Through Green Colored Glasses: Enviromentalism Reconsidered by Wilfred Beckerman

Author:Wilfred Beckerman [Beckerman, Wilfred]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nature, Ecology
ISBN: 9781882577354
Google: RdsNXjz1XwUC
Goodreads: 4482604
Publisher: Cato Institute
Published: 1996-09-24T00:00:00+00:00

Conclusions

Global warming has to be taken seriously, but is no cause for alarm or drastic action. There is plenty of time to improve our understanding of the science, and to take measures to cut out uneconomic uses of fossil fuels, and to remedy market failures that lead to inadequate research into alternative sources of energy. It does not justify diverting vast amounts of people's time, energies, and funds from more urgent environmental problems, particularly those in developing countries. We are not on the edge of an abyss, and the human race is not facing destruction on account of the accumulation of greenhouse gases. Global warming is far more glamorous and telegenic of course than building better lavatories in the Third World, or ensuring a stock of the gene pool of endangered species, or tackling air pollution or bad housing in many cities in advanced countries. But it is to these environmental issues that people who are genuinely concerned with the welfare of their fellow creatures—both those who are alive today and those who will be alive in 100 years' time—should pay attention.

Although we should give high priority to improving our scientific understanding of the climate change phenomenon, how society should strike a balance between the apparently relatively minor damage that global warming would impose on future generations on the one hand and the burden that the present generation should bear in order to take drastic action to prevent global warming on the other is not a matter that can be decided purely on scientific grounds. Nor is it a matter to be decided by pressures from semi-hysterical eco-doomsters. Scientists may often have their own axes to grind, but science is a field of human activity in which, in the end, truth will prevail and error will be exposed. This is not the case in evangelical crusades.

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