I have never really before seen the environmentalists' argument against Bjorn Lomborg. In a nutshell, he argues that there are many better ways of spending our money than trying to bring down carbon dioxide emissions. Rather than just having an emotional reaction to the latest perceived environmental problem, he argues, we should analyze what impact on the earth, and on human society, it will have, and spend money controlling it only if it is cost effective to do so. It is very interesting that the line is attack is not to challenge any of his figures, which encourages me to think that his analysis is perfectly sound, but to argue that the problem of climate change is so serious that any attempt to quantify the magnitude of the problem, and to scientifically assess the damage it is likely to cause and to look at dealing with this damage directly is some kind of sacrilege.
Some of Mr Burke's argument are truly extraordinary, especially from a Green. One is that if the costs of invading Iraq were properly computed and compared to the benefits of removing Saddam then we and the US would never have gone to war in the first place, but that because decisions like this are taken by some process called 'politics' the fact that we did indeed take this action proves that the 'economic' analysis is somehow flawed.
Oddly enough, later in the article, Burke accuses Lomborg of practising politics, rather than sticking to economics, even though politics was previously asserted to be a somehow superior means of arriving at big decisions.
But the most extraordinary part of the article comes at the end where Burke lays into the Economist magazine for giving a platform for Lomborg. He states Until it chose to give a Danish lecturer in politics of no academic distinction whatsoever the rare accolade of a named essay, the world had remained in peaceful ignorance of Lomborg's opinions.. This actually shows how close the environmental movement is to a religion. Burke says: But its heavy promotion of Lomborg's faith-based approach to the future suggests that its current editors have changed sides. They should be ashamed.. I have no doubt which side is faith-based, and it is not Lomborg's.
References
There is an amazing amount of stuff about this on the web. Much of it biased. Wikipedia is a good place to start.
