Idea Log

If you follow green issues at all closely, by now you'll have probably heard of a book titled The Skeptical Environmentalist, by a Danish statistician named Bjorn Lomborg. Published in the U.S. last year by Cambridge University Press, the work has set off a firestorm, largely because it purports to show that for decades, environmental groups have been overly pessimistic about nothing less fundamental than the actual state of the world.

But there's a funny aspect to the Lomborg debate. Many commentators who have praised The Skeptical Environmentalist have lingered at length upon its organizational and physical attributes -- finding their own bizarre figures by which to measure this highly statistical book. It's almost as if the density of Lomborg's tome has become a testimonial to its validity. Here's Thomas Bray, from Tuesday's Wall Street Journal:

The 515-page paperback version, complete with 2,930 footnotes and a 69-page bibliography, received respectful, indeed glowing, reviews in many quarters, including The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post.

Bray then went on, without any apparent sense of irony, to quote approvingly one Lomborg defender who noted that "some environmental activists, when challenged with well-founded objections to the scientific validity of their alarmist claims about the state of the planet, [have responded] with such diversionary tactics as counting the number of footnotes cited by their critics." Apparently it's wrong for environmentalists to count footnotes, but anti-environmentalists are more than welcome to do so.

And Thomas Bray isn't the only Lomborg fan who likes his citations lengthy. Consider the Chicago Tribune columnist Steve Chapman, who wrote of Lomborg in late October: "The author, armed with nearly 3,000 footnotes. . .argues that while there is still vast room for improvement, the condition of the planet and the people who inhabit it is improving, not deteriorating." Or how about Houston Chronicle's Craig Hines: "At the end of his volume, with almost 200 charts, graphs and tables as well as 2,930 footnotes, Lomborg writes. . ." And there's always the reliable former American Spectator editor R. Emmett Tyrell: "'We are not running out of energy or natural resources,' Mr. Lomborg demonstrates in a book that includes 3,000 footnotes. . ."

These aren't the only examples. And it's pretty clear that aside from a few straight news reporters, it's only pro-Lomborg writers who have found his actual footnote count so remarkable. Far be it for Idea Log to suggest that this means they've been less than diligent at absorbing the book's actual contents.

Idea Log tried to read Lomborg's book, but didn't get very far. So far, we seem to be the only commentator to have admitted this. However, we too were able to discover a new and deeply resonant statistic in the Lomborg debate: The paperback version of The Skeptical Environmentalist weighs some 2.5 pounds. That's no small matter, considering that Idea Log's hardback Oxford Annotated Bible weighs just under 3 pounds. In his book Lomborg collectively dubs environmentalists' doomsaying mantra about global famine, floods, and climate change "the litany" -- can this be a coincidence?

So get out your scales. Let's go figure out the real state of the world.