High Profile
The Bright Side
Huw Spanner
The self-styled 'sceptical environmentalist' Professor Bjørn
Lomborg has
for years been both extolled and excoriated. As he urges us all to
'cool it',
Third Way got smart with him at the Copenhagen Consensus
Center.
The accolades you have received - three years ago, for
example, the Guardian called you 'one of the 50 people who
could save the planet' - are extraordinary. Would the people who
knew you as a child have been surprised?
I don't know. I think they would probably say they always knew I
was a little bit weird, but they didn't know whether it was weird
in a good way. I excelled academically, and certainly I knew too
many long words.
What kind of upbringing did you have?
I was brought up by my mom, who's a primary-school teacher - my
dad died when I was very young. I'm an only child and I had a
huge amount of love. I've always felt that the reason I've
been able to do what I've done is fundamentally because my mom told
me, 'You're just amazing and I love you.' So, you know, I don't
feel quite the same need to know that everybody else does.
Was there any religion in your
background?
The stepdad who was the primary guy who brought me up was a
liberal Catholic priest, in the Rudolph Steiner theology - a
slightly odd offshoot of Christianity that mixed in a little bit of
Hinduism: the idea of rebirth and karma, that kind of thing. I
think it's plausible, but I've always felt that what really matters
is not so much, you know, what is supposed to happen after you die
as whether you're a good person here in this world.
Has that been a major driver in your life, the desire to
be a good person?
I think it's crucial to accept that you have needs yourself - you
want to have a good life and to do things that excite you - but at
the same time these should at least have some social value. So, I
think the honest answer is that doing some good has been a partial
driver.
The reason I ask is that you have spent much of the last
decade asking how we can do most good for humankind on a limited
budget. For one man that might be just an academic exercise, but
for another it could be a matter of passionate
concern.
I really think it has to be both. For me, compassion is about
stopping and thinking, 'What is the smart thing to do?' - and then
doing it.
One of the points that I've tried to make, especially in the
[debate about climate change] but also in a lot of different
discussions, is that there's a lot of feeling good in many
of these arguments - 'I've put up some solar panels, so I feel I
have done some good.' But what really matters is that you actually
do some good, which is - sometimes at least - not the same
thing.
What is your take on human nature? I get the impression
that you're quite an optimist.
I love these questions, because these are not really
things that I think about very much - so forgive me if my answers
are a little bit extempore.
I think human nature is not inherently good or evil. I think we
have a strong tendency to look out for ourselves, but we have an
amazing ability also to care for others. The trick is to set up
social structures that make sure that people get the comfort and
security that they need but also make it possible for us to not
harm others and to show compassion.
And what is your take on the non-human world? I don't
know much about Steiner's theology, but there is a strain in
Catholicism that teaches that the world exists merely for our use
and has no intrinsic value, but then there is the line taken by
Francis of Assisi, who talked of the ox and the cow as our brother
and sister.
Well, I would definitely tend to think more like Francis of
Assisi. I'm a vegetarian because I don't want to kill animals.
Obviously, a cow is not the equal of a person, but there is
definitely a moral obligation to keep animals alive as well. I
think they have a right more than just to exist for our
pleasure.
We're often reminded that you used to be a supporter of
Greenpeace. What did that support consist of, and what did it mean
to you?
My support for Greenpeace was merely that I [gave them money], I
wore their badge, I had their poster up in my room - you know, the
one with the quote from the [Native American] chief (which, by the
way, I later realised was fake): 'When the last tree is cut, the
last river poisoned, and the last fish dead, we will discover that
we can't eat money…'1 For me, it was more of a statement, a way of
saying: We're not treating our world well. We need to do more for
nature.
I felt strongly about it - you know, when the topic came up. I
remember the oxygen depletion we had in the open seas around
Denmark in 1986-87: I was 21, 22 and it was the first time I had
that really visceral sense that the world is coming apart and we're
doing nothing about it. The fish were dying - there were lots of
dead lobsters - and it was all Man's fault. And I felt: Why can't
we get this right? How can we just despoil the planet?
