Raymond,
Just came in from a long ride on my snowmobile and read your post. I am impressed. I like your style—a reification of Spiro Agnew from the Left Tree. To simply label Lomborg as a sycophant of Simon—who did, in fact, win the bet with Paul Ehrlich [*]—presumes Lomborg is a dogmatic hack. Of course, I disagree, but why should anyone assume such? Perhaps it is only because tree huggers can't tar him with their favorite method, guilt by association (his great grandmother's neighbor worked for Exxon).
Regarding "price of everything and the value of nothing," > If you believe his methodology is corrupt or his evidence insufficient, produce your own synthetic review of the objective state of the world’s environment. Marshal the evidence and present it. Failing that, perhaps you can legislate his book and ideas out of existence since a dictatorial mandate to collect and burn his works, as the church did with Galileo, would expose the left’s superficial mantra of ‘tolerance and diversity’ to even the most uninformed citizens.
For my part, I appreciate the “value” of value-free science. The potential of the Enlightenment has allowed us to leave the caves. I presume you would not now argue we should return. If we substitute “values” for science, or if we replace “values” for prices and the market system, whose “values” or what “values” would we adopt (or have imposed)? Certainly not Stalin’s or Osma’s. Many of the left might suggest an Americanized strain of Fidelismo (?)
As the Economist (2-2-02) concluded,
<Leeches of the world, unite
Mr. Wilson's insufferable arrogance is bad enough, but there's worse. The fuss over Mr. Lomborg highlights an attitude among some media-conscious scientists that militates not just against good policy but against the truth. Stephen Schneider, one of Scientific American's anti-Lomborgians, spoke we suspect not just for himself when he told Discover in 1989: “[We] are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we'd like to see the world a better place...To do that we need to get some broad-based support, to capture the public's imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have...Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.” In other words, save science for other scientists, in peer-reviewed journals and other sanctified places. In public, strike a balance between telling the truth and telling necessary lies.
Science needs no defending from Mr. Lomborg. It may very well need defending from champions like Mr. Schneider.>
* [As Lomborg, himself, has posted (www.lomborg.org) <Lovejoy predicted back in 1980, that 15-20 percent of all species on earth would have died by the year 2000 (1980:331, SE:252), a prediction which clearly did not hold true and this is pointed out in the book. Holdren back in 1980 also clearly thought that many resources were running out. Along with Ehrlich and Holdren, he bet on this belief with Julian Simon:
“Frustrated with the incessant claims that the Earth would run out of oil, food and raw materials, the economist Julian Simon in 1980 challenged the established beliefs with a bet. He offered to bet $10,000 that any given raw material – to be picked by his opponents – would have dropped in price at least one year later. The environmentalists Ehrlich, Harte and Holdren, all of Stanford University, accepted the challenge, stating that “the lure of easy money can be irresistible.” The environmentalists staked their bets on chromium, copper, nickel, tin and tungsten, and they picked a time frame of ten years. The bet was to be determined ten years later, assessing whether the real (inflation-adjusted) prices had gone up or down. In September 1990 not only had the total basket of raw materials but also each individual raw material dropped in price. Chromium had dropped 5 percent, tin a whopping 74 percent. The doomsayers had lost.
Truth is they could not have won. Ehrlich and Co. would have lost no matter whether they had staked their money on petroleum, foodstuffs, sugar, coffee, cotton, wool, minerals or phosphates. They had all become cheaper.” (SE:137).
Since 1990 the price of raw materials has declined another third (Economist industrial price index, SE:138).] |
