reporting. For some reason environmentalists find it in the best interest of coming generations to perpetuate an apocalyptic discourse which might eventually become bankrupt if few of those dire predictions turn out to be true. The author shows that policies advocated by the environmental movement can sometimes have immediate harmful consequences especially in less developed countries because they lead to money being wasted on policies which hinder economic development.

The author's alternative vision about learning to live with climate change through a spectrum of policies - adaptation and economic development foremost among them - seems reasonable. However, I must say that some of the research the author presents in favor of his conclusions is utterly ridiculous. Models where GDP is modelled as a function of temperature increase, or predicted a century into the future, have absolutely no scientific validity. They are just arbitrary extrapolations of a badly defined variable on a ridiculously long timescale. It seems to me that the main pieces of the arguments presented in this book could have been put together even without citing this shoddy subfield of economic research, but I suppose the citations reflect the author's own interests.

In any case, despite the argumentative weaknesses of some parts, this book is educational and certainly worth reading as a thoughtful antidote to alarming news. show less