Better Ways example essay topic

A similarly stark example comes from a cost-benefit analysis of the precautionary principle as applied to climate change caused by carbon-dioxide emissions ( [CO. sub. 2]). On the assumption that global warming will occur to about the degree most often predicted, and that we do nothing about it, its adverse effects are likely to cost the world economy about $5 trillion in total -- not a trivial sum. If, however, we attempt to stabilize global [CO. sub. 2] emissions, we will be faced with a cost of about $8.5 trillion, while actual cutbacks in [CO. sub. 2] emissions could cost an astronomical $38 trillion.

Surely, suggests Lomborg, there are better ways to spend $33 trillion than in combating what is almost certain to be an insignificant environmental problem. This, indeed, is the central message of Lomborg's book: given the range of large and small problems that we face as a civilization, we should use our resources wisely, in ways that are likely to pay off in the long term. Although there is less starvation than there has been in the past, undoubtedly it is a moral imperative to reduce it even further. And the methods for doing so are not mysterious. In order to increase agricultural production in the developing world, we need to improve farming methods, both through better technology (genetically modified foods) and by increasing the use of existing aids to agriculture (fertilizer). These methods will not be available to third-world farmers if they remain impoverished.

In like manner, poverty is the main stumbling block to improvements in the environment and human health. The point here is stunningly simple. The real way to improve the environment is to reduce poverty in the world; the real way to reduce poverty is to encourage the global development of free and efficient markets. This requires a substantial initial investment in public health (sanitation and access to clean water) and education. Beyond that, however, the requirements are virtually cost-free -- consisting, in the main, of democratic governance and adherence to the rule of law. (One of the conspicuous subtexts of The Skeptical Environmentalist is that exceptions to the general trend of global improvement have occurred in totalitarian systems; thus, caloric consumption, while rising in most of the developing world, has fallen in Cuba and Iraq.) But the link between free-market economies and human progress is, perhaps more than anything else, exactly what the environmental movement is most perturbed by.

Lomborg puts his finger squarely on this issue -- the extent, that is, to which environmentalism has become a proxy for anti-capitalism. It is, he says, the "environmental trump card", and it goes like this: even if we are doing better and better on almost every objective environmental indicator, we still need to change our way of life by decreasing consumption, limiting industrial activity, and sharing resources. As Lomborg goes on to point out, this argument, untethered from either an objective evaluation of risks or any consideration of what will actually leave us better off, is wholly ideological. Indeed, if we followed the course of action loudly advocated by the largest environmental organizations, we would almost certainly end up, as P.J. O'Rourke put it in his 1994 book, All the Trouble in the World, in "a just and peaceful world full of powerless nobodies who are broke and have empty shopping malls". And herein lies the great value of The Skeptical Environmentalist, even apart from the clarity with which it shows that the state of the world is improving. A reader of this book cannot fail to be made acutely aware of the relationship between environmental decisions and human welfare.

That relationship is precisely what goes suppressed or unrecognized when environmental issues are discussed by most policymakers and in the media, and it is certainly never invoked when the precautionary principle is under discussion. Bjorn Lomborg is correct to say that, in deciding how to apply our resources in order to better the state of humanity, we must be guided by evidence and not by intuition. He is also correct to point out, as was Julian Simon before him, that our record in this regard has been astonishingly good.