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The Skeptical Environmentalist
Bjorn Lomborg
Measuring the Real State of the World
Cambridge University Press
September 2001
On Sale: September 10, 2001
540 pages ISBN: 0521010683 EAN: 9780521010689 Trade Size (reprint)
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Non-Fiction
Bjørn Lomborg, a former member of Greenpeace, challenges
widely held beliefs that the world environmental situation
is getting worse and worse in his new book, The Skeptical
Environmentalist. Using statistical information from
internationally recognized research institutes, Lomborg
systematically examines a range of major environmental
issues that feature prominently in headline news around the
world, including pollution, biodiversity, fear of chemicals,
and the greenhouse effect, and documents that the world has
actually improved. He supports his arguments with over 2500
footnotes, allowing readers to check his sources. Lomborg
criticizes the way many environmental organizations make
selective and misleading use of scientific evidence and
argues that we are making decisions about the use of our
limited resources based on inaccurate or incomplete
information. Concluding that there are more reasons for
optimism than pessimism, he stresses the need for
clear-headed prioritization of resources to tackle real, not
imagined, problems. The Skeptical Environmentalist offers
readers a non-partisan evaluation that serves as a useful
corrective to the more alarmist accounts favored by campaign
groups and the media. Bjørn Lomborg is an associate
professor of statistics in the Department of Political
Science at the University of Aarhus. When he started to
investigate the statistics behind the current gloomy view of
the environment, he was genuinely surprised. He published
four lengthy articles in the leading Danish newspaper,
including statistics documenting an ever-improving world,
and unleashed the biggest post-war debate with more than 400
articles in all the major papers. Since then, Lomborg has
been a frequent participant in the European debate on
environmentalism on television, radio, and in newspapers.
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