THE SKEPTICAL ENVIRONMENTALIST
Adapted from: http://www.hoover.org/publications/uk/2996211.html
Measuring the State of the
Environment
November 12, 2002
Peter Robinson: The late economist Julian Simon, "The material conditions of life will continue to get better for most people, in most countries, most of the time, indefinitely." True or false? Bjorn?
Bjørn Lomborg: I think it's true.
Peter Robinson: Dan?
Daniel Kammen: I think it's true if you direct your research appropriately, which we're not doing currently.
Peter Robinson: All right, Bjorn, you describe an environmentalist litany which comes down to this: human beings are exhausting the planet's resources, reproducing too fast, driving other species to extinction, and fouling the environment. Not a cheerful litany. Let's take each of those items in turn. Now you contend, that since The Club of Rome published its famous 1972 report, The Limits to Growth, energy and other natural resources have become more abundant, not as The Club of Rome predicted, less so. Explain.
Bjørn Lomborg: Well, the idea is to say we need to take out our myths of understanding of how the world works. And we obviously think that, you know, there's only a limited pool, for instance of iron, so we use up the iron and that leaves very little or none to our kids and grandkids. But actually what we do at the same time--yes, we use up the easily accessible iron ore, but at the same time, we leave more technology so that they're able to get lower grade iron ore, or have to dig deeper for it, but actually do so altogether at a cheaper cost. And so what we do is, in the economist's sense of that word, we leave more available iron at a lower cost for our kids and grandkids, and this is the general idea--in general for most of these resources that actually get cheaper and we leave more and not less. And that of course leaves us with the understanding that, listen, this is not so that we shouldn't--and obviously I think that was probably also what Dan was trying say--it doesn't mean that we shouldn't direct our research in the right direction, but it also means that we shouldn't think, oh God, we're going to run out!
Daniel Kammen: Well, this is--I mean, this is an unfortunate use of the facts because from my perspective, it is true that we discover there is more oil the more we look for it, there is more tin and magnesium the more we look for it, but as many of the critics of your book have brought out I think in great detail, that's not really the central point. The central point isn't how much coal there is in the ground, it's what we do to get it and to burn it. And so it's running out of places to put our waste products as a society that overuses these resources, not the pure amount of tin, magnesium, oil out there.
Too many people.
(Timing 5:14)
Peter Robinson: 1968 book, The Population Bomb, Paul Ehrlich wrote, "In the course of the 1970's the world will experience starvation of tragic proportions. Hundreds of millions of people will starve to death." That didn't happen, and Bjorn will tell us why.
Bjørn Lomborg: Well, basically we're able to produce more and more. From the green revolution we've utilized better varieties of grain, we've used pesticides, we've used artificial fertilizer, it's increased our productivity. Basically we haven't expanded very much the use of ground, of agricultural ground--we've gone from ten to eleven percent of the earth's surface, but we've produced much, much more on each hectare. So we've actually been able to feed about 2 billion extra people by now.
Daniel Kammen: You see this is an example of one of the areas where John Bongaarts, one of your critics on population said this is a very, very, fast and loose use of statistics. And the problem is this: when you say the total amount of land and production has only increased by a small amount, that is true if you say there is this many hectares of land in use at one time, and there's this many hectares another time, but they're not the same the hectares. The fact is…
...
Daniel Kammen: …that that piece of productive land has migrated and has left behind it degraded land. So right now, the estimates are that the amount of degraded land, severely degraded, that can't be used currently, around the world, is about equal to the land area of the United States. So it's true that the total land area under production for rice and corn and things is roughly the same, a little bit of increase, but we have left behind an environmental legacy of waste…
Pollution and affluence.
(Timing 14:00-17:45)
Peter Robinson: Tell us about London and what that has to say about Sao Paulo.
Bjørn Lomborg: Well, ........................................... is to say that most people think air pollution is a fairly recent phenomenon that's getting worse and worse. Seventy percent of all Americans think that air pollution is actually getting worse in the U.S., and that's just not so. ...........................................from 1585 in London and basically it's been getting worse and worse and worse up until about 1890, and from then on it's declined dramatically. And so the idea is ...........................................now down below what it was in 1585. It doesn't mean that we don't actually want this to get down even further. But we should do so not because we worry excessively, but because it's a good idea. And air pollution is actually one of the most important pollutants.
Daniel Kammen: ............................................ In industrialized, rich nations, we have seen that transition. And ...........................................that you make in the book, that again I think ..........................................., is that we can therefore expect that richness around the world, or increasing affluence in poor countries today is going to naturally follow that same path. And we have lots of data that's not the case. We have lots of cities where, as affluence has increased, we have not seen those commensurate increases in air quality.
Bjørn Lomborg: In the richest developing countries, in Mexico and Chile, you have declining levels of air pollution in both Mexico City and…
Daniel Kammen: ...........................................look at Mexico City, which is in fact not getting cleaner.
Bjørn Lomborg: ...........................................
Daniel Kammen: ...........................................that's actually wrong............................................ emissions from vehicles alone…
Bjørn Lomborg: The World Bank, their latest report for 2002, just states that …
Daniel Kammen: …that's actually not the full--again, that's case of not using all the data. The World Bank also has reports looking at the informal sector on Mexico City which says that overall pollution has increased even if the official government sponsored indicators show its decreased and that's the problem.
Bjørn Lomborg: These are the concentrations, these are not the emissions. It's actual measurements in Mexico City…
Daniel Kammen: ...........................................
Bjørn Lomborg: …and the air is just getting cleaner. And that of course also ........................................... that you were saying earlier, when you were talking about where we may not be running out of resources, but we may be running out of places to store all the garbage that we put out, and air pollution and acid rain was one of the important ones. And we've actually seen dramatic declines in sulfur dioxide emissions.
Daniel Kammen: Now when you say dramatic, do you mean dramatic for where?
Bjørn Lomborg: Dramatic for Europe, and there've been declines--significant declines of about half or so…
Daniel Kammen: You're right; the most affluent countries have shown that history.
Peter Robinson: So why does it not stand to reason that we should encourage affluence elsewhere?
Daniel Kammen: ...........................................we have become cleaner in the U.S. and Europe--there's two reasons: one is emission controls; and the other one is we have exported a number of dirty industries to developing countries, and so they are dirtier to make us cleaner. And that's an inescapable fact when you look at the export of steel, a whole variety of production industries that we see that trend around the world. So it's not fair to say--and it's not accurate to say…
Bjørn Lomborg: But they can certainly get those much cleaner, which is what we do, because we also have a lot of those technologies--steel production in the industrialized countries--and they are much cleaner.
Daniel Kammen: They are much cleaner, ...........................................but this argument that you've said that simple increased affluence in developing countries will result in the same trends we see in developed countries, is in fact false.
Bjørn Lomborg: ...........................................we both do see that, which I also point out. And we also see the fact that they import our technology, so they actually get cleaner. It's true that at the same time they also import the dirty technology, which is where their competitive edge is. So yes, we do have these conflicting trends but it's a--can you possibly imagine the situation where when they get sufficiently rich, that they wouldn't also impose stringent regulations?