Dissident from Denmark. - 'The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World' - book review

National Review, April 8, 2002 by Jonathan H. Adler

John Holdren of Harvard University's Kennedy School complained that Lomborg focused on neo-Malthusian fears that we are running out of energy. Serious environmentalists, Holdren counseled, have long abandoned such concerns. That may have come as a surprise to Scientific American's readers, however, as the monthly has recently published several articles and reviews suggesting that depletion of oil supplies could be imminent. Challenged on this point, Scientific American editor-in-chief John Rennie replied that his magazine's articles were about the end of "cheap oil," not the exhaustion of physical supplies. Not only is this a distinction without a difference-as oil supplies dwindle, prices rise-but Lomborg makes clear throughout his energy chapter that his target is the argument that we will run out of affordable energy. As he explains, "Even if we were to run out of oil, this would not mean that oil was unavailable, only that it would be very, very expensive. If we want to examine whether oil is getting more and more scarce we have to look at whether oil is getting more and more expensive." Lomborg then proceeds to show that oil has been getting cheaper as available supplies increase. Should this trend reverse, price signals will encourage the development of other energy sources.

While Lomborg is an optimist, he is no Pollyanna. He regularly pauses to remind the reader that environmental concerns are real. The claim that 40,000 species disappear every year may have no empirical basis whatsoever, but Lomborg leaves no doubt that extinction rates are on the rise and that human activity is largely to blame. This, he says, is a "problem," not a "catastrophe." The record of environmental progress is impressive, particularly in the developed world, but substantial environmental concerns remain in the poorer nations of the developing world-for example, suffocating air pollution and inadequate supplies of drinking water. Continued economic growth may one day alleviate these concerns, but millions suffer from severe pollution today. Lomborg's frank and repeated acknowledgements of the need for environmental progress are hard to square with the caricature presented by his critics.

Fears of an environmental cataclysm have driven the growth of governmental power at the local, national, and even international levels; hundreds of pages in the U.S. Code are devoted to environmental concerns, as are dozens of international treaties. A great portion of these measures seek to address the very problems Lomborg identifies as overstated. Yet other than the Kyoto Protocol, Lomborg critiques surprisingly few environmental initiatives. Beyond increases in foreign aid and generic policies that promote economic growth, his most substantial policy recommendation is to rely on quantitative analysis to set environmental priorities.

It's true that science-based risk prioritization is often lacking in environmental policy, but it is insufficient as a policy agenda: "Sound science" is only one piece of the puzzle. The accumulation of statistics on environmental trends provides a useful snapshot of the global condition, but it does not answer pressing questions, such as how to address uncertainty in environmental risk, or what obligations (if any) humanity has to future generations or to the rest of nature. Once priorities are set, substantial questions remain about how to achieve environmental goals.