The Skeptical Environmentalist.....

[Fmr jarhead]

For those who think that the tree huggers are out of thier minds most of the time, and use fear to control those who are easily swayed.

By Bjorn Lomborg http://www.lomborg.com/books.htm

 

[5stringJeff]

This was a great book. I read it about a year and a half ago. Lomborg does a great job of showing that, while there are still environmental concerns that we should deal with, the vast majority of the hype from the Green Left is just hot air.

 

[Fmr jarhead]

I am all for clean air, clean water and I don't think there is a political candidate that will disagree. I just don't buy the "Litany" that the granola crowds wants to force on to the government's dole.....

 

[Isaac Brock]

It was an interesting read, however as a student in the environmental field it had some very serious flaws. A casual search on the net will find most of the criticism.

The works he cites are rarely the most recent, and are extremely selective. He also is guilty of using the "straw-man argument" with unfair graphs and figures which give false portrayals of his pont (just take a look on how he divides the graph on human driven extinction). The important criticism, is because it is not a scientific paper, his point were not peer reviewed and speficially as I remember in the global warming section, newer data strike his theories as patently false.

Where he gets it right is that some people seek environmentalism for sake of environmentalism at all, which is a good political and social observation. It's a shame he did not do so well on the science part.

 

[NATO AIR]

i enjoyed it even though i am aware of the criticism (mostly correct) about some of his judgements and tactics.

all in all though, it is still a damn good book because it opens up a sector of environmental discussion and policy most people are unaware of.

most importantly, he is speaking and advocating a SANE environmentalism that is sorely lacking in the debate about how far to take environmentalism. Too often, it always come down to advocating a slow crawl on environmental regulation and protection or a full speed ahead (damn the economic consequences!) policy.

in reality, we should be careful and cautious but open to innovation and improvement.