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The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World Bjørn Lomborg Cambridge University Press New York 2001, 540 pp., $69.95 ISBN: 0-521-80447-7 The premise of The Skeptical Environmentalist, a book about environmental issues by statistician Bjørn Lomborg, is that environmentalists have suppressed the good news about environmental improvements in recent decades and focused on doomsday predictions to further their agenda. Using time series for various global statistics to illustrate his points, Lomborg critiques global trend predictions of groups such as the Worldwatch Institute, Greenpeace, the World Wide Fund for Nature, and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He seldom mentions that concerns voiced by environmentalists helped initiate many of the improvements he documents and instead dwells on demonstrating the bias and even misrepresentation of data used by environmentalists to show environmental decline. Chapter titles such as “The Litany—Why So Much Bad News When Things Are Getting Better?” reveal Lomborg’s own bias, which is built on measuring the state of the world only in terms of direct effects on human health and economic welfare. Before arguing whether global rates of anything are increasing, de76 A
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creasing, or stable, we should ask: What do we want to know about the state of the world? And what data, collected at what scale, can best give us answers? Measuring responses at a global scale can obscure critically important information about resources. For example, Lomborg’s section on deforestation relies simply on aerial estimates of global forest cover, ignoring the importance of data on forest age, class, and condition. Such data are critical for understanding whether forests are being managed sustainably for timber and other ecosystem services. Lomborg’s understanding and appreciation of services provided to humans by healthy, diverse, wellfunctioning ecosystems (and the economic benefits we derive from such services) are sadly lacking. For example, although Lomborg admits that excess nutrients have poisoned coastal waters and that marine fisheries have been overexploited, he uses global fish production per capita (in which farm fish production in the past few decades makes up for declines in the marine catch) to make the case that sustainable supplies of fish for human consumption are not a problem, because “in getting the calories or protein, it appears of minor importance whether the consumer’s salmon stems from the Atlantic or a fish farm.” Besides the inadequacy of many metrics that Lomborg relies on to measure the “real state of the world”, it is also worth noting that the global scale at which these statistics are summarized would make it impossible to detect many trends early enough to effectively respond to them. Although Lomborg makes some valid points about the need to prioritize our efforts and the value of funds spent relieving poverty and suffering in the developing world, I disagree with his tendency to cast the debate in terms of saving butterflies for the rich, while the poor of the world starve. Often, the poor are the first victims of environmental degradation.
ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY / FEBRUARY 1, 2002
Yes, environmentalists should report their own success stories and avoid hyperbole and bias in presenting environmental data. People should know that investments in solving environmental problems have been rewarded by improvements. Fear brought on by doomsday predictions can lead to denial, apathy, inadequate prioritization of our actions, and poor decision making. Many prominent ecologists agree with Lomborg on the need to incorporate the human dimensions of environmental problems and their solutions into our decision making and our societal priorities. I rejoice, with Lomborg, that “children born today will live longer and be healthier, will get more food and enjoy a higher standard of living, more leisure time, and far more possibilities.” Yet, I also hope they will be able to swim in a river, catch a frog, safely eat fish they catch, walk in a forest, see trees they can’t get their arms around, share the planet with other living beings, and know that forests are not tree farms, oceans are not fish farms, and the world is not a human farm. Reviewed by Mary Santelmann, Geosciences Department, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR; e-mail: santelmm@ ucs.orst.edu
Web Site The Environmental Contaminants Encyclopedia (www.aqd.nps.gov/ toxic/index.html) emphasizes concentration data. It is compiled by student assistants at Colorado State University and edited by Ray J. Irwin at the U.S. National Park Service. Visitors can access PDF files describing each listed contaminant with a search engine. To post information on this site, visitors can send information to the National Park Service, Water Resources Division, 1201 Oakridge Dr., Ste. 250, Fort Collins, CO 80525. © 2002 American Chemical Society
