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07-01-2008 - Bjorn Lomborg named one of the "50 people who could save the planet" by the UK Guardian
A Guardian panel, taking nominations from key environmental figures, met to compile a list of the Guardian "ultimate green heroes." Bjorn Lomborg was named one of the "50 people who could save the planet" by the Guardian newspaper in the UK, together with German chancellor Angela Merkel, Al Gore, Leonardo DiCaprio, Geneticist Craig Venter, London mayor Ken Livingstone, Nobel prize winner Wangari Maathai, and Australian Environment Minister Peter Garrett.
Their verdict on Lomborg: "Bjørn Lomborg, 42, has become an essential check and balance to runaway environmental excitement. In 2004, the Dane made his name as a green contrarian with his bestselling book The Skeptical Environmentalist, and outraged scientists and green groups around the world by arguing that many claims about global warming, overpopulation, energy resources, deforestation, species loss and water shortages are not supported by analysis. He was accused of scientific dishonesty, but cleared his name. He doesn't dispute the science of climate change, but questions the priority it is given. He may look increasingly out of step, but Lomborg is one of the few academics prepared to challenge the consensus with credible data."
17-12-2007 - Article in International Herald Tribune
Rhetorical excess undercuts the case against global warming.
By John Vinocur.
09-12-2007 - Book of the Year in Sydsvenska, Sweden
Kenneth Hermele has chosen Cool It as one of the top five books of 2007 in Sweden.
07-12-2007 - Interview in VG Nett, Norway
Miljø-Hitlers klimaplan
By Geir Terje Ruud
Han omtales som "Hitler" og en "trussel mot menneskeheten", men har en billigere plan enn den de jobber med på Bali.
12-10-2007 - Interview in China Post
"Awarding it to Al Gore cannot be seen as anything other than a political statement. Awarding it to the IPCC is well-founded," said Bjorn Lomborg, author of "The Skeptical Environmentalist.
He criticized Gore's film as having "some very obvious mistakes, like the argument that we're going to see six meters of sea-level rise," he said.
"They (Nobel committee) have a unique platform in getting people's attention on this issue, and I regret they have used it to make a political statement."
07-10-2007 - Interview in Sunday Times
Bryan Appleyard meets Bjorn Lomborg
Bjorn Lomborg's first book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, raised the temperature in green circles more radically than global warming. Eco-warriors see him as a heretic, deniers as a secular saint. Time magazine names him as one of the 100 most influential people on earth
04-10-2007 - Time: Eco-Rebels
Maybe it happened the day after Hurricane Katrina or the night Al Gore won an Oscar for An Inconvenient Truth, but the first phase of the global-warming debate has ended. Even Skeptic-in-Chief George W. Bush recently convened a global-warming summit, where Condoleezza Rice told foreign diplomats that "climate change is a real problem--and human beings are contributing to it."
28-09-2007 - Time: Let's Chill About Global Warming
Danish statistician, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist (2001) and one of the TIME 100 Scientists & Thinkers of 2004, Bjorn Lomborg, 42, sat down with TIME's Laura Blue in London to discuss carbon cuts, his many critics, and his new book, Cool It: the Skeptical Environmentalist's guide to Global Warming, published in the U.S. in September 2007.
25-09-2007 - Margaret Wente, The Globe and Mail (Canada)
Global warming's cooler heads
How is any normal person supposed to make sense of the global warming debate? I don't blame you if you've given up. The trouble is, it's not a debate at all. It's a heavily politicized screaming match, with claims and counterclaims bombarding you from all directions. What can we do? And who the heck can we believe?
If you're in this fix, Bjorn Lomborg is your man. The Danish environmentalist has just published an essential guide for the perplexed, called Cool It. He covers all the bases in language anyone can understand. He doesn't deny the reality of global warming. Instead, he puts it in perspective. Yes, it's getting warmer, and the impact will be serious. But scary headlines about looming catastrophe are wildly exaggerated. We need simpler and smarter solutions than the ones that are getting all the attention.
