The skeptical environmentalist

Björn Lomberg

This book is, without doubt, required reading for anyone who wishes to seriously tackle the challenge of sustainability.

Bjørn Lomborg, an Associate Professor of Statistics at the Department of Political Sciences of Denmark's University of Aarhus, has made a substantial effort to assess what he calls "measuring the real state of the world". Full of quotations, notes and bibliographical references of all sorts, Lomborg presents himself as an ex-member of Greenpeace who has become the enfant terrible of the ecologist movement. He denounces in fluent, accessible language the inconsistencies committed (according to him) by the scientific community in analysing the "real" state of the world.

Given his background, and the subjects he deals with (which range from biodiversity to climate change), some of his claims appear somewhat rash, and he has been the subject of fierce criticism by the very scientific community he questions.

Lomborg's main problem is probably the fact that he is an expert in statistics, given that his claims often seem to stem more from a (perfectly admissible) ideological position, than the statistic rigour that is to be expected of him in the treatment of information and data.

Especially recommendable is his view of climate change, contained in a special chapter on the subject.

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