WSJ Profiles Lomborg: SWNID Topoi Everywhere

Mimicking the Observer, doubtless because SWNID drew attention to the article, Kimberly Strassel at the Wall Street Journal today profiles environmental contrarian Bjorn Lomborg. A trio of pull quotes will reveal why the more we hear about this guy, the more we're intrigued.

First, on why the left is a spent political force and what it needs to become a powerful force again:

Bjorn Lomborg is a political scientist by training, but the charismatic, golden-haired Dane is offering me a history lesson. Two hundred years ago, he explains, sitting forward in his chair in this newspaper's Manhattan offices, the left was an "incredibly rational movement." It believed in "encyclopedias," in hard facts, and in the idea that mastery of these basics would help "make a better society." Since then, the world's do-gooders have succumbed to "romanticism; they've become more dreamy." This is a problem in his view, and so this "self-avowed slight lefty" is determined to nudge the whole world back toward "rationalism."

Second, a summary of his earlier work:

Bjorn Lomborg busted--and that is the only word for it--onto the world scene in 2001 with the publication of his book The Skeptical Environmentalist. A one-time Greenpeace enthusiast, he'd originally planned to disprove those who said the environment was getting better. He failed. And to his credit, his book said so, supplying a damning critique of today's environmental pessimism. Carefully researched, it offered endless statistics--from official sources such as the U.N.--showing that from biodiversity to global warming, there simply were no apocalypses in the offing. "Our history shows that we solve more problems than we create," he tells me. For his efforts, Mr. Lomborg was labeled a heretic by environmental groups--whose fundraising depends on scaring the jeepers out of the public--and became more hated by these alarmists than even (if possible) President Bush.

Which brings us to the present, where he insists on rational prioritization of global actions to address human problems that can be addressed by the global body politic:

If you have a rational list that tells you that you do a lot more good preventing HIV/AIDS, then those in favor of such projects have slightly better arguments. Those arguing for climate change have slightly worse arguments." And while this may not change the world, it could be a start. "The Consensus isn't about getting it perfectly right," says Mr. Lomborg. "It's about getting it slightly less wrong."

Yes, getting things slightly less wrong. Seldom Wrong--a noble and perhaps attainable goal, at least some of the time.

In Sum, The Entire Question on Climate Change

If you can endure it, watch this video in which Bjorn Lomborg, SWNIDishly celebrated economist, calls out Al Gore, SWNIDishly ridiculed source of hot air, on the confusion of science with public policy.



If you can't endure it, just read this transcript:

BJØRN LOMBORG: Hi, Mr. Vice President. I'm Bjørn Lomborg.

It seems to me that you are probably the most well-known person arguing that we should be spending a large sum of our money and we should be spending most of our concern on focusing on cutting carbon emissions, and cutting very, very soon. And I would argue that the Copenhagen Consensus [think tank] and certainly a lot of really well-esteemed Nobel awards tell us that both scientifically and economically, it's not a very good way to spend our money.

And so my point is to actually say, "Shouldn't we have that debate?" I know you've sort of dodged that bullet before, and I don't mean to corner you. Well, maybe I do mean to corner you. Do you want to have a debate on that? Would you be willing to have a debate with me on that point?

MR. GORE: Look, I think that I want to be polite to you. But the scientific community has gone through this chapter and verse. We have long since passed the time when we as a civilization, let alone we as the United States of America, should pretend that this is an on-the-one-hand/on-the-other-hand kind of situation.

You know, the tobacco industry for many years after the surgeon general's report collected the epidemiological evidence that was already very, very damning. They had strategic exercises with the PR experts to try to divert people down into the details of this and that. And they delayed public-health action for 40 years. And millions and millions of people died as a result. The stakes this time are so high.

The issue, of course, is the way Gore moves from science to policy. Lomborg doesn't dispute that climate change might exist or even be humanly caused, though he insists that some responsibly do dispute that. He disputes that it's going to be doing humans any good to spend enormous sums to try to reverse that.

For further reference, see our remarks on Obama's disingenuous use of "science."

Lomborg: Ditch Controls, Promote Investment

The formidable Bjorn Lomborg, scourge of the global warming totalitarians, writes today for the Gray Lady. He insists that (a) controls on carbon emissions are doomed to failure and at best grossly inefficient; (b) investment in non-carbon energy production offers over the long term to reduce carbon emissions and be economically efficient.

We're willing to listen to such analysis, not least when he acknowledges that the world's poor shouldn't wait for alternatives to carbon to be developed.

More on Climate Change and Public Policy

Except for debating the virtues and vices of Cheez Whiz, our gentle readers seem most engaged in the issue of global climate change and ancillary issues of public policy. We therefore point out two interesting pieces in the Sunday press:

• The Observer of England (national motto: "Using celebrity players to beat itself in the World Cup since 1998") brings us Bjorn Lomborg offering a reminder of the economics of actions to stem global warming. Specifically, he cites a meeting of leading economists in Denmark in 2004 which concluded that of various public-policy initiatives, the ones with the least likelihood of yielding benefits to human beings were related to global warming. Those likely to do the most good were aimed at HIV/AIDS, human nutrition, free trade, and malaria (SWNID's nominee for least-publicized issue of importance).
• The Wall Street Journal offers MIT climate professor and well-known global-warming skeptic Richard S. Lindzen's objections to the rhetoric of "consensus" in Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. His upshot is that global warming data does not correlate well with increases in CO2 and so a causal relationship, let alone a crisis, cannot be inferred, as Earth's climate is demonstrably dynamic and complex. Lindzen criticizes the "lassitude" of his more politically minded scientific colleagues who offer CO2 emissions as the explanation for climate change because they can't think of any other cause. No consensus exists on global warming, Lindzen argues, because we can't yet know enough about the dynamics of climate change.
  

SWNID, of course, is inclined to agree with these positions. Lindzen has been harshly criticized for his position by the most politicized of environmentalists, but we appreciate the credibility of any scientist who (a) holds tenure at an institution like MIT; (b) addresses his own area of expertise (sorry, Noam Chomsky, you make it on the first point, but this second one puts you out of our circle of credibility except for pronouncements on linguistics); (c) confesses that his discipline can't know something. Lomborg reports matters that fit what strikes us as a common template that proves often true: while the healthy and prosperous worry about disasters that may perchance befall them, they neglect actual disasters that actually befall the unhealthy and poor.

As we enter deep into the political "silly season" (for the uninitiated, the summer vacation period, when politicians go to the beach and the reporters who cover them get silly in the scramble for something to fill their pages and newscasts), it is good to be reminded that the sky may not be falling, but there remains important work to be done in the world.