Re: permaculture digest: January 01, 2002

[Richard Morris <webmaster@pfaf.org>]

> Subject: The Skeptical Environmentalist
> From: Claude  Genest <genest@together.net>
> Date: Tue, 01 Jan 2002 17:36:23 -0500
> X-Message-Number: 6
> 
> Have you begun to have the name of Bjorn Lomborg thrown at you in
> discussions about the environment?
> 
> What do you say in response to "The world is better than ever : people live
> longer, healthier lives than ever before...." ?

I got his book as a christmas present from my dad. After looking
at some of his chapters I'm very dubious about his book.
The main thrust is trying to debunk greenpeace, the wwf and the 
worldwatch institute. And saying their statistics are chosen
selectively to cast a grim picture (probably true). 
He seems to be guilty of many of the same selective statistics tricks.
Also he reduces everything to percentages, 1% loss of forest does
not sound nearly as bad as a million hectares.
His main conclusion seems to be the world is not in as bad a mess
as we believe and things are getting better, slowly. Addressing poverty
seemed to be the main cause of action.
On the whole I was disappointed, I wanted to read an unbiased review
of the state of the planet but it was far to one-sided.

SOme reviews of the book can be found on the UK Guardians page
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
and Gist magazine, (the latter has many famous scientists who rip
the book apart) (online but cant remember the url off hand).

		Rich
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