But still it was on a fairly low level - I wasn't out in a
rubber dinghy. And it didn't have to be Greenpeace; I could equally
well have been a member of the Nature Conservancy or something
else.
How did you become disillusioned with
Greenpeace?
Well, I read an article in Wired by [the US 'free-market
environmentalist'] Julian Simon saying: 'Contrary to what you
believe, things are getting better.' My immediate reaction was:
'Right-wing propaganda! It can't be true.' I thought it would be
fun to get my students to show that he was wrong, but as we went
through it, we realised that a lot of the things he said were right
- and when you think about it, it's kind of obvious. Air quality is
getting better, not worse. Water quality is getting better. People
are better fed, they live longer, they are not as poor or as sick
as they used to be. We've actually managed to do a lot of good
things.
And yet we have this whole culture - and it's much, much more
than just Greenpeace - that we're going in the wrong direction,
that things are falling apart. Everyone - politicians, journalists
and certainly scientists - are telling us that things are getting
worse and worse. But that is actually not the case with many - not
all, but many - of those important indicators.
You know, some of my friends have been debating with themselves
for years: Is it right to bring kids into this world? Now, if the
world is coming to an end, kind of thing, certainly it's a very
relevant thing to take into consideration; but imagine choosing to
forgo one of the most wonderful things that life offers, just
because you were misinformed!
The Damascus Road experience you have described puts me
in mind that the apostle Paul was arguably just as dogmatic after
his conversion as he was before it. Do you see yourself as someone
who is always open to another change of mind, or was that
enlightenment it?
I hope I'm able to change my mind. I've certainly said
that whenever the evidence changes, I change with it.
Just to be clear, you are still green?
Absolutely. Obviously, I still recycle. I don't own a car.
What I've rejected is the idea that this is the end of the world
and that we must atone - you know, 'Thou shalt not do' all these
things. No. What we should do is collectively make sure that we can
get all the good things but without the bad things.
And your attitude to nature is one of prudence, maybe,
but not reverence.
You know, I like the idea of the environment in general - I think
most people do. I like the idea of having lots of whales, I like
the idea of having untouched rainforests; but I also recognise that
basically we have gotten rich by cutting down virtually all of our
forests. Do we want to deny the people of Brazil the same
opportunities? I think we could pay them for not cutting
down the rainforest; but I also think we need to recognise that
their needs are probably more important than the need for an extra
hectare of forest when we have lots of it.
You place a heavy emphasis on cost-benefit analysis.
From a moral point of view, it's important to say that it has
limitations, hasn't it? What value could you put on the last pair
of blue whales in existence, for example?
As you say, it's clear that the world is not just an Excel sheet
and you cannot just say: Here are the costs, here are the benefits
and that's it: in a sense we've made the decision already. But
likewise we cannot ignore the fact that there are costs
and benefits, and I see this analysis as a very important part of
understanding our choices.
I'm pretty sure that if a whale was threatened with extinction,
we'd find a way to stop that happening and we'd be willing to pay
for it; but we're not willing to pay for an extra beetle that we
didn't even know existed. So, in a sense you could say we are
already implicitly making these sorts of cost-benefit analyses.
Fortunately, most of our choices are not about exotic, extravagant
things like the whale. They're much more: What would you do to save
this fairly anonymous beetle?
What if I could demonstrate that the Grand Canyon was
worth more economically as a landfill site than as a tourist
attraction?
Yes, but… My sense is that that is actually a faux
conflict, because you're taking the Grand Canyon, which we all sort
of really, really love. We don't put landfills in spectacular
places exactly because there are really, really boring places that
are a dime a dozen and that's where we put our garbage dumps. So,
we are making precisely these sorts of comparisons all the
time.
Am I right that you take it as read that climate change
is happening and that it is predominantly man-made?
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
In my 2010 edition of Cool It,2 you seem to
argue that the threat is hugely exaggerated and you say: 'It's
obvious that there are many other and more pressing
issues.'
