I thought I would introduce a man who has quite infamously controversial views on the whole climate change (and thus population) debate: Bjørn Lomborg. He is not an environmental scientist and many are in turn skeptical about his statistical claims about human impact on the environment as being little more than 'manipulating the data'. This is why I'm just presenting him here with a few links to his work and the criticism that surrounds it.
His main argument is a cornucopist one: that as societies grow and become wealthier, technology will become more advanced and sophisticated – enough so as to meet our resource needs. He uses such examples as the green revolution to show how we were able to sustain a growing population and still are. He believes that economic growth is the answer and we should be focussing our resources on more pressing issues such as HIV/AIDS and poverty.
While I don't disagree that solving health and poverty issues that affect people today is extremely important too, I don't think we can just stop all efforts to keep the Earth systems healthy and 'hope for the best'. I cant help thinking that without a massively inflated population we wouldn't need new technologies that enable oil extraction in the most difficult and remote locations for example, and for that matter the ecosystems in those locations would be better off without them!
Here is his website and the trailer for his documentary 'Cool It':
Links to articles (one relatively recent) he has written, summarising his arguments:
Link to the article published in the journal 'Nature', criticising his work; it's a book review of The Skeptical Environmentalist:
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| Having dinner with Bjørn Lomborg when he came to speak for the UCL Economics and Finance Society (I'm on the right) |
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