Dr.
Bjorn Lomborg aged 42, heads the Copenhagen Consensus Centre, is adjunct
professor at Copenhagen Business School Denmark, and author of the best selling
books ‘The Skeptical Environmentalist’ and ‘Cool It’.
Bjorn was named one of the "50 people who could save the planet" by the
Guardian newspaper in 2008.
Bjorn
Lomborg
has been described as one of Europe’s leading scientific and political
realists, who has brought courage to those that wish to discuss and debate
environmental issues in a scientific rational, compassionate and logical
manner.
Bjorn’s work
has brought a breath of fresh air to the debate for he has challenged many
of the almost dogmatic claims about global warming, overpopulation, energy
resources, deforestation, species loss and water shortages using scientific
methods of evidence, analysis and assessment.
It
is not generally realised that Dr. Bjorn Lomborg
does not
dispute the existence of climate change, but questions the priority given to
specific solutions, in particular, co2 emissions, put forward by the likes
of the former American Vice President Al Gore. In so doing Lomborg is
providing Europe’s politicians, like Chancellor Merkel and President Sarkozy
with the public policy toolkit on which to determine government priorities
to tackle the problems Europe faces.
Bjorn Lomborg
– the man
Dr. Lomborg is
the sceptical environmentalist, and probably the most famous Dane since the
Viking Eric the Red? It is a pleasure to listen to this impressive friendly
Danish academic. Bjorn looks like a professional tennis player; there is
hardly a trace of his Danish heritage in his bubbling Californian accent. Of
his friends Bjorn says: ‘they are always happy to share a pizza and play
with my X-box.’
Global Warming is not
our first priority
‘Gore’s film
‘An Inconvenient Truth’ makes three points; global warming is real, it will
be catastrophic and addressing it should be our first priority.
Inconveniently for the film’s producers, however, only the first statement
is correct.’ Bjorn says.
Not only does
Lomborg question the solutions put forward to deal with the problems
involved but is also sceptical of the often simplistic correlations made
between physical phenomena and the degree of effect of such phenomena.
To take one
example the recent flooding in Prague and Dresden are simplistically often
attributed to global warming, though other scientific hydrological studies
of historical records, tend rather to indicate that these events are well
within normal parameters.
Another
example is where the doomsday scenario predicts that the sea level rise
consequent on climate change will mean that the Netherlands will be
submerged under 6.5 metres of water. Such exaggeration, Lomborg points out,
is not backed by IPCC (UN Climate Change Committee) research. In fact, they
expect a more manageable 38.5cm, which means cities like Amsterdam and
London will easily be able to improve their flood defences.
As for
Possible Solution?
Turning to
possible solutions for dealing with the effects of climate change, Lomborg
argues that rather than concentrating almost solely on reductions in CO2
emissions, attention should rather be given to what might be called
social/political alternatives. It would be more effective if we spent our
scarce resources on human happiness (which, after all, should be the point
of environmentalism), such as poverty alleviation, anti-malarial programs,
and similar measures.
For example,
anticipated costs of €1 trillion to reduce carbon emissions sufficiently to
have a global effect, might be more efficiently applied to the prevention
and treatment of HIV/Aids, the elimination of malaria and the provision of
clean drinking water to the world’s poor?
In other
words attention should be given to a cost benefit analysis approach, which
would have more certain results in both the short and long term.
What Bjorn
Lomborg has achieved is to provide Europe’s decision makers with a set of
policies, including increased spending on research and development, in
particular nuclear power, on which to base informed rational decisions.
Such policies Dr. Lomborg suggests, will not only be more cost effective,
but provide greater economic development opportunities than Gore’s policies
which are likely to significantly limit future opportunities to deal with
future problems.
Perhaps this
explains why the Kyoto Protocol has not been fully implemented and adopted
by the world’s nations and as Bjorn observed about the recent IPCC
conference in Bali in December 2007: ‘that little concrete progress had been
accomplished, despite the theatrics. In fact since 1995 little has been
achieved.’
Finally,
perhaps the greatest irony is that whilst the EU enthuses over the Kyoto
Protocol in contrast to the US hostility the reality is, Lomborg observes is
that: ‘since 1990 the growth in EU’s emissions have tended to increase ahead
of the US.’
Seems actions
speak louder than words?
