Poverty is ‘real pollution’ – Dr Lomborg has angered the green lobby by daring to challenge certain “truths” about environmental decline. He has accused the greens of exaggerating problems and of ignoring the facts. [BBC News]
I especially like Bjorn’s attempts to put environmentalism in perspective as a movement that needs to USE tools like economics and pragmatism if it seeks to solve what are legitimate and real, complex long term problems.
It is his belief that the money nations are considering spending averting climate change under the Kyoto Protocol would be better spent alleviating poverty in the developing world.
“It’s important to say that it is only when you get sufficiently rich that you can actually worry about environmental problems.”
I think he really gets the thought that the reason many developing nations like China and India are not so concerned is that they have more pressing problems like feeding and clothing their populations. Environmentalism really is a luxury of the rich, that much of the developing nations want to address at some point, but not at the expense of current generations.
“We think things are getting worse and worse,” he told BBC News On-line, “but actually if we look at the facts we see that fewer and fewer people are starving, we’re better able to handle pollution in the developed world (for instance, air pollution) and in the developing world, it will be the same when they get sufficiently rich.
“What we need to realize is that the real pollution problem is the pollution of poverty; when people are poor they cannot take care of the environment 10 or a 100 years down the line.”
The biggest fallacy in environmentalism seems to be the “do it now” impulse. The truth is that we CAN put some things off, but it will require a MUCH more drastic and expensive shift later to fix damage carelessly caused now. It’s like a poor diet. It CAN (mostly) be fixed at a somewhat later date, but gets increasingly expensive and difficult.
Bjorn Lomborg: Poverty is ‘real pollution’
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Poverty is ‘real pollution’ – Dr Lomborg has angered the green lobby by daring to challenge certain “truths” about environmental decline. He has accused the greens of exaggerating problems and of ignoring the facts. [BBC News]
I especially like Bjorn’s attempts to put environmentalism in perspective as a movement that needs to USE tools like economics and pragmatism if it seeks to solve what are legitimate and real, complex long term problems.
I think he really gets the thought that the reason many developing nations like China and India are not so concerned is that they have more pressing problems like feeding and clothing their populations. Environmentalism really is a luxury of the rich, that much of the developing nations want to address at some point, but not at the expense of current generations.
The biggest fallacy in environmentalism seems to be the “do it now” impulse. The truth is that we CAN put some things off, but it will require a MUCH more drastic and expensive shift later to fix damage carelessly caused now. It’s like a poor diet. It CAN (mostly) be fixed at a somewhat later date, but gets increasingly expensive and difficult.