EDITORIAL
Environmentalists destroy truth for the green agenda

Sit in on a meeting with a group of environmentalists and the world teeters on disaster. Read The Economist magazine and wonder what all the fuss is about.

The Economist reported that in the book The Skeptical Environmentalist, by Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg, the environment is improving. Technology is improving lives across the planet and western civilization is environmentally sustainable.

Environmentalists are seething with anger. One environmentalist who claims to be a scientist refused to share the same platform with Lomborg at a meeting. Others wrote angry essays in the January issue of Scientific American, which The Economist reviewed and said, was "strong

on contempt and sneering, but weak on substance."

The Economist defends Lomborg because he did his homework and because his claims are largely true. He carefully includes 2,930 footnotes. Where Lomborg later changes a conclusion, as any honest researcher would do when faced with irrefutable evidence to the contrary, he has noted his errors on his own website.

But the environmental scientists continue to sputter and whine about Lomborg's main conclusions, which are based on science. The Economist concludes, therefore, that the anti-Lomborg environmentalists are also attacking science.

Why all this trash talk? Why do they slam a writer who did his homework? Are

pro-green scientists so attached to a point-of-view they won't let go, even in the face truth?

Apparently so. Says Stephen Schneider, who was quoted in the Scientific American 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."