However, in Smart Solutions to Climate Change,3
which also came out last year, you say it's 'a challenge that
humanity must confront … We actually have only one option: we all
need to start seriously focusing, right now, on the most effective
ways to fix global warming.'
It sounds like two different people speaking - and a lot
of reviewers of Smart Solutions have said that you seem to
have changed your tune.
OK, OK. My sense of what I say in Cool It - and I make
these boldface points very up-front in the book - remember this was
2007 [originally] - is: Global warming is real, though it's not the
end of the world (as it's often portrayed), but the current
solutions aren't working. We should impose a $2 carbon tax (now $7,
because the facts have changed) and we should invest the revenue in
research and development. And that's just what we say in Smart
Solutions. I really don't see the difference.
But it's important for me to say: we should be doing
this, and should be doing it right now. It's tragic that
for 20 years we have been following a strategy that we kind of knew
was not going to work. Kyoto-style solutions are very costly and
will do very little good - which is the argument I've been pounding
for the past 11 or 12 years.
What exactly is wrong with Kyoto?
Our problem, very simply, is: we burn fossil fuels that emit CO2,
which causes global warming. Well, why don't we stop using fossil
fuels? That seems to be the obvious answer, and that's what pretty
much everybody has jumped on. What we forget is, we don't burn
fossil fuels to annoy Al Gore, we burn them because they power
pretty much everything we like about civilisation. Which is why
half the world's population that is poor want to use much, much
more of them. And so unless we can find another source of power
that provides all the same benefits but doesn't emit CO2, we're
never going to solve this.
We're never going to be able to ask people: 'Can you please do
without all that fun stuff?' And that's why we need to take a step
back and see that it's not about cutting a little bit of CO2 now,
to make ourselves feel good; it's about cutting a lot in
the long run that does good - and that means
technology.
One of the other areas where technology solved the problem is
food. In the 1970s, Paul Ehrlich4 and others were basically saying:
We're not going to be able to feed the world. Their solution was
sort of: Well, let a lot of them starve and maybe the rest of us
should stop eating so much, or maybe go vegetarian.
I remember the slogan: 'Live simply so that others may
simply live.'
Yeah, yeah. And that was never going to work. The guy who solved
the problem was [Norman Borlaug, 'the father of the Green
Revolution'], who found a smart way to make rice and wheat much
smaller so that there would be much more. So, it's about better
technology.
Did you argue for investment in R&D 11 or 12 years
ago?
No, because I didn't know it was actually a good idea. That's part
of the reason why I worked with some of the biggest and best
environmental economists to find other ways to tackle global
warming. We were clearly coming to the conclusion that the current
solutions weren't working, and so that was what I was saying
first.
You know, I was simply saying: There are lots of solutions [to
problems such as malaria and HIV] that do work. Let's spend money
here! There are clearly solutions that don't work - the
Kyoto-style solutions - let's not spend money here!
Your books have made a big thing of presenting us with
choices: should we spend money on preventing climate change or on
fighting malaria? (You say that for a mere $3 billion a year we
could reduce its incidence by half.)
Many people say that these are false choices. After all, you
helped to persuade countries such as the United States to reject
Kyoto, but did they then spend their money on fighting malaria
instead? No. And isn't the reason that the rich world has not dealt
with it not that we have squandered our resources on Kyoto but that
we don't care? Climate change affects us directly; malaria
doesn't.
Sure. But actually, if you look at [George W] Bush's legacy, he
was very focused on malaria. Some people from the National Security
Council told me that one of the main reasons why he gave another
$1.3 billion to malaria was because of the outcome of the first
Copenhagen Consensus. But I'm not going to take credit for
that.
I do believe, though, that lots of people actually do want to
help people [in the developing world], but there is a tendency to
focus on a few things that make the headlines, that sound scary and
exciting - and that does suck some of the oxygen out of the
conversation.
A lot of people see you as being naive - which is
strange, perhaps, in a political scientist - because, rather than
persuading the world to look for another way to tackle climate
change, your denunciation of Kyoto in effect encouraged much of the
world to do nothing at all.
