The Skeptical Environmentalist

The Skeptical Environmentalist, subtitled "Measuring the Real State of the World" is a book by statistician Bjørn Lomborg that attempts to counter the Malthusian thesis that the world is headed for inevitable ecological disaster.

Lomborg originally started work on the book as an attempt to counter what he saw as anti-ecological arguments, and changed his direction as he worked on researching his arguments. He describes the views held by many environmental campaigners as "the Litany", which his book attempts to correct.

It has a large range of references to primary material, and is a landmark in the development of the ecological movement. Whether you agree or disagree with Lomborg, he has at least focused the argument and the issues to be argued over in the next few years of the development of environmental policy and political advocacy.

Environmental groups have heavily criticised the book for selective use of statistics - essentially, taking the most optimistic view on the environmental damage being caused by current human activity, and the most pessimistic view of the adjustment costs of changing to less environmentally-damaging technologies.

The January 2002 issue of Scientific American contains, under the heading "Misleading Math about the Earth", a set of essays by several distinguished scientific critics of Lomborg's thesis. They claim that Lomborg is misrepresenting both scientific evidence and scientific opinion. Lomborg has in turn published an annotated response to the article on his website (see link below).