Biodiversity

2013-11-06 One of the longest-running big picture debates is between optimists and pessimists  arguing the state of the world. Pessimists  have constantly painted a dystopian future from Malthus and Jevons to the 1972 book Limits to Growth. Optimists have cheerfully pointed to how everything is getting better. 

2013-10-14 FOR the past half century, a fundamental debate has raged between optimists and pessimists over the state of the world. Pessimists build their case on overpopulation, starvation and depletion of resources. Optimists stand for the infallibility of the market economy. Wouldn't it be nice to remove the darkened or rose-tinted spectacles for once, and try to quantify how the world really has done and will do in future? I asked some of the world's leading economists to do just that. The result is a groundbreaking book, How Much Have Global Problems Cost The World?

2013-09-03 Contrary to what you may have heard, there is no “bee-pocalypse.” There is lots of alarmist talk about colony collapse disorder, people are blaming pesticides and talking about hundreds of billions of dollars at risk. But a closer look tells a very different story. Read the article online.

2013-05-20 A todos nos enseñan que hay que reciclar papel para salvar árboles. En nuestras casillas de ‘e-mail’ recibimos infinidad de veces esta advertencia: ‘Piense en el medio ambiente antes de imprimir este mensaje’. De hecho, el movimiento ecologista nació con un llamado a la preservación de los bosques. (...)

2013-01-22

Bjorn Lomborg challenges Sir David Attenborough's notion of humans being a “plague on the Earth” and insists that the planet can sustain a much bigger population thanks to innovation.

"He argues that new technologies mean that humans need less land to produce food. Therefore the population can grow without harming wildlife and as people become richer it may even be possible to return degraded land to wildlife."

2013-01-21 Las historias de miedo han sido una parte integral del discurso sobre el calentamiento global durante mucho tiempo. Allá por 1997, Al Gore nos dijo que el calentamiento global hacía que los vientos de 'El Niño' fueran más fuertes y más severos. Eso no sucedió. Greenpeace y muchos otros nos dijeron durante años que veremos huracanes más violentos.

Op-ed by Bjørn Lomborg in Project Syndicate, 13 Jan, 2013. PRAGUE – Scare stories have been an integral part of the global warming narrative for a long time. Back in 1997, Al Gore told us that global warming was making the El Niño winds stronger and more severe. That has not happened. Greenpeace and many others have told us for years that we will see more violent hurricanes.

Biodiversity campaigners should push the case for more R&D, rather than putting out alarming figures or pictures of endangered cuddly animals

Forbes India

By Bjorn Lomborg.Jun 14, 2012

Newsweek  Bjorn Lomborg 2012-05-28

A message from Bjørn Lomborg to organizers of the Rio+20 environmental summit: poverty pollutes.

We Still Need to Save the Rain Forests

Biodiversity efforts are often targeted toward saving cute animals. But the real problem is disappearing forests, wetlands, and mangroves. By Bjørn Lomborg Posted Monday, May 7, 2012