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With scientific data piling up showing that the world has reached its
hottest-ever point in recorded history, global-warming skeptics are facing a
high-profile defection from their ranks. Bjorn Lomborg, author of the
influential tract "The Skeptical Environmentalist," has reversed course on the
urgency of global warming, and is now calling for action on "a challenge
humanity must confront."
Lomborg, a Danish academic, had previously downplayed the risk of acute climate
change. A former member of Greenpeace, he was a vocal critic of the Kyoto
Protocol -- a global U.N. treaty to cut carbon emissions that the United States
refused to ratify -- as well as numerous other environmental causes.
"The Skeptical Environmentalist," published in 2001, argued that many key
preoccupations of the environmental movement, including pollution control and
biodiversity, were either overblown as threats or amenable to relatively simple
technological fixes. Lomborg argued that the governments spending billions to
curb carbon emissions would be better off diverting those resources to
initiatives such as AIDS research, anti-malaria programs and other kinds of
humanitarian aid.
[Photos: The world's most polluted places]
Lomborg's essential argument was: Yes, global warming is real and human
behavior is the main reason for it, but the world has far more important things
to worry about.
Oh, how times have changed.
In a book to be published this year, Lomborg calls global warming "undoubtedly
one of the chief concerns facing the world today" and calls for the world's
governments to invest tens of billions of dollars annually to fight climate
change.
Lomborg's former foes in the environmental movement are so far unimpressed by
news of his conversion. Calling him a "shrewd self-promoter," Grist.org's
Jonathan Hiskes marveled at Lomborg's ability to "play the media" in simply
"adopting a position already held by millions of sensible people." And Friends
of the Earth climate campaigner Mike Childs told the U.K. Guardian, "It appears
that the self-styled skeptical environmentalist is beginning to become less
skeptical as he enters middle age."