Tuesday, August 28, 2007
A Denier's Confession
Global warming is more alarmist than alarming.
"I confess: Though it may surprise those who use the term 'denier' so as to put me on a moral plane with Holocaust deniers, I have children for whom I would not wish an environmental apocalypse.
Yet neither do I wish the civilizational bounties built up over two centuries by an industrial, inventive, adaptive, globalized and energy-hungry society to be squandered chasing comparatively small environmental benefits at gigantic economic costs. One needn't deny global warming as a problem to deny it as the only or greatest problem. The great virtue of Mr. Lomborg's book is its insistence on trying to measure the good done per dollar spent. Do we save a few lives, at huge cost, as a byproduct of curbing global warming? Or do we save many, for less, by acting on problems directly?"
"I confess: Though it may surprise those who use the term 'denier' so as to put me on a moral plane with Holocaust deniers, I have children for whom I would not wish an environmental apocalypse.
Yet neither do I wish the civilizational bounties built up over two centuries by an industrial, inventive, adaptive, globalized and energy-hungry society to be squandered chasing comparatively small environmental benefits at gigantic economic costs. One needn't deny global warming as a problem to deny it as the only or greatest problem. The great virtue of Mr. Lomborg's book is its insistence on trying to measure the good done per dollar spent. Do we save a few lives, at huge cost, as a byproduct of curbing global warming? Or do we save many, for less, by acting on problems directly?"
