Bjørn Lomborg was wrong, Lomborg (almost) says

By Massimo Pigliucci

I’ll be darned. Bjørn Lomborg, the author of the infamous The Skeptical Environmentalist, one of the most thoroughly debunked books of the past decade (and one that has given a bad connotation to the word “skeptic”), has just changed his mind! In his new book, Smart Solutions to Climate Change, Lomborg says that climate change is “undoubtedly one of the chief concerns facing the world today ... a challenge humanity must confront.”

I could say “I told you so” (for instance in a chapter on global warming in my Nonsense on Stilts), but I’ll refrain — largely because I would be the last on a long list of scientists who have published detailed (negative) reviews of Lomborg’s first book in prestigious outlets such as Scientific American (volume 286, issue 1, 2002), Nature (8 November 2001, pp. 149-150) and Science (9 November 2001, pp. 1285-1286).

No, we need to give credit were credit is due. The man has changed his mind, and has come out publicly to say so. I can’t wait until Fox News has him over for an interview. Indeed, while I have been a harsh critic of Lomborg (largely on the ground that as an economist he really does not have the technical expertise to pronounce about global warming), I think some of the attacks against him were (and still are) ridiculous. Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, famously compared Lomborg to Hitler — and you know that when one plays the H-card all rational argument goes out the window. Similarly, in a commentary on the new book, long-time Lomborg critic Howard Friel wrote: “If Lomborg were really looking for smart solutions, he would push for an end to perpetual and brutal war, which diverts scarce resources from nearly everything that Lomborg legitimately says needs more money.” Oh, c’mon, so unless one brings lasting peace to the world one cannot be taken seriously?

Still, it is interesting to look at some of the details of Lomborg’s change of heart. He claims it happened once a group of economists was asked what was the best way to spend $50 billion for humanity. Back in 2004 putting money into climate change ranked straight at the bottom of the list, but four years later the issue made it at least half the way through the rankings. Once Lomborg and his colleagues began to consider not just cutting carbon emissions, but a variety of other solutions to the problem, they began to appreciate that something not only had to be done, but could in fact be done.

(Notice, of course, that this is exactly the kind of question for which we need the expertise of economists: not to tell us whether climate change is happening or what its causes are, and not even to advance possible technological solutions, but to provide us with the best risk-benefit analysis in economic terms of an array of proposed solutions. Also notice that Lomborg claims that he didn’t really change his mind, because he has always maintained that climate change was real, just that it wasn’t “the end of the world.” While literally true, this seems a highly disingenuous reading of The Skeptical Environmentalist, and if it were accurate, it would make all the criticism of Lomborg’s early book utterly incomprehensible.)

Lomborg, of course, has not lost his techno-optimism. He thinks that “This is not about ‘we have all got to live with less, wear hair-shirts and cut our carbon emissions.’ It's about technologies, about realizing there’s a vast array of solutions ... Investing $100 billion annually would mean that we could essentially resolve the climate change problem by the end of this century.” Well, first of all, nobody ever said anything about wearing hair-shirts — I would be against it on aesthetic grounds alone. Second, once again Lomborg is crossing the line between what he has expertise to talk about (economics) to what he probably knows little about (new technologies and their efficacy). One of the recurring problems with techno-optimists is that they subscribe to the magic pill school of life, where if only we put our minds (and out money) to it, we’ll achieve it, whatever “it” is. Seems like a bit more caution and less hubris would not be an altogether bad thing.

Still, some of Lomborg’s suggestions are positively stunning, even for a skeptical economist. He is advising not only to pour money into research and development of cleaner energy sources such as wind, solar and nuclear (duh!), but recommending a global tax on carbon emissions, part of which would go for (gasp!) global healthcare! I wonder what Senator Inhofe would think of that.

And that’s not all. While acknowledging that most economists think that research and development is best done by the private sector (it’s not clear why, since the private sector is perfectly happy to take advantage of pre-development research funded by government agencies like NSF or NIH), he would actually make an exception for climate change related technologies. Lomborg draws a parallel here with government-sponsored research on computers during the 1950s, which laid the groundwork for the commercial version of the internet. But the real question is: can Sarah Palin get behind this obviously socialistic approach?

Seriously, though. Lomborg deserves credit for changing his mind and going public about it. His specific ideas still require critical analysis by a broad community of experts, not just in economics but also in the various technologies that he is advancing as possible solutions to the problem of climate change. Nonetheless, we now have another strong voice that clearly admits that there is a problem, and an urgent one at that. And as we all know, the first step toward a solution is to make that dramatic admission. Oh, and please no more H-comparisons, let’s reserve those for real evil bastards, of which the world will always provide plentiful examples.