Well, but listen, back in 2001 there was no other solution on the
table. I would have loved to have been able to say, 'In the future,
we'll have a better solution'…
But the bandwagon that started rolling, that global
warming is 'the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American
people',5 if you didn't actually give it a push, you at least gave
it room to gain some momentum.
Well, I mean, I would find that a very strange argument. I would
say that if anything it was the amazing exaggeration -
however well-intentioned - that we've seen from Al Gore and many
others, who have said that this is the end of the world and we've
got to throw everything and the kitchen sink at it - these are the
people who have made it possible for the [James] Inhofes of this
world to go to the other extreme. The path that I've been trying to
tread is, if you will, the middle road.
If we had started much sooner saying, 'Right, Kyoto doesn't
work. Let's start thinking about other, smarter ways!'… But 10
years ago when I said this, it was anathema and people were
outraged that I would dare utter this - apostasy, is that
the word? It had these religious overtones. And now everybody is
basically saying, 'Oh yeah, Kyoto is a dead end and it was never
really going to work, and we need to find a smarter way.'
Nonetheless, the official policy is to keep on down the same
road - there is huge inertia. The reaction to the breakdown in
Copenhagen [in 2009] was not 'We need to find a different
approach,' it was simply 'Let's wait a year and say the same things
again in Cancún!' And that is what they'll do next year in Durban
and then next year in Rio. You know, it's almost mind-boggling.
OK, so you feel that we have wasted time
-
Oh, absolutely!
- but you don't feel in any way responsible for
that?
No, no, no. I think that's a crucial point. It is true we've
wasted a lot of time, but it's because everybody in power - except
perhaps for Bush and his administration - has been saying: There's
only one solution, and it's Kyoto-style. And Kyoto was dead before
it was even born.
Is there anyone anywhere who you think is pushing in the
right direction?
There are a few places where they are doing something better, but
very under-the-radar. For instance, the Indians are taxing coal at
the equivalent of half a dollar per tonne of CO2 and spending the
money on research and development. But they're not making a big
show of it, because it still isn't the PC thing to do.
As you yourself point out, there are many measures that
could help to prevent climate change that are both simple and
almost cost-free - for example, planting trees, painting rooftops
white, reducing speed limits… Why aren't we forging ahead with
these things?
Well, I think to a very large extent this is exactly what we saw
with Kyoto: there is one right solution - namely, cutting carbon
emissions. And a large part of the impetus for that is a very, very
different thing from actually solving global warming: it's about,
you know, 'Cars are bad' or something. What this is really
about, I think, is that, no, we don't want industry, we don't want
all this - You know, we want a smaller, cosier society in which we
all care for each other and have more time.
I suppose that attitude may prevail at the deep green
end of things…
Yes, and if you deviate from that deep green argument, you risk a
lot of fallout - and that's not very nice. In some ways my career
has been a good example of that.
Do you really think that the political establishment is
dominated by deep green thinking?
Well, listen, if you were Tony Blair would you want to get
everybody's accolades by saying, 'We're going to cut emissions' or
would you say, 'We're going to paint the roofs white and plant more
trees' and get all the greens on your neck saying you're butting
out?
I don't know if you remember cold fusion - back in '89 for a
couple of months we actually thought it might be possible. The
Los Angeles Times asked a lot of environmentalists what they
thought of this and they were all furious about it,
because it would mean, you know, we'd get all wasteful!
But wait a minute! If this is clean, cheap energy, how can they be
against it? But they were - which sort of suggests that there is a
whole different layer of things below this that people are really
against. Because if this was about solving the problem of global
warming, we'd be asking: What solves it the cheapest?
And so adaptation [to climate change] was totally off the table
in the Nineties, because people felt: If you talk about adaptation,
people won't care about cutting carbon emissions. And there is some
truth to that. But, you know, if you don't want to have all the
solutions on the table, you're essentially saying that you care
more about the particular solution than actually solving the
problem. And the same thing is happening now with
geo-engineering.
