October 10, 2001 (Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org) - The following report by Marc Morano is from CNSNews.com, October 09, 2001:

Danish Professor Bjorn Lomborg was a former Greenpeace member who truly believed the earth was in dire condition and that humans were ruining the environment until he was challenged to check the facts for himself.

"I never doubted the environmental myths. I used to be a very concerned Greenpeace kind of leftie," he said.

In 1987, he read an article by Economist Julian Simon who said the earth's environment was getting healthier. "I said no, no. That's got to be right-wing American propaganda," he stated.

Lomborg then set out with some of his students from the University of Aarthus to debunk Simon's contention. But it was Lomborg who was in for a surprise. "As it turned out, we were the ones getting debunked. Things are actually getting better and better on pretty much all accounts. We are actually leaving our kids a better world," he said.

Lomborg is in the U.S., promoting his new book the Skeptical Environmentalist. At a Cooler Heads Coalition luncheon on Capitol Hill, sponsored by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), Lomborg said that since he began criticizing the green movement, he has been accused of being a "right winger" or at least a "messenger boy for the right."

But an excerpt read from his book clearly refutes any ties to the conservative movement. On page 32, Lomborg writes that his criticism of environmentalists "does not mean I am a demonic little free market individualist. I believe there are many circumstances [upon] which environmental intervention is necessary."

In his book, he details his transformation on environmental thinking and uses statistical information from respected research institutions to debunk what he sees as the major environmental myths of today. Lomborg, who speaks with the zeal of a convert, explained that the air in London is cleaner today than it was in 1585. He also insisted that world hunger is a rapidly declining problem, dropping in half since 1970 and projected to drop dramatically lower in the next 30 years.

He criticized the alarmism and misinformation with regard to most environmental issues and suggested that myths are designed to force immediate action. "If you feel you painted yourself into a corner, you are willing to do pretty much anything," he asserted.

Lomborg noted that since the 1920s, the world has been told how there is only a "10 year supply of oil" left in the world. He quoted an old professor who said, "We have been running out of oil ever since I was a kid.

"It's like going home and looking into your fridge and saying 'whoa, you only have food for three days, you are going to die in four,'" he joked.

Lomborg explained that we continue to consume more oil while at the same time producing greater quantities of the fuel. He quoted the former head of OPEC, who once said, "The oil age is not going to come to an end because of a lack of oil, just like the stone age did not come to an end because of a lack of stone." He believes that solar energy will emerge as a primary energy source over fossil fuels by the close of this century.

Lomborg asserted that the Kyoto global warming treaty would be an economic disaster for the world while having only minimal effects on climate change.

"The cure is more costly than the disease," he said. According to Lomborg, even if the Kyoto Protocol were fully enacted, the world would have "simply postponed the problem [of climate change] for six years. We will basically say the temperature we would have reached in 2094, we have no postponed until 2100."

He believes the money Kyoto would cost the world's economy would be better spent investing in cleaner drinking water and improved sanitation for the developing world.

"We do not fix all problems. Some problems we simply say we would rather spend our resources elsewhere."