Bjorn Lomborg

Taking the Romance out of Environmentalism

My latest Green Chain column for the Record-Bee. Just after 7 p.m. on Sept 5, 2001, Mark Lynas, a writer and a member of the Green Party in Britain stepped into the Borders Bookshop in Oxford and “pied” former Greenpeace member Bjorn Lomborg with a sponge cake topped with whipped cream. Lomborg was at theContinue reading “Taking the Romance out of Environmentalism”

What the Frack? U.S. CO2 Output the Lowest in 20 years.

“The best is the enemy of good.” – Voltaire Good news travels slowly, if at all. Given headlines of the century you might think that good news does not exist. A newspaper will not stay in business without readers—and they need drama to get readers—so even good news often gets described as bad news. AtContinue reading “What the Frack? U.S. CO2 Output the Lowest in 20 years.”

Have one-half of the world’s forests been converted to non-forest use?

I posted recently “You’re pulling my Yang. Ten reasons to use dead tree stuff,” the Yang being half of the Taoist Yin-Yang concept of male/female, light/dark/ ebb/flow, action/reaction. The post’s message was that we can’t look at only one side of an issue as a Yahoo Green blog had done (10 big reasons to stopContinue reading “Have one-half of the world’s forests been converted to non-forest use?”

The Copenhagen Consensus

On one of my post the other day, Anne asked in a comment, “What, other than cost, is the downside of reducing our carbon footprint [to prevent global warming]?” There are steps that we can take to reduce a footprint, carbon or otherwise: Move to a metropolitan area. Urban areas, due to their compactness, areContinue reading “The Copenhagen Consensus”

I find Bjorn Lomborg to be one of the most persuasive voices on the planet. Money quote: An African safari trip once confronted America’s new president with a question he could not answer: why the rich world prized elephants over African children. Today’s version of that question is: why will richer nations spend obscene amountsContinue reading “Bjorn Lomborg”