Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming (Vintage)
Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming (Vintage) – Review
This book should be involved only reading for every politician and public policy maker – for that matter, for everyone who votes. Lomborg does not challenge the science of global warming. He accepts it as a given and asks the reasonable questions: how much should we being willing to spend to combat global warming, what are the most effective solutions, and what are the tradeoffs? Lomborg argues convincingly that the complete solutions to global warming being originally proposed currently would be hugely costly and not terribly effective. The same or far less money finished could be subsequently spent on attacking extra issues, such as the international AIDS epidemic, with far better benefit to society. He also makes crystal clear a point that so many miss: resources directed to one cause are resources that can’t be subsequently spent somewhere else, so a great effort to combat global warming will inevitable drain money away from other charitable efforts that may be far more beneficial to mankind in the long run. By working within the scientific consensus rather than constantly arguing against it, Lomborg also is able to counter the doomsday scare tactics commonly used by Al Gore and others to rally open support behind desperate measures. He squarely rebutts predictions of a slowly melting global Antartic ice cap and flooded coastal cities, showing that “most likely” scenarios are far less dramatic, and so call for more measured responses. Particularly fascinating is his observation that global warming may in some ways be quite beneficial. Far more people fail each year of freezing weather than stormy weather. Also, chronological records reveal that society bore much more hardship during cool periods than hot periods. Unfortunately, its questionable that all but a few politicians will embrace Lomborg’s arguments. Most politicians are lawyers, not economists, and few can resist the power that comes with directing a draconian reallocation of the world’s resources. Our one hope is that the general public will push back after really feeling the pinch in the pocketbook and the destructive change in their everyday standard of possibly living, asking “is it really worth all this pain to keep the sea level from rising 11 inches over the next century?”