There does seem to be a lack of vision, or
courage…
Well, I think to a very large extent it's because this is about
symbolic politics. It's about politicians saying, 'I'm going to
save the world.' They have no interest in actually doing it. Blair
made all these promises, but he never actually did
anything. And if you do symbolic politics, you don't want to screw
it up by annoying the people who are going to be lauding you for
saying it.
Joseph Stiglitz has estimated that the invasion of Iraq
in 2003 will have cost the US $3 trillion by the time it's all
done. (I can't imagine any economist arguing for that on a
cost-benefit basis.) Why do we seem to find it so much easier to
mobilise to go to war, say, than to deal with an environmental
crisis?
I think we make pretty bad decisions when we all get riled up
about something. I think there's this sense that if you get scared
enough, if you get wound up enough, that's the way you have to go.
And it seems to me that that's exactly what we have done with
climate. It was like the oxygen depletion in '86: in five weeks, we
made the biggest environmental decision ever in Denmark - because
of these dead lobsters, essentially. We got into a panic and there
was this sense, 'We've got to do something - and here is
something we know how to do.' And it turned out to be incredibly
costly.
I think in some ways it shows the danger of hyperbole - and
that's the argument that I'm making against climate-change policy,
that it's been driven by hyperbole and that, I would argue, is a
large part of why we haven't been able to do anything for the last
20 years.
The debate over man-made climate change is extremely
heated, and the title Cool It can be read as a rebuke to
both sides. You yourself have been likened to Hitler. How would you
characterise the two sides of the debate? Do you see people as
being ideologically driven? Is everyone honest, disinterested,
serious, well-meaning?
I tend to think of most of the participants in this conversation
as well-meaning and honest. Even the people who say that a lot of
the science is very dodgy, it seems to me, spend a lot of time
trying to find out whether that is true or not. So, I think they
are well-intentioned - and I don't doubt that Al Gore is.
Also, I just find that there is no point disputing people's
motivation: it just blocks any kind of conversation from the
get-go. And of course what you have to remember is, it's not about
convincing Al Gore or Inhofe, it's about convincing the people who
believe those people; and so it really is about engaging
everybody.
Are there no people on the sceptical side whose aim is
merely to protect corporate interests?
Oh, yeah. I'm not naive in that sense. I would definitely believe
that the people who are just being paid by PR companies probably
have no particular moral qualms in saying, 'Hey, if we can create
more confusion, that will probably help our cause.' But the people
that I've met, the people who actually have some intellectual
weight in this debate, it strikes me that they have serious
intellectual reasons for believing what they do - even people like
Fred Singer,6 whom I would tend to disagree with very much.
On the other side, James Hansen7 is said to be 'close to
panic', and you yourself - not being averse to being rhetorical
yourself sometimes - have described people such as Nicholas Stern
as 'screaming'. Do you think these people are just being
hysterical?
No. I've met Nicholas Stern a couple of times and we have debated,
though he doesn't want to debate with me any more. I think he's a
very good economist, but I think what he did in his report was
pretty poor and it was very clear that it was a commissioned
result. Again, I don't doubt that he actually believes what he's
saying…
I don't know about their psychology, but I think their analyses
are wrong. I can only guess, but if Jim Hansen is panicky about the
fact that we're not doing anything, I would say: 'Well, that's
because we're barking up the wrong tree. We're basically trying,
again and again, the same solution that hasn't worked for the last
20 years. We need to look at other solutions.' And to a certain
extent I think that's the point that Jim Hansen has also gotten to
- he advocates that we need to look a lot more at technology and at
fourth-generation nuclear, that kind of thing.
Nicholas Stern, I think, has convinced himself that it's going
to be very costly if we don't do something - though his
[assessment] is vastly exaggerated from the numbers that
he bases it on - and his estimate of the cost of a zero-carbon
society is significantly underestimated. But he never actually did
a cost-benefit, which I thought was on the verge of not
intellectually sound.
