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I've known about that website for several months. It doesn't change the fact that the environmental doomsayers have been consistently wrong in all of their major predictions of doom and gloom ever since the 1960s.
Here's my amazon.com review of Lomborg's book:
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"The Skeptical Environmentalist" by Bjorn Lomborg is a wonderful book about the environment. The book is very logical and rational. It's full of facts, data, and empirical evidence. It's extensively well footnoted. The book would make an excellent source of information for anyone who cares about the environment, for anyone who wants to learn more about the environment, and for any student who is doing a research paper on the environment for school.
Just as interesting as the book is, is the story of how the book came to be. About 30 years ago, a bunch of radical environmental doomsayers made a bunch of predictions. According to them, before the year 2000, all sorts of terrible things were going to happen: the world would be in the middle of an ice age, there would be no trees left, most people in the U.S. and in the rest of the world would have starved to death, the air pollution would be so bad that everyone would have to wear a gas mask, there would be a major reduction in global life expectancy, the entire country of England would not exist, the entire South American rainforest would be gone, half the species of the world would be extinct, and the world's supplies of oil, copper, gold, natural gas, tin, zinc, mercury, and lead would all be gone.
But the doomsayers had a "solution" to all of these problems. Their "solution" was to bring an end to capitalism and economic growth. They wanted all the governments of the world to pass legislation to halt economic growth. They wanted the government to take control of all economic activity, and all natural resources.
Well, we ignored their advice. On the contrary, since then, world GNP has more than doubled. And it's precisely because of capitalism and economic growth that we were able to avoid these catastrophes. Capitalism and economic growth gave us the ability to pay for the invention and use of new technology to make the environment better. The air and water are cleaner now than 30 years ago. There are more trees today. Adjusted for inflation, prices of oil, copper, and all those other natural resources have gone down, which means that the supply of known available resources has gone up. Technology makes it easier and easier to find things and extract them. And technology makes it easier and easier to invent and use substitutes. Because of economic growth, we now use fiber optics. Compared to copper wire, a fiber optic cable uses fewer materials, but carries more information. Because of all the farming technology that doomsayers hate (pesticides, genetic engineering, biotech, chemical fertilizer) we now grow more food on less land. So some past farmland is now set aside as a forest preserve. The average person in the world eats more calories today than ever before. Global life expectancy keeps going up and up. England still exists. The amazon rain forest hasn't even come close to disappearing. The vast majority of the world's species are still intact. The world has not entered into an ice age.
So, the doomsayers said that capitalism and economic growth would cause all sorts of problems. But in reality, capitalism and economic growth made things better. So the doomsayers were wrong.
So, along comes a guy named Julian Simon. He explained why the doomsayers were wrong. He explained that things had gotten better. And he explained that capitalism and economic growth were the reason that things had gotten better. His best book is "The Ultimate Resource 2," which I highly recommend, and which can be ordered at amazon.com
Well, the doomsayers became very angry at Simon. They called him all sorts of nasty names. They hated him with a passion. They tried very hard to discredit him.
But there's one thing that the doomsayers never did: they never provided any actual evidence to explain why Simon was wrong.
Furthermore, the doomsayers continued to make all sorts of doomsayer predictions for the future. For example, the Earth Day 2000 special issue of Time magazine is full of doomsayer predictions.
Then along comes Bjorn Lomborg. He was sure that Simon was wrong. After all, everyone "knew" that Simon was wrong. But unlike Simon's other critics, Lomborg decided to do actual research. So he spent a lot of time doing intense, detailed research. And much to his surprise, he ended up proving that Simon was right.
And that's why "The Skeptical Environmentalist" is such a great book. It's a great book because it's based on logic, rational thinking, data, facts, and empirical evidence. If everyone reads "The Skeptical Environmentalist," then the doomsayers will be exposed as the liars and frauds that they are.
As it stands right now, the doomsayers can continue to get away with making their bogus statements, because most people are unaware of what has been happening in the real world.
The doomsayers like to take advantage of the fact that most people aren't aware of their past bogus predictions. Younger people have never heard about these failed predictions of the past, and older people forget that the predictions had ever been made. The mainstream media treats the doomsayers as being credible, and labels them as being "experts on the environment." Anyone who disagrees with the doomsayers gets labeled as being "uncaring" or as being "against the environment." The doomsayers prey upon the ignorance of their audience. The best thing that people like Bjorn Lomborg can do to deal with this is to tell the truth. In the debate over the environment, the truth is the best weapon.
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