Welcome to Uncommon Knowledge. I'm Peter Robinson. Our show today: a disagreement--a sharp disagreement--over the state of the planet. On one side, environmentalists, and a tale of woe: global warming, overpopulation, deforestation, the mass extinction of species. According to the environmentalists, the planet has been in dire straits for decades and things are going to get worse. On the other side, one young man, a Danish statistician who has come forward to say, not so fast. After looking at the figures, he has concluded that the state of the planet has actually been getting better, and is likely to go on doing just that. His claims have generated a firestorm of criticism.

Joining us two guests, an environmental scientist, Dan Kammen, who is a professor of energy and society at the University of California at Berkeley and that young Danish statistician, Bjorn Lomborg, whose book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, started all the trouble.