Matt Ridley, author of The Rational Optimist chose The Skeptical Environmentalist as one of his 5 favorite books

Matt Ridley’s books have sold over 800,000 copies, been translated into 27 languages and been short-listed for six literary prizes. In 2004 he won the National Academies Book Award from the US National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine for Nature via Nurture. In 2007 he won the Davis Prize from the US History of Science Society for Francis Crick. Bjørn Lomborg. He read a famous article about Julian Simon in Wired, about the bet and Simon’s views, and Bjorn, being a gay, vegetarian, left-wing Dane thought: ‘This is crap.’ But he was an economics professor so he set some of his students to show what was wrong with Simon’s argument but, instead of showing what was wrong they concluded, after a term, that Simon was absolutely right, and Bjorn became a convert to Simon’s view and he started taking on environmental pessimism and wrote The Skeptical Environmentalist. He said, hang on, most of the environmental trends in the world are getting better not worse. There is more forest now than there was 50 years ago. (...)