Bjorn Lomborg, The Skeptical Environmentalist

Here’s Bjorn Lomborg (pictured), author of “The Skeptical Environmentalist,” speaking at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think-tank in New York City, in a video shot in 2008.

His viewpoint in a nutshell: Yes, man-made climate change is a reality, but a) it’s not going to be a disaster, b) environmentalists don’t present their case on the subject in a fair and balanced manner, and c) dealing with it via emissions reductions is going to be horrifically expensive.

However, there are a few points he leaves out, for some reason:

• The economic growth associated with the development of cleantech is predicted to more than outweigh the costs.

• Climate change is just one of the forms of damage to human health and the environment that stems from fossil fuel consumption.

• We tacitly retard the development of renewable energy by allowing the externalities of fossil fuels consumption to go unnoticed.

• The projections of things like sea level rise caused by climate change are, by necessity, extremely vague; the increase in CO2 levels in our atmosphere is unprecedented; we’re hard-put to predict the results of run-away processes like the change in albedo, the melting of the tundra, the possible shutdown of the oceans’ thermohaline currents, etc.

Also, Lomborg underestimated the precipitous decline in the prices of solar PV and wind (though he can hardly be blamed for that).  He says, “The cost of solar energy is five times that of traditional sources.  By 2060, perhaps the cost of solar energy might be at parity, and then people will install PV simply because of the forces of pure market economics.”  Well, outside of the fact that this happened in seven years (not 52), I have to say that he’s right here; in fact, it is market economics that’s driving the rapid migration to renewables, and that, of course, is the theme of my most recent book (“Bullish on Renewable Energy”).

After writing all this, I came across this much larger chronicling of the errors in Lomborg’s presentation.

Let me close with something that made me laugh: The fellow who introduces Lomborg at the beginning of the video says that the speaker has had to deal with a deluge of unfairness from environmentalists who have assailed his academic credentials, his motives, etc.  That’s not hard to believe, given the sources of his enormous funding and their right-wing political affiliations.