Lomborg's article in Newsweek: A Roadmap for the Planet
A Roadmap for the Planet
How we live today is clearly unsustainable. Why history proves that is completely irrelevant. by Bjorn Lomborg June 12, 2011 From the 18th through the mid-19th century, whale oil provided light to much of the Western world. At its peak, whaling employed 70,000 people and was the United States’ fifth-largest industry. The U.S. stood as the world’s foremost whale slayer. Producing millions of gallons of oil each year, the industry was widely seen as unassailable, with advocates scoffing at would-be illumination substitutes like lard oil and camphene. Without whale oil, so the thinking went, the world would slide backward toward darkness. By today’s standard, of course, slaughtering whales is considered barbaric. (...)
