I used to think that we are living in a polluted world with few years left on the doomsday clock until disaster will strike us with the punishment deserved by us for destroying mother nature. Like many others: Gallup reported in April that most Americans think that the environment is getting worse. Examples for this thinking can be found abundantly in the media.
Reading The Skeptical Environmentalist brought about many paradigm shifts for me. I found it a remarkable book, well-written and broad in scope. The second title being "Measuring the Real State of the World," it looks into many different aspects of environmental problems, well being of humanity, and global warming, and looks into seriousness and approaches to solution from a cost-benefit perspective.
The book has been criticized a lot (how not?) but has likewise found praise from many sides. The author Bjørn Lomborg uses global and historic statistics to analyze whether we are developing into the right direction and what our future will look like, supplementing many charts with analyses that come from credible sources such as world bank, UNESCO, and many others.
Lomborg collaborated with several nobel prize winners on a second book, "Cool it," so I think it is safe to assume that he is not some isolated crackpot.
His conclusions are many-fold, but I'll attempt to summarize the main ones:
- There is what he calls the "Litany," a wide-spread bias towards believing in humanities doom.
- This comes from blowing up negative news and bad (but probably well-meant) statistics (his reviews of some literature reveals stunning errors in statistics).
- Our health, well-being, the environment in many aspects, are becoming much better over the years and still will become much better.
- It is important to prioritize and choose where to spend limited resources.
- Money could be most effectively spent in education, infrastructure, and sanitation, and
- Market economy seems to work. Environmental regulations could have adverse effects and benefits are slight as compared to other policy decisions (with respect to e.g. taking costs of life-years saved per dollar).
- Natural catastrophes, deaths, and malaria are probably not going to increase because of global warming.
- We are living in a good world.
- We are not going to die out as punishments for our sins.
Not convinced? See and hear Bjørn Lomborg at TED talks. His talk is called "Our priorities for saving the world." See whether he can make you call your convictions into question.
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I am skeptical of all I was taught about the Environment as well. They claim carbon is causing global warming but I learned that we need carbon and without it we would not have oxygen.
I am glad you are skeptical because it's healthy to be skeptical. To be skeptical means you do your own research instead of beliving whatever your told. Good job!
Just to clarify: carbon dioxide is one of the green house gases and it is part of the efforts fighting global warming to restrict carbon dioxide emissions.
Bjørn Lomborg writes in his book that the effect of global warming will not be drastic enough to justify major measures of carbon dioxide restriction. The money could be much more reasonably spent in other areas (see the video).
There are a lot of specialists in any domain. Environment is no different. You can find a lot of well written, well documented and credible books written by great scientists, which say that the Earth is really heating up.
You can believe those guys or the other guys - it doesn't matter really. What matters is that we each do what we feel is right. If you think driving a 4 liter SUV to work is the right thing, you can do that. If you think riding a bike is right, you can do that too. You can find documented arguments for any approach. So: do as your heart tells you.
Cheers!
@Gec: I agree about the specialists.
Your second statement could sound irresponsable. It could be argued that by consuming too much fuel and destroying the life conditions on this planet you are infringing on the rights of other people. I understand that to somebody convinced of the imminence of environmental desaster, arguments to the contrary may sound like a little child that doesn't want to listen.
However, the past century of dogmatism should teach us the importance of individual freedom. Some time ago I read The Wisdom of Crowds where anecdotal evidence is given that groups of many people under certain conditions can make better decisions than small groups of experts. The conditions were diversity of opinion, independence, decentralization, and aggregation (a mechanism of integration of opinion).
Some people drive bikes and others drive huge cars. That's diversity of opinion, independence, and decentralization. Emissions get down a little because of less cars but the economy gets not slowed down too much because of the people who buy huge cars, that's the aggregation.
I feel that's a big topic. Does this work or not?
Exactly my point :D
Do as your heart tells you. I wasn’t cynical (well, maybe a little :) ). We must celebrate diversity, and see the beauty in it. Everything interweaves, making the world what it is: a wonderful place.
Yes the topic is BIG. It’s good to be skeptical, just remember to be skeptical about skepticals too ;)
Cheers!
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