Bjorn Blogging

Bjorn Lomborg's got a new book out, Cool It. I'll be blogging a few bits and pieces from it over the week for your delectation. Short and sweet it's more of an extended essay than (163 small pages with large print in the review version I've got) a thundering tome on the subject of climate change.
But it's well worth reading as it gives a lucid and entirely contra- the received wisdom view of the issue. He starts from the point that it is happening, that humans are causing it, and then goes on to ask whether it's an emergency (no) and what we ought to do about it (some things but not a lot).
One of the things that makes his view so interesting is that he sees the problem in a rather different way from everyone else:

We need to remind ourselves that our ultimate goal is not to reduce greenhouse gases or global warming per se but to improve the quality of life and the environment. We all want to leave the planet in decent shape for our kids. Radically reducing greenhouse-gas emissions is not necessarily the best way to achieve that. As we go through the data, we will see that it actually is one of the least helpful ways of serving humanity or the environment.

One of the mantras repeated through out the book is that our descendents will be richer, much richer, than we are. Quite how much so depends rather on what we decide to do now. Perhaps we ought to be attempting to maximise their wealth, not minimising the CO2 in the atmosphere?

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