Bjørn Lomborg is an environmentalist and an economist. He accepts without reservation that global warming is occurring and that it is caused by human activity, but he makes a critical examination of the methods by which we're attempting to deal with the problem. In other words, he disagrees with those who would say that climate change is not a real and serious problem, but he is skeptical of the primary strategies to combat the problem which have been advanced by mainstream environmentalists.
He's become controversial because he's asking questions of fellow environmentalists which they would rather not have to answer.
Are climate change activists engaging in alarmist scare tactics and exaggerating the dangers involved in an attempt to motivate through fear? If we wish to invest in attempts to improve the lives of those who are most disadvantaged, what is the relative benefit of spending on climate compared to other humanitarian endeavors?
Are attempts to artificially raise the price of fossil fuels likely to be successful at lowering temperatures? Will they be sufficiently effective to justify the costs in terms of slowed economic growth and lost increases in the standard of living?
Lomborg seems to believe that the most reasonable approach is a combination of:
>engage in many relatively unobtrusive small scale activities to combat global warming in the short term while contributing more to efforts to promote global health and education
>employ geo-engineering and adaptation in the medium term to minimize the disruption of temperature increases
>make large immediate increases in funding for research and development of renewable energy and more sophisticated nuclear reactors so that in the long term alternative energy will not be more costly than fossil fuels
His arguments about what the rational approach (lacking the unreflective dogmatism of both the deniers and the alarmists) is to finding the best future for the global population certainly merit the time it takes to view this film.
