Skewed Priorities? Another AGW Perspective
Bjorn Lomborg is a thorn in the side of many a climate change warrior. As a self-described environmentalist (onetime Greenpeace member), he’s been accused of global warming heresy, largely on account of his book, The Skeptical Environmentalist (1998, English editon 2001). In that book, Lomborg accused climate alarmists of making mountains out of climate molehills, forecasting doom when we had much more urgent needs to address. Fast forward to 2011, and he was taking a more modest tack, admitting that Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) had progressed further, and its impacts were likely to be more severe, than he had previously forecast. Nevertheless, he maintained the future progression, and potential harm, were far less urgent than claimed by climate hawks, when compared with other threats.
Fast forward to 2019, and he has come to admit that climate change is a problem of daunting dimensions. Where he parts ways with most environmentalists and climate scientists is how he ranks climate change against other threats to the well-being of most people and natural systems: e.g. malnutrition, disease, air and water pollution, war, subsistence agriculture, habitat destruction, unsustainable exploitation of natural resources, and failing infrastructure. The last is most glaring in the Third World, where the state of roads, bridges, power delivery systems, flood containment, and the resistance of buildings to earthquakes, high winds, flood, and fire, are all woefully inadequate by the standards of the developed world. He disagrees with climate warriors who overwhelmingly prioritize the elimination of fossil fuel use as soon as possible, regardless of the consequences to other economic activities.*
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