Today's extremists appear to be divided between the Chicken Littles who tell us the sky is falling and the Panglosses who tell us that everything is okay.  The truth undoubtedly lies somewhere in between these positions--in the hands of scientists and naturalists looking at particular environmental problems and considering particular solutions.

One of the latest Panglosses is the statistician Bjorn Lomberg, who argues in "The truth about the environment" that since four of the arguments made by Chicken Littles Paul Ehrlich and Lester Brown apparently aren't as strong as they were thought to be, that everything is okay environmentally.  What are these arguments?

1. Natural resources are running out.

2.  The population is ever growing, leaving less and less to eat.

3.  Species are becoming extinct in vast numbers; forests are disappearing and fish stocks are collapsing.

4.  The planet's air and water are becoming ever more polluted.

Now Lomberg does a good job of dismantling the first two arguments.  But his arguments depend on the fact that humanity has had fifty years to work on the problem of efficient food production and use of raw materials.  What Ehrlich and Malthus failed to take into account is the human reaction to problems--when one has them, one solves them.  The growth of population in China, for example, has been resolved through draconian measures of birth control.  And the Green Revolution, created by science to combat starvation, has successfully resolved that problem.

In short, arguments one and two don't apply because we recognized them as problems and worked actively to resolve them.

Arguments three and four offer less help to the enemies of environmentalism.  Lomberg recognizes that the threat of biodiversity loss "is real, but exaggerated." The loss of tropical forests is not 2-4% per year as some have claimed, but only 0.5%.  This means the tropical forest will last four to eight times longer than estimated.  Is this cause for celebration, or does it just delay the inevitable?

As for species lost, Lomborg argues that it's much less than the 50% that some environmentalists estimated, perhaps as little as 0.7%.  But Lomborg's figures apparently cover only animals, and don't mention plant, insect or microbe species, all of which might prove very useful to medical research and in preserving the ecological balance of the land.  And again, the lesser losses only string out the time until a significant loss of biodiversity happens--unless we take action.

Most damning of his arguments is his statement that pollution is exaggerated.  Why?  Because "air pollution diminishes when a society becomes rich enough to be able to afford to be concerned about the environment. (p.4)"  In other words, when places like America and Europe develop environmental groups and environmental politics result in laws like the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts.  In other words, things get better because the environmentalists push to make them better.  This argument can hardly make anti-environmental people happy.

Lomborg acknowledges that air pollution is increasing in many developing countries, but assumes that when they become wealthy, they'll have their environmental movements, too.

At the same time, though, Lomborg argues that people worry more about the environment than they need to, make more of environmental disasters like El Nino than they should, and worry about problems like waste disposal that are easily dealt with. Yet when Lomborg puts together a table (p.6) to demonstrate the cost/risk ratio of many policies, he makes the point that many of the most effective environmental policies have already been made.  In other words, the very success of the environmental movement works against some of their current attempts to make things better.  Emission controls for industrial plants, for example, save millions of lives compared to seat belts or air bags.

Lomborg would calculate a cost/benefit ratio for things like the Kyoto Treaty to prevent global warming, but his figures hardly provide support for those who deny that global warming exists.  He bluntly states that CO2 emissions are responsible for climate warming.  His argument is that it is simply less costly to pay the price for that warming--use the money to recompense those affected by warming--than to try and prevent it.

Bjorn Lomborg's skepticism is probably a good thing for the environmental movement.  Criticism is likely to keep them on their toes, and since the problems of the environment are so numerous, a cost/benefit calculation is a necessary step to figure out what needs to be done to fix things.  But enemies of the environment have little to cheer about when one looks closely at Lomborg's figures, for he assumes that a vigorous environmental movement is fighting to reverse pollution and slow environmental depredation. A vigorous environmentalism, in other words, is necessary for his skepticism--Pangloss needs Chicken Little, after all.

McMaken's thought that a "cooling trend at the poles" signals another ice age is simply bad interpretation of inaccurate science. There isn't a cooling trend "at the poles"--there's a slight cooling trend at the South Pole.  On the other hand, the Antarctica peninsula recorded the highest raise in temperature in the world over the last twenty years, and ice in the northern polar regions has been reported by NASA as thinning out fast. Mountain glaciers are retreating, tropical plants and animals are advancing northward.

But global warming doesn't mean that every part of the globe turns toasty warm in a uniform way.  The changes in weather patterns caused by slow warming may cause some areas of the planet--like the eastern United States and South Pole--to temporarily get colder for a time. Overall, most measurements indicate that things are getting warmer, and seizing on one indicator--the South Pole--is the last refuge of scientific illiteracy.

McMaken's counterargument to that is that warm is better, anyway.  Tell that to the residents of coastal areas, lowlands, and the Pacific Island nations threatened with the permanent flooding of their property.  McMaken's last refuge, then, is to claim, in essence, that "Stuff Happens."  The thermometer goes up, it goes down, and nothing one can do about it.  All in God's hands, you know.

This is a strange argument, indeed, from the Culture (or is it Cult) of Personal Responsibility.  Those who tell us that we are responsible for our own actions fall mute when it comes to taking responsibility for air and water pollution, global warming and whatnot.  Take responsibility, Americans, for your wasteful lifestyle that creates a quarter of the world's CO2 and other greenhouse gases.  Take responsibility for the incandescent lightbulbs, the SUVs, the three televisions, swimming pool heaters, central heat and air, etc., etc., etc.  If we can't stop global warming, we can recognize that we've caused a good part of it, and take steps to help all those we've impoverished and made homeless.  Doing nothing is no longer an ethical choice.

James Hall, From the Left