杏吧原创

The Skeptical Environmentalist by Bj酶rn Lomborg, Cambridge, 拢17.95,
ISBN 0521010683

HALF-BAKED, ill-researched and designed to capture the moral high ground
rather than to advance the cause of knowledge, says Bj酶rn Lomborg. He鈥檚 been
scrutinising environmental statistics. He should know: he鈥檚 a statistics
professor at A氓rhus University in Denmark.

The Skeptical Environmentalist came out in Danish three years ago. Its
translation into English has caused a sensation. Lomborg looks at a huge range
of statistics on environmental change, globally and locally. He says things are
getting better, refuting the doomsday environmentalists.

Part of the problem is that doing a bit better doesn鈥檛 set things right.
Concern about the state of the environment does have a lot to do with adverse
trends, such as the rapid loss of bird populations in Britain鈥攁n indicator
not mentioned by Lomborg. But it also has something to do with the widening gap
between the state of the environment and the state that many people want, their
aspirations fed by better education and rising incomes. So Lomborg鈥檚 chapter on
global extinctions comes as scant reassurance to, say, salmon anglers who not
only lament the decline of the salmon but demand more fishing as we get richer.
Arguing that total forest cover in the world is increasing (it is) is less than
reassuring if expanding temperate forests do not compensate for declining
tropical forests.

But the greatest ire is going to be reserved for Lomborg鈥檚 chapter on global
warming. The science is clear; it is not rational policy to proceed as if the
probability of induced warming is zero. Lomborg asks an economist鈥檚 question: do
the benefits of controlling warming outweigh the costs? He agrees that global
warming will damage the world, but says that human misery would be greatly
reduced if the huge cost of dealing with global warming went to solve the
immediate problems of the poor.

Those who take a moral view about intergenerational equity will want to
challenge this cost-benefit thinking, but Lomborg has identified a basic truth
of economics moralists often ignore: you can鈥檛 spend money twice. Money is not
just money, it is hospitals and schools, water and clean air. Just as compelling
is the fact that the Kyoto Protocol, even if the US had signed up, will postpone
reaching the predicted warming levels for 2100 by only 6 years if we spend the
estimated $5 trillion now. Lomborg鈥檚 view is that it鈥檚 far better to
invest in adaptation than pretend we can hold back warming.

I doubt if his conclusion needs to be so extreme. Targeting carbon should
accelerate the switch to renewable fuels, rather than market forces as Lomborg
advocates. This brings lots of dividends鈥攔educed congestion and lower
pollution from non-CO₂ gases. Perhaps the mistake in the debate has been
to get too hung up about warming itself, rather than focusing on the need to get
technology moving.

If readers can鈥檛 quite square Lomborg鈥檚 optimism with what they see around
them, this is no surprise. Even 178 graphs and 3000 footnotes can鈥檛 cover all
the issues that people worry about. If he has debunked some doomsters, good. The
only risk is that people will confuse the 鈥渢hings are getting better鈥� message
with a Panglossian 鈥渢hings are as good as they can be鈥� message. But all
scientists have a duty to tell it as it is.