Bjorn Lomborg interview in the San Francisco Examiner

'We can do immense good' 2005: Challenges and Opportunities
Published: Friday, February 4, 2005 11:26 AM PST

In 2001, Danish economist Bjorn Lomborg enraged the environmental community by publishing his book "The Skeptical Environmentalist," which claims the planet is not in as dire a condition as many would have us believe.

With the Kyoto Protocol aimed at curbing global warming set to take effect next week, Lomborg spoke with Examiner reporter Josh Wein to discuss his views on the world's problems. His new book, "Global Crises, Global Solutions," argues there are other, more pressing issues that deserve the world's resources.

EXAMINER: With Kyoto set to take effect next week, we've seen a number of global warming headlines recently that claim the world is headed to certain catastrophe. Where do you think this comes from? BJORN

LOMBORG: I think it's curious because global warming really has become the predominant concern of our time. It has become the thing that you care for if you are a good person. The positive part about this is it tells you that a lot of people really do care about the world. Bottom line, that's a tremendously positive thing. But, and there is a big but, we are barking up the wrong tree. The U.N. climate panel head just said that we might all die from global warming; this is just way beyond the pale of what the U.N. climate panel tells us. It tells us, yes, there are going to be problems. By the way, it tells us there will also be advantages of global warming. Most of the impacts of global warming will be problems, but you need to put it into context. You need to put it into consideration with all the other problems of the world.

Q: There are advantages to global warming?

A: Absolutely. I come from Denmark, and there it's pretty cold. The environmental assessment of the impact of global warming in Denmark is that overall it will be slightly positive. We'll have better agricultural production. We'll probably have better forestry. We will, however, also have more flash rain. That will be a negative. One of the most typical examples we're told is that people will die from heat waves from global warming. That's true. People will die from heat waves. What you really seem to forget is in most advanced countries, the cold deaths outweigh heat deaths two-to-one. And of course while you will get more heat deaths, you will also get many fewer cold deaths, and actually a research team looking at the cold and heat deaths around Europe estimated that for Britain global warming will mean 18,000 fewer deaths.

Q: Do you think that global warming, like predicting the weather, is complex and chaotic? Or is there some sort of linear pattern we can take from the data? How do we know which we're dealing with?

A: It makes sense to try and predict it. That's how we've gotten to where we are. We try to use science to understand how things work. But just like we use scientists to be better able, we should also use economists to tell us how much this is going to cost and how much good is it going to do. And that is exactly what the Copenhagen Consensus and my new book is about. We can do fairly little about global warming at a fairly high cost. Maybe there are other things we'd like to be spending our money on doing first.

Q: Where should we be spending our money then?

A: The top four priorities we identified are doing something about HIV/AIDS, doing something about malnutrition, doing something about free trade and doing something about malaria. Those four things are things where for very little investment, we can do immense amounts of good. Global warming has not actually been a harm to the First World so much. It has mainly been a harm to the Third World, because they have much less infrastructure and because they are in places where it's already pretty damn warm. The question is, do we want to help them by implementing Kyoto, which will cost a lot of money and will do fairly little good a hundred years from now? Basically, all models agree that Kyoto, if everyone agreed to it, would postpone global warming by about six years, in 2100. Just to give you a sense of the proportions: Doing Kyoto will probably cost about $150 billion a year, for the rest of the century. That's not a trivial amount of money. But the United Nations estimates that for half that amount we could solve all major basic problems, we could provide clean drinking water, sanitation, education and basic health care to every single human being on the face of the planet.

Q: Often in the talk about pollution, the U.S. is singled out as being the world's worst polluter. Do you think there is some anti-Americanism in this? Even among finger-wagging scientists?

A: In general, to say that the U.S. is the world's worst polluter really just plays into this idea that wealthy industrialized societies have got to be polluting a lot. That's simply not true. Typically, the countries that are the worst polluted places on earth are developing countries. It makes sense. If you're rich, you can afford to worry about the environment, but if you're poor, it's very hard to get people to worry about the world fifty or sixty years down the line. It is true, however, with carbon dioxide. The U.S. is the worst in that respect, and I think that's probably why that gets thrown around so much. The U.S. is a very energy-inefficient society, compared to other societies. In certain ways it makes for a better quality of living. I only have a bike, I don't have a car. It means that I go grocery shopping with my bags hanging off the handle bars. Here in the United States my friends all go shopping in their cars and they pull right into their garages. It's a different quality of living and it has certain environmental costs.

Q: It's fine to say that large governments should focus on problems such as malaria and malnutrition, but many people in the Bay Area like to "think globally and act locally." Many people sort their trash, drive hybrid vehicles. What's the best way for individuals to think about these problems?

A: The curious part is that you actually could make the decision to stop spending all that time sorting trash, which is very close to being inefficient. Our whole idea of recycling comes from this worry that we're running out of resources, which we're not. So it really doesn't make much sense. Of course, we should treat our garbage well. But it's just simply not a huge problem. If you want to get involved and not just show that you care, but actually make an impact, then choose the things you worry about well. The thing I try to point out is that particulate air pollution kills 120,000 people a year in the United States. That's many more people than die in car accidents. That's a huge problem. Compare this to pesticide residues, which a lot of people worry about. It's sort of a foundation of the environmental movement all the way from Rachel Carson, our worry that we're going to get cancer from this kind of thing. Pesticide residue probably kills about 20 people a year in the U.S. In an ideal world, we will tackle both problems, but clearly we should deal with the big problem first.

Q: There's almost a born-again evangelical quality to your work, as if you've seen the light and now you're out preaching the good word. Where do you think this comes from, and whom are you trying to convince?

A: I'm hoping that's not true. I don't feel that I'm out there preaching. But I am out there saying there are very simple things that we could do that are very cheap and that will do an immense amount of good. I'm trying to make people think about priorities. It's not about saying "Everything is important." We should do very good things before we do good things.

BJORN LOMBORG Age: 40
Education: One year at the University of Georgia as an undergraduate; master's in political science from Aarhus University in Denmark, 1991; doctorate from University of Copenhagen, 1994. Professional
Experience: The author of several books, including "The Skeptical Environmentalist"; recently stepped down from a teaching position at Aarhus University. Book he would most liked to have written: "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Society," by Jared Diamond.