Cool It
Bjorn Lomborg argues that many of the elaborate and expensive actions now being considered to stop global warming will cost hundreds of billions of dollars, are often based on emotional rather than strictly scientific assumptions, and may very well have little impact on the world's temperature for hundreds of years. Rather than starting with the most radical procedures, Lomborg argues that we should first focus our resources on more immediate concerns, such as fighting malaria and HIV/AIDS and assuring and maintaining a safe, fresh water supply-which can be addressed at a fraction of the cost and save millions of lives within our lifetime. He asks why the debate over climate change has stifled rational dialogue and killed meaningful dissent.
Lomborg presents us with a second generation of thinking on global warming that believes panic is neither warranted nor a constructive place from which to deal with any of humanity's problems, not just global warming. Cool It promises to be one of the most talked about and influential books of our time.
Click here for the following translations: Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese, Czech, Dutch, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish. Click here for Scandinavian translations and reviews (Danish, Norwegian, Swedish).
Also available for Kindle.
Testimonials
Bjorn Lomborg's rational and compassionate suggestions would save more lives, preserve more wilderness and have a better chance of eventually halting man-made global warming than hysterical catastrophism, global treaties, and high-minded energy rationing. Read this ingenious book."
- Matt Ridley, author of The Origins of Virtue
Lomborg affirms that the planet is warming, but questions why so much of the policy debate is framed around the idea of imminent catastrophe. This book dares to offer straightforward new thinking about how best to respond. Indispensable."
- Clive Crook, associate editor, Financial Times and senior editor, The Atlantic Monthly
At last we have a book that puts the hype of global warming into perspective. Bjorn Lomborg's eye-opening book, Cool It, examines and meticulously documents climate change, and proposes solutions, and outlines ways we can do things. An extraordinarily timely and supremely useful book."
- John Naisbitt, author of Megatrends
Brilliant! A devastating critique of the prevailing climate change hysteria. This book provides an overwhelming case for re-assessing where exactly our policy priorities should lie if you are genuinely concerned with world welfare rather than with making noble--if futile--gestures that, at best, make us feel good but actually do a lot of harm."
- Wilfred Beckerman, Professor Emeritus of Economics, Oxford University
By bringing historical information and perspective, statistical analysis and common sense to the issue of global warming, Bjorn Lomborg deflates much of the widespread sensationalism that has regrettably come to mark the subject. His main point: how do we establish priorities and allocate our resources --cost-effectively and not heedlessly--to limit damage to human life and well-being. Solely focusing on reducing CO2 emissions may fall far from the optimal outcome. Meticulously researched, Lomborg provides a powerful antidote to the prevailing exaggerations-as well as an intriguing read."
- James Schlesinger, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, US Secretary of Defense, and Jimmy Carter's Secretary of Energy
Bjorn Lomborg is the best-informed and most humane advocate for environmental change in the world today. In contrast to other figures that promote a single issue while ignoring others, Lomborg views the globe as a whole, studies all the problems we face, ranks them, and determines how best, and in what order, we should address them. His first book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, established the importance of a fact-based approach. With later books, Global Crises, Global Solutions and How to Spend $50 Billion to Make the World a Better Place, this mild-mannered Danish statistician has steadily gained new converts. Not surprisingly, Time Magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming will further enhance Lomborg’s reputation for global analysis and thoughtful response. For anyone who wants an overview of the global warming debate from an objective source, this brief text is a perfect place to start. Lomborg is only interested in real problems, and he has no patience with media fear-mongering; he begins by dispatching the myth of the endangered polar bears, showing that this Disneyesque cartoon has no relevance to the real world where polar bear populations are in fact increasing. Lomborg considers the issue in detail, citing sources from Al Gore to the World Wildlife Fund, then demonstrating that polar bear populations have actually increased fivefold since the 1960s.
Lomborg then works his way through the concerns we hear so much about: higher temperatures, heat deaths, species extinctions, the cost of cutting carbon, the technology to do it. Lomborg believes firmly in climate change--despite his critics, he's no denier--but his fact-based approach, grounded in economic analyses, leads him again and again to a different view. He reviews published estimates of the cost of climate change, and the cost of addressing it, and concludes that “we actually end up paying more for a partial solution than the cost of the entire problem. That is a bad deal.
In some of the most disturbing chapters, Lomborg recounts what leading climate figures have said about anyone who questions the orthodoxy, thus demonstrating the illiberal, antidemocratic tone of the current debate. Lomborg himself takes the larger view, explaining in detail why the tone of hysteria is inappropriate to addressing the problems we face. In the end, Lomborg’s concerns embrace the planet. He contrasts our concern for climate with other concerns such as HIV/AIDS, malnutrition, and providing clean water to the world. In the end, his ability to put climate in a global perspective is perhaps the book’s greatest value. Lomborg and Cool It are our best guides to our shared environmental future."
- Michael Crichton, bestselling author of State of Fear and Jurassic Park