In cost-benefit analysis, one has to set a
'discount rate' that makes a judgement about the interests of
future generations and how much weight should be attached to them.
You've set a very high discount rate, is that right, and Nicholas
Stern has set a very low discount rate?
No, I've set a low discount rate and he's set a ludicrously low
one. Most governments will set a much, much higher one than the one
I have used.
The fundamental point is that cost-benefit analysis gives
implicit values to human lives and implicit values to the present
versus the future. Broadly, there are two different ways to
approach this. The empirical one says: Well, how much do we care
about people? We know that in Denmark, for example, we will put in
a roundabout (for £1 million or thereabouts) where at least one
person is killed, but not otherwise - so it must be because we
value a human life at £1 million. And that is validated in many
different circumstances.
It's also very clear that we give a Third World life about
one-tenth of the value of a human life here. That makes people very
uncomfortable, but the point is that we actually act that way -
otherwise, we would place all our new hospitals there, for example.
It's very clear that those values are implicit in our system.
Likewise with the future. If we cared infinitely about the future,
we would just live on porridge and leave everything else to future
generations - and we clearly don't. We say: 'I want a lot, and I'll
leave some for my kids.' And that implicit value is the rate we
used in our estimate.
The other approach is the ethical one that says that all human
lives should be valued equally and the future should be just as
important as the present.
Encapsulated, perhaps, in that saying 'We do not inherit
the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our
children.'
Yes, yes. But the point is that, certainly for the last two or
three hundred years, every generation has been a lot better-off
than their parents. So, should we leave even more for the
future and just starve ourselves? If that is the case, it's the
case for every generation and so everybody should be
living on porridge and leaving an ever larger mountain of stuff for
the future - which is, you know, arguably very silly.
But we don't. And so my real problem with the second approach is
that we are analysing the world as it is, if you will, and simply
saying, 'If you take seriously the judgements you implicitly make,
this is what your priorities should be,' whereas Nicholas Stern is
saying: 'If you accept that everybody, now and in the future, ought
to be equal, this is how the world should be.'
Now, that's fine - but of course it has a lot of other
consequences. We should be spending virtually all our money on the
Third World, and likewise we should be saving virtually everything
for the future. And we don't. And so it seems to me that unless
you're willing to accept all the other implications of Nicholas
Stern's argument, it's not really very helpful. In a sense, you
could say it's just constructed to say: 'If we turn a blind eye to
everything else, we should be doing more on climate.' And that's
obvious.
It's clear from the analysis in your books that we can
be easily hoodwinked by people who sound authoritative. What can
lay people do to avoid being manipulated?
Well, I mean, you shouldn't trust Al Gore, who's a journalist, and
you shouldn't trust Bjørn Lomborg, who's a political scientist,
either. For the science, you should look at what the IPCC tells
you. But remember, they basically cut out cost-benefit from their
purview in 1998 - you could say (and I've no idea whether that's
true) because it didn't come up with the right answer.
And also, you know, use some of your pragmatic 'street smarts'.
When half the world's population don't have food, don't have
education, don't have access to clean drinking water and
sanitation, and a quarter of everybody who dies dies from easily
curable infectious diseases, it's quite obvious to me - and to most
people on this planet - that there are other, more immediate issues
that we need to fix. It doesn't mean we shouldn't fix global
warming also, but it does mean that it cannot be our only priority
and be sort of exaggerated…
But then there is your comment - you know the one I mean
-
Yeah, 'We need to move right now.'
'We all need to move right now.'
But listen, that's exactly the point that I try to make. If we
taxed CO2 at $7 a tonne (which is what we're saying is pretty much
the damage cost of an extra tonne of CO2), it would raise about
$250 billion worldwide, which is about what the EU 2020 policy is
going to cost the world - to reduce temperatures by 0.05ºC by the
end of the century!
If we spent that money differently, we could spend $100 billion
on research and development into green energy technology. Fifty
billion dollars would basically save everybody from the flooding
that we're expecting from global warming (and cool all the world's
cities). And that would leave about $100 billion to deal with all
the other problems: we could give clean drinking water, food,
sanitation, basic health care and education to everybody who needs
them.
