The Skeptical Environmentalist Measuring the Real State of the World

Een pragmatisch boek dat probeert te ontdekken hoe het staat en hoe het beter kan. Een mooi voorbeeld is de volgende stelling (die na uitputtend bronnenonderzoek wordt bereikt): "we could give all people in the world food and clean water forever for less than the yearly costs of Kyoto". Het moge duidelijk zijn dat sommige mensen dat niet willen horen en daarom reageren eco-lobby (waar ik gewoonlijk ook toe behoor) en gevestigde academische belangen furieus en proberen ze hem uit de wetenschappelijke gemeenschap te stoten. Over die heksenjacht zegt The Economist het volgende: "THE Bjorn Lomborg saga took a decidedly Orwellian turn this week. Readers will recall that Mr Lomborg, a statistician and director of Denmark's Environmental Assessment Institute, is the author of "The Skeptical Environmentalist", which attacks the environmental lobby for systematically exaggerated pessimism. Environmentalists have risen as one in furious condemnation of Mr Lomborg's presumption in challenging their claims, partly no doubt because he did it so tellingly. This week, to the delight of greens everywhere, Denmark's Committees on Scientific Dishonesty ruled on the book as follows: "Objectively speaking, the publication of the work under consideration is deemed to fall within the concept of scientific dishonesty." How odd. Why, in the first place, is a panel with a name such as this investigating complaints against a book which makes no claim to be a scientific treatise? "The Skeptical Environmentalist" is explicitly not concerned with conducting scientific research. Rather, it measures the "litany" of environmental alarm that is constantly fed to the public against a range of largely uncontested data about the state of the planet. The litany comes off very badly from the comparison. The environmental movement was right to find the book a severe embarrassment. But since the book was not conducting scientific research, what business is it of a panel concerned with scientific dishonesty? One might expect to find the answer to this question in the arguments and data supporting the ruling-but there aren't any. The material assembled by the panel consists almost entirely of a synopsis of four articles published by Scientific American last year. (We criticised those articles and the editorial that ran with them in our issue of February 2nd 2002.) The panel seems to regard these pieces as disinterested science, rather than counter-advocacy from committed environmentalists. Incredibly, the complaints of these self-interested parties are blandly accepted at face value. Mr Lomborg's line-by-line replies to the criticisms ... are not reported. On its own behalf, the panel offers not one instance of inaccuracy or distortion in Mr Lomborg's book: not its job, it says. On this basis it finds Mr Lomborg guilty of dishonesty. The panel's ruling-objectively speaking-is incompetent and shameful." Alle discussies, incusief Lombok's "rebuttal" op het intimiderende 11 pagina's lange maar niet feitelijke Scientific American artikel kunt u snel op internet vinden. Mijn advies, u raadt het al: koop dit boek. U zult er van opknappen (het gaat allemaal niet zo slecht als we dachten) en tegelijkertijd wordt u erdoor opgepord om actief aan de slag te gaan waar het helpt. Op zijn minst raakt u heel veel beter geinformeerd.

Na het lezen van TSE (wat niet in 1 keer lukt) wordt de wereld anders. Enerzijds beter dan verwacht, anderzijds slechter dan voorstelbaar. In de discussie over het milieu vervult dit boek een fundamentele rol! Onmisbaar voor iedereen die iets wil betekenen voor het milieu! En elke milieuprofessional zou dit (meer dan) eens gelezen moeten hebben!!!