The greenhouse gospel according to Bjorn Lomborg  
Dr Bjorn Lomborg is the keynote speaker at this month’s AIE national conference at the Sydney Superdome. People either love him or hate him. There’s no middle ground. This report looks at why Dr Lomborg and his views are getting plenty of air play on the world stage.
 
The AIE has secured a world-class keynote speaker in Dr Bjorn Lomborg for its national conference at the Sydney Superdome late this month. Dr Lomborg, a Dane, statistician at the University of Denmark, Aarhus, whose new book The Skeptical Environmentalist goes against the tide by arguing that the world’s environment is not in decline.
 
His address to the conference on the theme The Skeptical  Environmentalist Looks at Energy is therefore both topical and timely as notions of global warming and its effects are being increasingly challenged. Dr Lomborg has achieved something of celebrity status following his invitation to write an essay for The Economist, which
presages his book, just published. He wrote his book after he sought, as a self-confessed holder of ‘left-wing Greenpeace views’, to debunk the position of the American economist Julian Simon, who has long doubted
many of the claims of the more radical environmentalists.
 
These include the notions that we are exhausting the world's natural resources, the world’s population is exploding; biodiversity is seriously threatened; and pollution, not least by greenhouse gases, is out of control.
He is not specifically doubting global warming, just the Kyoto-prescribed cure. Dr Lomborg’s research was exhaustive and comprehensive. The result: he ended up agreeing with Simon. Judging from his piece in The Economist, he is particularly critical of the Kyoto Protocol, seeing this as being extremely expensive, and ultimately counterproductive in terms of its stated objective: the limiting of atmospheric emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
 
His message in an energy context is an important one for Australia, given our stake in coal mining and export, the supply of LNG, and our competitive advantages in energy-intensive industries such as aluminium smelting.
 
In a review of The Spektical Environmentalist (Cambridge $49.95) in The Sydney Morning Herald, respected environment writer and commentator James Woodford said that Lomborg’s argument came as a major shock to him. “Things I have always considered serious threats to the future of mankind—the loss of forests, biodiversity destruction, chemical pollution, climate change, degradation of freshwater systems and  overpopulation—he calls, sarcastically, ‘the Litany’,”
 
Woodford wrote. “Lomborg accuses environmentalists of misrepresentation and exaggeration . . . his is the first detailed and comprehensive attempt to call the conservation movement to account. “He argues that there is a kind of Calvinistic guilt associated with the progress our society has made—in essence, he argues we are embarrassed at being such a successful species.” Lomborg writes: “The constant repetition of the Litany and the often heard environmental exaggerations has serious consequences. It makes us scared and it makes us more likely to spend our resources and attention solving
phantom problems while ignoring real and pressing (possibly non-environmental) issues. That is why it is important to know the real estate of the world. We need to get the facts and the best possible information to make the best possible decisions.”
 
Woodford observes: “For 350 pages, backed up by nearly 3,000 footnotes, the Danish statistician critically examines the slogans and arguments that have galvanised much of the developed world into environmental action.
 
It is a book the green movement would love to see pulped ….” While agreeing that human-induced climate change is underway and that its impact will be immense — costing as much as $A10 trillion, Lomborg’s view is that the cost of reducing greenhouse gases will nearly be as great as the predicted impacts and the outcomes dubious.
 
He suggests that the money would be better spent on more tangible problems such as saving endangered species, rainforests, rivers, and modernising primitive, polluting industries in the developing world. He further suggests that money spent reducing carbon dioxide emissions may be best spent on renewable energy research.
 
“The cost of such energy research (attaining cold fusion so that industry could be run at a fraction of the environmental downsides) would be orders of magnitude cheaper than the cost of limiting carbon emissions,”
Lomborg writes.
 
His views will, at minimum, generate vigorous debate, ensuring that the AIE national conference will without doubt, be Australia's premier energy event this year. For further information about the AIE conference see
full program details at the centre pages of Energy News, visit the AIE website, at www.aie.org.au or contact conference Chairman Richard Hunwick, telephone: (02) 9410 9834, fax: (02) 9410 9984.
 
More information about Dr Lomborg may be obtained from his website, www.lomborg.org
 
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