My point is that instead of doing the one thing we've signed up
to, which is absolutely silly, we could actually fix global warming
and its impacts and all the other major problems.
The world is spending a trillion dollars a year on all
its armed forces. Why do you never comment on that?
Actually $1.2 [trillion]. The reason why we don't is that we've
tried to set priorities for spending that is meant to do good for
other people, and most people would agree that military spending is
not meant to benefit everyone else - apart, maybe, from the US:
they might argue that that's what their military spending is
for.
Remember, we spend about 98 per cent of our money on ourselves.
I don't say we should stop doing that. There's an argument, 'Well,
if we didn't spend so much on lipstick, or dog food, we could save
the whale,' but I don't think you're ever going to change that -
and I don't think there is necessarily anything wrong with that. We
can have a conversation about should we spend 1, 2 or 3 per cent of
our money on the rest of the world, but it's silly to talk about 10
per cent - and it's certainly not going to be 50 per cent. But I'm
simply saying: whatever the percentage is, shouldn't we try to
spend it in the best possible way?
The US biologist E O Wilson, reviewing The Skeptical
Environmentalist8 in 2001, described your 'sallies' as
'characterized by wilful ignorance, selective quotations, disregard
for communication with genuine experts, and destructive campaigning
to attract the attention of the media rather than scientists'. How
do you react to that kind of comment? I could quote many more like
that.
Well, it's hard to react in one sentence, but you're right, there
are lots of those quotes out there.
I've never debated with him - not for lack of trying but he's
said that he doesn't want to, you know, waste any energy on what
I've been doing. But the people I have met who have made similar
comments I think feel that we need to have some sort of Kyoto-style
approach and since I say that's bad, I must be wrong in every other
way. When they realise that what I'm trying to point out is that
it's not helpful to say that sea-levels are going to rise 20 feet
[by 2100] - because it's not true and also because it panics us and
makes us make bad decisions - and yes, global warming is real but
Kyoto is just not going to work, so let's try a different approach,
I think people start to think: Oh, maybe he has some sort of point.
I don't think that most people will come over to my point of view,
but I think most people will realise that I'm actually
well-intentioned, I have good data - it doesn't mean it's the only
data - and I have valid arguments that are actually worth a
hearing.
I think the best example of that is Rajendra Pachauri,9 who was
the one who compared me to Hitler - in 2010 he wrote a great blurb
for my book. His conversion really happened when he met me a year
and a half ago in Lindau, where there was a climate-change debate
among four Nobels and me. We were sitting next to each other and he
was sort of, 'I find myself agreeing with Lomborg, but…' There was
constantly a 'but', but he was very surprised that I was a much
nicer and much smarter and much more well-informed person than he
expected. And also, I'm sure, he couldn't really believe that a
vegetarian could be a bad person!
But the point is, when people start realising that the arguments
I'm making are not wholly bunk but are genuinely meant and fairly
well substantiated, I think a lot of people gain a lot more respect
for me.
--
1 Supposedly a quotation from a speech made in 1854 by
Chief Si'ahl (Seattle), written up 'from notes' by someone who
heard it and published in 1887
2 Cool It: The skeptical environmentalist's guide to
global warming (CUP, 2007)
3 Smart Solutions to Climate Change: Comparing costs
and benefits, edited by Bjørn Lomborg (CUP, 2010)
4 The US ecologist and author of The Population
Bomb (1968)
5 US Senator James Inhofe in July 2003
6 Fred Singer, who is emeritus professor of environmental
science at the University of Virginia, founded the climate-sceptic
Science and Environmental Policy Project in 1990.
7 Director of the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space
Studies, and George W Bush's chief climate modeller
8 The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the real
state of the world (CUP, 2001)
9 The chair of the IPCC since 2002, who in 2004 asked,
'What is the difference between Lomborg's view of humanity and
Hitler's? … Lomborg thinks of people like numbers.'