And finally - listen up, folks - global warming is not an imminent planetary emergency. It is one, but only one, of many challenges we need to tackle on a global basis. Two billion people still live without electricity, and three billion without clean drinking water and sanitation. In this century, malnutrition, disease, dirty water and lack of sanitation will kill far more people than global warming will.
Mr. Lomborg drives a lot of environmentalists crazy. It's easy to see why. He says, for instance, that international protocols such as Kyoto are entirely useless, because their impact is minuscule and nobody observes them anyway. In the short term - the next 50 or 100 years - cutting carbon dioxide emissions is environmentally inconsequential. That's not a matter of opinion. It's a highly inconvenient fact. "What we must come to terms with is that even though C0{-2} causes global warming, cutting C0{-2} simply doesn't matter much for most of the world's important issues," Mr. Lomborg argues.
Does that justify indifference or inaction? No. It means we should focus on things that work. "We shouldn't ignore climate change," he stresses. "We should tackle it smartly." For example, by far the most effective way to minimize the damage from increasingly severe coastal storms would be to toughen building codes, protect wetlands, and discourage people from building in high-risk areas. That would also be orders of magnitude cheaper than making drastic cuts to carbon dioxide. Similarly, to save the polar bears, we'd save far more of them if we just abolished hunting.
In other words, feeling good is not the same as doing good.
Mr. Lomborg does advocate a modest carbon tax that would encourage people to change their behaviour. He also wants a dramatic increase in research and development funding devoted to non-carbon energy technologies. The logic is obvious. Deep cuts to emissions will only happen when alternatives exist at reasonable prices. He is convinced (as I am) that science and technology - not international treaties or trying to legislate fundamental changes to our way of life - hold the greatest promise for tackling climate change.
Every ambitious politician in every Western nation now takes global warming seriously. This is a remarkable development, and it happened fast. The next step is to find approaches that (unlike Kyoto) are workable and realistic. That's the tone that Stephen Harper struck in his speech at the United Nations yesterday, and the tone that John Howard has adopted in Australia. I have no idea of their personal opinions about global warming (I'm inclined to be cynical.) But their commonsensical approach will surely appeal to people who figure there must be some middle ground between abandoning fossil fuels tomorrow and doing nothing.
Mr. Lomborg's great contribution is to rescue global warming from the moral realm and put it back in the real world of real choices and real tradeoffs. And that's a highly moral thing to do. It means we might get action instead of more hot air.
24-09-2007 - Interview in Esquire
Bjørn Lomborg, the controversial author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, is back with his new book, Cool It. His take on global warming is bound to come under fire. Here, Lomborg responds to his likely critics.
21-09-2007 - Reuters Africa: Less rigid new climate deal may draw big emitters
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
OSLO (Reuters) - A new deal to fight climate change from 2013 should be less rigid than the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol but it may still be hard to attract outsiders like China and the United States, the biggest greenhouse gas emitters, experts say.
... Others say the Kyoto model should be abandoned. Denmark's Bjorn Lomborg, author of "The Skeptical Environmentalist", said that Kyoto would cost $180 billion a year for little effect. The world should instead spend 0.05 percent of gross domestic product...
18-09-2007 - New York Times: ‘Feel Good’ vs. ‘Do Good’ on Climate
By John Tierney
Last week's column about Bjorn Lomborg's ideas for combatting global warming generated lots of angry comments, including the suggestion that Dr. Lomborg and I be fed to polar bears. I was more interested in what Seth Masia had to say about the Copenhagen Consensus, which is Dr. Lomborg's project for bringing experts together to set priorities in tackling global problems...
Read also: Tierney-Lab: Economists vs. Ecologists
04-09-2007 - Cool It - The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming out now
On September 4, Bjorn Lomborg's latest book 'Cool It' was released in the US. It will soon be available in the UK and the rest of the world.
