A sneak attack on humanity

A review of Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming By Bjorn Lomborg

Bjorn Lomborg is a Danish statistician and darling of those who believe that markets should not be regulated and that concerns about the environment are overblown. He is articulate, certain in his opinions and well informed on the statistical minutiae of the topics he investigates. Indeed, so compelling and entertaining are the grains of truth that adorn his latest book, Cool It, that you are certain to hear them soon in dinner table conversation. But is this book, as its subtitle proclaims, really an acceptable “guide to global warming”?
In his opening paragraph, Lomborg establishes a revealing dichotomy: “In the face of . . . unmitigated despair” about global warming, he intends to write a book that is optimistic about humanity’s prospects. It’s seductive rhetoric. But is climate change really about unmitigated despair? And can Lomborg’s optimistic solutions actually work? It all depends on how well he’s read the science.

Cool It commences with a look at polar bears. Despite what you might have heard, they’re doing fine, according to Lomborg. If we want to protect them better, we should forget about melting ice and just ban hunting. For every bear the Kyoto Protocol saves, a hunting ban would save 800 bears, he conjectures.

Lomborg then moves on to the consequences of the warming itself. He does not doubt that it is occurring, nor that it is caused by humans, but almost alone among commentators he finds reason to welcome it. In Europe, 200,000 people die from excess heat each year while 1.5 million die from cold, he asserts. His message is simple: more warming, less death. In this and many other projections, Lomborg is astonishingly certain about how things will be in the future. In a sentence italicized for emphasis, he writes that in 2200