Controversial Danish Eco-Skeptic Bjorn Lomborg is currently in Israel.
Today he is due to present a lecture at the Knesset arguing that funds set aside for environmental protection would be better spent on research and development for the “possible” negative effects of global warming.Professor Lomborg, author of the book, ‘The Skeptical Environmentalist’, which ruffled many green feathers some years back for his dismissal of some scientists opinions upon the speed and rate of global warming, has recently set up the Copenhagen Consensus Centre to study human existence.
Lomborg discredits Nobel Laureate Al Gore’s data on the rise of sea levels: Gore predicts 6 metres over a short period of years, contributing to a catastrophic climate change, including flooding and worldwide devastation.
Lomborg’s figures are at a few dozen centimetres, over a longer period of time, which can be mitigated by technological readiness, he claims.He is here to address a special Knesset panel on Climate Change, as part of the annual Herzilya Conference on planning; proposing that funds given over to reducing greenhouse gases, i.e preventative planning to reduce the future threat of climate change, are a waste of resources and that they divert funds from human needs now, such as welfare and education.
Instead, Lomborg argues, funding needs to be concentrated in a few countries only to developing technology to help the rest of the world to ride the coming inevitable (and unpreventable) wave of climate change, and produce clean energy.With relation to concerns over increased hurricane activity, Lomborg told Haaretz that “experience shows that damage and loss can be prevented mainly by proper planning of construction and drainage” in threatened areas.
“If it’s going to be that much hotter, then people should have more air conditioning and cooling of urban areas by plants and water features,” Lomborg says. He adds that in the future more people will die of the heat, but fewer will die of the cold.
“The implementation of the Kyoto Protocol [to reduce greenhouse gases] will save a few bears a year,” Lomborg says. “If we stop hunting the bears we will save nearly 300.”This latter statement is quite ridiculous, and adds little to the debate.But GreenProphet believes in the spirit of open, reasoned debate, and (if we can agree on a range of variables and possible scenarios for the planet in the future), we must come together with all shades and hues to acknowledge human culpability for environmental degradation, and work on (possibly several) solutions for a sustainable survival.
::http://www.lomborg.com/The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World
Author: James Murray-White
Growing up in a green village outside Cambridge, UK gave me an eye into the natural world, and years later, after being an actor, dramatist, weary traveller and anthropologist, the environment fires me up the most – and the need to save and nurture it… while we live within it. I now live in the UK, with partner Tania and 2 pesky cats – writing and filming the world (slowly making a documentary about the Bedouin situation) take up my creative time. I do this while growing things organically and composting profusely take up the remainder. James can be reached at james (at) greenprophet (dot) com.
