Bjorn Lomborg - The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World (2001)

Bjorn Lomborg - The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World (2001)

Bjorn Lomborg, a former member of Greenpeace, challenges widely held beliefs that the world environmental situation is getting worse and worse in his new book, The Skeptical Environmentalist. Using statistical information from internationally recognized research institutes, Lomborg systematically examines a range of major environmental issues that feature prominently in headline news around the world, including pollution, biodiversity, fear of chemicals, and the greenhouse effect, and documents that the world has actually improved. He supports his arguments with over 2500 footnotes, allowing readers to check his sources. Lomborg criticizes the way many environmental organizations make selective and misleading use of scientific evidence and argues that we are making decisions about the use of our limited resources based on inaccurate or incomplete information. Concluding that there are more reasons for optimism than pessimism, he stresses the need for clear-headed prioritization of resources to tackle real, not imagined, problems. The Skeptical Environmentalist offers readers a non-partisan evaluation that serves as a useful corrective to the more alarmist accounts favored by campaign groups and the media. Bjorn Lomborg is an associate professor of statistics in the Department of Political Science at the University of Aarhus. When he started to investigate the statistics behind the current gloomy view of the environment, he was genuinely surprised. He published four lengthy articles in the leading Danish newspaper, including statistics documenting an ever-improving world, and unleashed the biggest post-war debate with more than 400 articles in all the major papers. Since then, Lomborg has been a frequent participant in the European debate on environmentalism on television, radio, and in newspapers.

Everyday, various opinions are expressed in the media regarding doubts over the Kyoto agreement and the international community's ethical responsibility to the future of the environment. In his controversial new book, The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World, Bjorn Lomborg, offers a fresh perspective to the debate and challenges the view that we are destroying our planet irrevocably by exploding the widely propagated myth tat the state of the environment continues to spiral downwards beyond our control.

Lomborg investigates a variety of issues, including:

- Global Climate Change - Are we dealing with the problem in the right way?
- Resources - Are we living on borrowed time?
- GM Foods - Diaster or blessing?
- Waste - Are we running out of space?
- Forests - Are we losing them?

Lomborg answers such questions and stresses the need for clear-headed prioritization of resources to tackle real, not imagined, problems. The Skeptical Environmentalist is the result of extensive analysis of a wide range of statistical data and serves as a useful juxtaposition to the headline-grabbing examples used by advocacy groups and the media.

Bjorn Lomborg is an Associate Professor of Statistics in the Department of Political Science, University of Aarhus, Denmark. He has published in international journals in the fields of game theory and computer simulations. He has given invited lectures on the subjects discussed in The Skeptical Environmentalist in leading universities in North America and Europe following the success of the original Danish edition which has had a significant impact on the terms of the environmental debate within Scandinavia.

Publisher: Cambridge University Press (2001)
ISBN: 0521804477

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