Green Options » Bjorn Lomborg http://greenoptions.com/tag/bjorn-lomborg Posts tagged 'Bjorn Lomborg' Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:09:29 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 en Bjorn Lomborg on Who the Environmentalists Forgot http://sustainablog.org/2009/06/04/bjorn-lomborg-on-who-the-environmentalists-forgot/ http://sustainablog.org/2009/06/04/bjorn-lomborg-on-who-the-environmentalists-forgot/#comments Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:09:29 +0000 Simran Sethi http://sustainablog.org/2009/06/04/bjorn-lomborg-on-who-the-environmentalists-forgot/ bjorn lomborgWhen the headlines told us that the global warming debate was over, it seemed like we environmentalists could breathe a collective sigh of relief. The United States elected a cap-and-trade-sympathetic administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency says it is going to exert some of the “P” in its acronym after it formally labeled carbon dioxide a pollutant last month. So now that the debate is over, has the discussion ended?

Much of what I assumed to be climate consensus has been turned on its head since I moved to the Midwest from New York. Meaning, there a lot of people here in the Middle who care about environmental issues but are not convinced climate change is related to human activities and/or is as dire as predicted. I believe it is. . .and I also believe that in order to get buy-in from such diverse constituents, it’s imperative that we engage in dialog with those who hold differing opinions.

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]]> http://sustainablog.org/2009/06/04/bjorn-lomborg-on-who-the-environmentalists-forgot/feed/ Red, Green & Blue: Is It Time to Just Live With Climate Change? http://shirleysilukgregory.greenoptions.com/2007/10/09/red-green-blue-is-it-time-to-just-live-with-climate-change/ http://shirleysilukgregory.greenoptions.com/2007/10/09/red-green-blue-is-it-time-to-just-live-with-climate-change/#comments Tue, 09 Oct 2007 20:23:55 +0000 Shirley Siluk Gregory http://shirleysilukgregory.greenoptions.com/2007/10/09/red-green-blue-is-it-time-to-just-live-with-climate-change/ U.S. after one meter sea-level rise (NOAA)An article in this week’s Time magazine raises an interesting point about climate change. While there’s a growing consensus that global warming is real, the author writes, there’s also an emerging body of opinion that says it’s either too late to stop it or it’s not worth trying to stop. We’d be better off, these pundits say, investing in ways to make it easier to deal with the effects of climate change: build stronger dams, dikes and levees; do more to prevent the spread of diseases like malaria; provide more aid to help the poor live with increasingly hotter, or damper, or drier, or stormier conditions; etc.

While my initial reaction to people like Bjorn Lomborg, who has written, Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming, has been to get irritated and defensive, some nagging voice in the back of my head has been asking, "What if they’re right?" What if we really would be better just forging ahead with a sort-of global Marshall Plan to protect people from the potential impact of climate change, and throw in the towel on trying to curb emissions, tax carbon, etc. After all, the political will to do anything meaningfully preventive seems lacking around the world (in some places more than in others). Is reactive the better way to go? And, if so, is there any more political will for that approach?

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