SHANNON KELLY
Editor in Chief
“‘Planet in Peril,’ unbearable heat, sea levels rising, resource shortage, countless polar bears drowning, danger, disaster. And it’s all because of people – careless, wasteful, ill-intentioned humans.’” Welcome to the modern environmentalists’ doomsayers diatribe.
It’s Al Gore’s language and apparently it holds enough clout to elicit Academy Awards and Nobel Peace Prizes — and panic.
Gore’s tirades and escapades exemplify all that’s wrong with the popularized, mainstream environmental movement.
Today’s environmentalists rely on emotional, sensationalized claims that are often untrue and misleading. Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” has been found erroneous by many including a British Supreme Court judge and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). One inaccuracy from the film is the supposed 20-foot sea level rise that puts Manhattan under water (among other areas of the globe). But the 2007 IPCC report shows these flagrant miscalculations (or misinformation) have absolutely no scientific basis. The IPCC’s scientific estimations predict anywhere between an 18 to 59 cm rise in the next hundred years — a far cry from the Oscar-winning film’s portrayal.
Worse than Gore’s gross exaggerations, though, is his (and his followers’) propensity to demonize humans; making them the cause of all problems — devourers of the world’s resources — downplaying the fact that the human mind is, in fact, the Earth’s greatest resource.
Environmentalists use fear to manipulate the masses and redirect peoples’ focus from more pressing global issues — like finding cures to deadly diseases, alleviating world hunger —other more readily resolved problems facing humans now and for the next 100 years.
The movement’s politicized proponents push government intervention — policy that places trust in bureaucracy instead of individuals. They primarily focus on how national, state and local governments should direct their resources (and tax dollars) toward problems instead of simply identifying plausible policy at the individual level — the daily choices that each person makes, for himself and in ways that might affect others.
Using fear, devaluing humans and rushing to pass billion-dollar big-government policy is the wrong protocol for dealing with environmental issues (or any issue).
Still, it is also wrong to ignore environmental problems, especially when global warming’s existence is now virtually undisputed. Unfortunately today’s polarized political atmosphere has ignored the middle ground, which is the only place where rational solutions stand.
Where then is the middle ground? How can the doomsayers and those skeptical of the grandiose claims of the extreme environmentalists find some common ground? How can environmentalists move from rant to rational actions?
With so much focus on enviro-politicos, the calmer proponents of a different kind of environmentalism miss the limelight. But a group of scientists, statisticians and economists led by Bjorn Lomborg (“Cool It” (2007), “The Skeptical Environmentalist” (2001) represent this middle ground. They leave politics out of it. They leave the Oscars out of it. They leave out the ranting, the raving.
Instead this group and its “Copenhagen Consensus Center (CCC) scientifically prioritize and analyze global issues through an economic lens, breaking down the costs and benefits of each issue.
Lomborg’s cost-benefit analysis of many of the world’s pressing issues shows which global problems can be addressed at a fraction of the cost of climate change proposals. The climate change-centered environmental movement takes focus and resources off the issues that can be addressed to save millions of lives in our lifetime. While Gore pushes to spend trillions on addressing an issue that no one can prove will have detrimental effects in the next hundred years, Lomborg argues that people should first focus their resources on immediate concerns like fighting HIV/AIDS, assuring a fresh water supply for all people and addressing the malaria epidemic.
In his book “Cool It,” Lomborg acknowledges the planet is warming, but asserts the problem with environmentalists’ suggestion of imminent catastrophe. Like the CCC shows there are more imminent problems that have to be addressed first.
If the focus stays on glaring global problems, millions of lives can be saved today. This should be the focus of the next hundred of years. The money and resources that Gore wants to spend because of the possibility of the Earth warming 1/10 of one degree in the next decade should be used to save lives in that time.
It is time to move from diatribe to dialogue. It is time to pair sound logical arguments with sound science instead and depending on fear mongering and emotionally laden propaganda for leverage.
A new kind of environmentalism must emerge — a rational practice that places trust in individuals and emphasizes sound economic principles when creating and discussing solutions. This will be the environmental movement for people who see progress as a positive and who recognize a rational, optimistic outlook on the fate of the world as the best way to approach global problems.
This is humane environmentalism. It is environmental humanism.
11-08-2007
