Interesting ideas interspersed with nonsense - by nikhil bhatla: July 2006 Archives

Gary - May 27, 2006, 6:13p
Check out this article at Salon on the carbon neutral market:

http://salon.com/news/feature/2006/05/26/offsets/print.html

omar - May 28, 2006, 1:45p
my usagecame in at 12800, a little less than average. this is likely because i don't own a car (though all my flying causes the number to go way up!).

something that hit me pretty hard as i learned more about climate change came from a talk i saw by larry brilliant. he said that it's quite likely that if the climate continues to change as is, then most of bangladesh will be washed away, and all the good we thought we were doing with microfinance in that country will also be washed away. ie climate change can smash a lot of good.

jonathan - Apr 8, 2007, 8:18p
Although I haven't read this book yet (I'll take a look soon), I definitely disagree with the notion that environmental problems can be put off to a later date. I have a couple questions about his reasoning:

You say: "Improving environmental problems generally costs more and provides fewer benefits than spending on other issues..."

How does he measure benefits? Often benefits are measured over far too short a time scale, and it is inherently difficult to measure the benefit from preventing the destruction of some environmental system, because the effects of that destruction are too complex to predict accurately.

The reasoning that "environmental problems ... aren't well-understood or urgent enough to warrant a high level of attention right now" is short sighted and misleading. Although the dynamics of many of the ecosystems we are destroying are not well-understood, the general principals that loss of biodiversity and overtaxing of natural resources are harmful is definitely known. With regards to them not being urgent, many of the problems we are creating are irreversible. If we want to be at all cautious, we should act now so as to solve problems before they happen.

Basically my question is: are these issues dealt with in the book? If so, how?

If you're interested in an argument as to why environmental problems are urgent, and why they are not separate from the social problems of health care, transportation, civil war, etc., please read Collapse by Jared Diamond. As the Science review said "It is probably the most important book you will ever read."

Oh, by the way, I met you at the caltech BMS visit day if you're wondering who I am.

nikhil - Apr 9, 2007, 12:06a
Hey jonathan,

Thanks for the comment. I wrote this awhile back, so I dug back in the book to get you your answers.

Skeptical Environmentalist is basically a data-dense textbook that presents numerous statistics regarding the costs and benefits of various social policies, most notably policies directed toward the environment and human health. It is one of the most rigorously researched books I've ever read, with nearly 3000 endnotes for its 350 pages, and a bibliography with roughly 2000 sources.

A good example of one area he examined is policy toward pesticides. For a variety of reasons, we live in a society that has a deep fear of chemicals and other "synthetics", especially when it comes to ingesting them. I'm not suggesting that this is unfounded, but that such health risks need to be put in perspective with other health risks. For example, Lomborg points out that "our intake of coffee is about 50 times more carcinogenic than our intake of DDT before it was banned, more than 1,200 times more carcinogenic than our present DDT intake, and more than 66 times more carcinogenic than the most dangerous present-day pesticide intake, ETU." (235) He draws this conclusion from his comparison of the relative cancer risk of the average American daily intake of various foods and synthetic pesticides. (234) How did he get the data on relative cancer risks? By examining the data on rodent exposure to such chemicals.

Based on this data, it would be more benficial to human health to reduce the carcinogenic content of coffee than reduce usage of pesticides. But is this the policy we have today? No. Many environmental organizations are focused on reducing pesticide use and increasing the availability of organics, which is all fine, but likely not the best prioritization of human energy or orientation for social policy.

Lomborg goes on to detail the economic costs of banning pesticides, where he cites another professor's estimate of $4B lost annually in the US. (246) Banning pesticides altogether would reduce yields in Denmark by 16-84% and cause a price increase of 30-120%. More expensive fruits and vegetables means lower consumption, which would lead to a substantial increase in cancer since fruits and vegetables are believed to reduce likelihood of cancer. So his point is that not only would the transition to a pesticide-free society cost a good chunk of change, it would also lead to more cancer deaths.

In general, Lomborg measures benefits based on the human life cost (changes in death rates and life expectancy). I agree, its hard to measure the long-term impact of environmental damage, but he does a good job going back into the historical data and teasing out trends (except in the case of global warming, which I described previously). Not to say that he doesn't value the environment in and of itself - he was a member of Greenpeace before he started working on this book.

Now to the topic of deforestation. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the overall area covered by forest has not changed much since 1950, leveling at about 30% land area, or 4B hectares. (111) He says that globally we've lost about 20% of the original forest cover since humans started doing agriculture. (Goudie 1993) Since wood accounts for 25% of the energy consumption in the developing world as a whole and 50% in Africa, dramatically limiting cutting would have a very bad impact on development in poorer countries. He also states that "our entire consumption of wood and paper can be catered for by the tree growth of just 5% of the current forest area." (115, citing Bailey 1995) Fundamentally, Lomborg finds that "it seem hypocritical to accept that we have benefited tremendously from felling large sections of our own forests but not to allow developing countries to harvest the same advantages." (117) I couldn't agree more.

So Lomborg isn't advocating environmental destruction - in this case, he's just going to the data and pointing out that the hype around deforestation is overblown and really not something to worry too much about, given the conditions today. He's not advocating that we destroy biodiversity, but that stuff isn't as bad as we've been led to believe.

I hope these examples help to answer your questions. His arguments are intricate and rely on a ton of data. I'd be happy to discuss this more if you have some counter-data or believe that Lomborg's analysis is flawed in some way. All in all, I was impressed by the analytical process in the book.

It should be noted that the Danish Ecological Council posted a detailed rebuttal of the book, available here: http://www.ecocouncil.dk/download/sceptical.pdf . I've downloaded it but haven't gotten a chance to read it yet. And of course, Lomborg has his rebuttal to the rebuttal: http://www.lomborg.com/Reply%20to%20Skeptical%20Questions.pdf

Also, I bought Collapse over a year ago and its been waiting patiently on my shelf to be read. Diamond's earlier book, "Guns, Germs, and Steel", was one of the best books I've ever read (on my top 11 list: http://nikhil.superfacts.org/archives/2007/01/top_11_book_rec.html ). Thanks for the recommendation - that should bump it higher in my queue.

jonathan - Apr 10, 2007, 4:45p
I'm not trying to troll. But in case anyone is thinking of picking up this book, or has read it and is considering its ideas, please see:

www.anti-lomborg.com

http://www.lomborg.com/files/Microsoft%20Word%20-%20Reply%20to%20Nature.pdf

Or just read the Wikipedia article.

Interesting ideas interspersed with nonsense - RSS - by nikhil bhatla, nbhatla@mit.edu -