The View From Here . . .
By Bob Morgan, Jr.

As the debate rages about anthropomorphic (manmade) global warming and its effects on the planet, it is well to recognize that, despite the rather doctrinaire view of some advocates, there are a variety of reasonable views on the subject.

I recently attended a lecture in New York sponsored by the Smith Family Foundation featuring Bjorn Lomborg, the Danish author most recently of Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming (Knopf 2007). Interestingly, the Foundation said that it tried diligently to find someone to debate Mr. Lomborg at the event, but there were no takers.

Mr. Lomborg believes, or at least is willing to accept, the majority scientific view that global warming is real and that its causes are, at least to some degree, anthropomorphic. Mr. Lomborg argues, however, is that many of the analyses of the problem are very one-sided and that proposed solutions are unnecessarily extreme.

As an example of the one-sided analysis he cites the statistic, which he does not dispute, that the United Kingdom is likely to suffer 2000 extra deaths each year because of excessive heat from global warning. On the other hand, however, the number of UK deaths avoided each year by less cold, which dwarfs the number of projected heat deaths, is usually ignored.

Another example relates to the level of rise in sea level. While alarmists have talked about a 20 foot rise as a worst case scenario, the consensus of United Nations climate experts is more like one foot. Mr. Lomborg calls this a problem, not a catastrophe, noting that ocean levels have already risen by one foot over the last 150 years.

Mr. Lomborg also points to statistics relating to polar bears. While the number of bears has quadrupled in the last 40 years, he estimates that implementation of the Kyoto Protocol favored by environmentalists would save approximately one polar bear a year. However, to put this number in perspective, 300-500 polar bears are shot by hunters each year.

What does Mr. Lomborg suggest? Rather than extremely expensive initiatives like the Kyoto Protocol, he favors national investment equal to one-half of one percent of gross national product in the development of a variety of non-fossil fuel technologies, including solar power, wind power and many others. He estimates that the cost of this research would be one-tenth of implementing the Kyoto Protocol. While the research program will eventually level off the use of fossil fuel, he also believes that some effort must be made to cope with the effect of global warming in the interim period.

Mr. Lomborg's overall point is that global warning is a real and important concern, but not the world's only major problem. For example, for the cost of compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, the world could easily supply clean drinking water, improved sanitation and much improved health care for the poor. Moreover, the wealth produced by economic development, which would be curtailed by extreme environmental restraints, is closely correlated with the elimination of such scourges as ma-laria.

The point here is not that Mr. Lomborg's views should be accepted without question. Indeed, he could be criticized from the right for assuming the majority scientific view to be correct and from the left for giving short shrift to "worse case" contingencies. But he is surely right to point out that there are very important implications to the planet both of unchecked global warming as well as of sharp environmentally based limits on economic growth. We need to understand and debate fully and rationally the tradeoffs that are involved.