# Should we focus on clean air and water instead of Global Warming? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 20, 2012, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-focus-on-clean-air-and-water-instead-of-global-warming/625770 "2012-06-20T17:44:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2012, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-focus-on-clean-air-and-water-instead-of-global-warming/625770/1 "2012-06-20T17:44:46Z")
Was reading this article on CNN today and wondered what 'dopers think of it. Basically, Bjorn Lomborg feels that the focus should be on clean air and water, especially in the 3rd world, instead of Global Warming. > [@](#): > > 03:21 PM ET > Share > Comments (23 comments) > Permalink > Author: Focus on clean water, not global warming > > This week, hundreds of world leaders and tens of thousands of environmentalists are convening in Rio de Janeiro for the U.N.'s Conference on Sustainable Development. > > Bjorn Lomborg, author of “The Skeptical Environmentalist,” says the Rio+20 summit will be a wasted opportunity and that the U.N. is focused on the wrong things. He says that for every person who might die from global warming, 210 will die from health problems caused by a lack of clean water and pollution. > > Lomborg joined “Fareed Zakaria GPS” on Sunday to talk about his views and possible long-term solutions. Here’s an edited version of their conversation, which can also be viewed by downloading the entire show on iTunes. > > Fareed Zakaria:You have a Foreign Affairs article coming out in which you point out the history of these kinds of growth predictions and what the environmental concerns have been. Explain that point briefly. > > Bjorn Lomborg: It’s the 40th anniversary of (the report) “The Limits to Growth” –the idea that we were going to run out of everything and, even if we weren’t, we were going to be screwed anyway because we would basically be polluting ourselves to death. > > That ran computer models back then. Of course, remember, computers seemed like they were telling the truth no matter what you put into them. And I think with the oil embargo in '73 just one year later and oil prices shooting up, there was a real sense that, yes, we are running out of everything … we are running out of oil and we need to conserve everything and we are really on a very, very wrong path. > > In many ways, you can say, it’s set the environmental agenda certainly for a couple of decades. > [@](#): > > Lomborg: Well, the problem is they were wrong. They were, first of all, wrong that we were going to run out of food. But perhaps more importantly for the environmental concern, they were wrong about the idea that we were going to run out of all resources. > > Actually, if you look at the cost of resources, which is the economist’s way of looking at how many resources do we have left, the cost of resources generally have come down about sevenfold since 1850. Yes, it’s ticked up in the last 10 years … but if you look at the whole curve, it’s very clear, it’s a clear downward trend. 
Why? Because innovation is much, much more important than using up the resources. > > The Club of Rome thought there were only so many resources; when we’ve used up them, we are really up a creek. But what they forgot was we find many more resources and we get much better at exploiting poor resources further away but even cheaper with technology. And that’s really what we’ve done with virtually all resources. > > Zakaria: What about the other half of that report, which was about pollution? > > Lomborg: They thought as we get richer and richer and there are more and more people, you’ll have more and more belching smokestacks. But what they forgot was technology actually handles a lot of that. Now, we’ve actually seen air pollution come down in most rich countries for most of the last century. > > It’s not just the technology. … After '72, we put extra effort into making regulations that meant that we’ve gotten even lower levels of air pollution. > [@](#): > > Lomborg: Absolutely. We want to have regulation where it makes sense - where there’s lots of people dying, for instance, from air pollution. That is a real concern. > > But you should also recognize, what is it that drives the ability to care about the environment? It is that you’re rich enough that you don’t have to worry about your kids dying tomorrow. > > And that’s my real concern about the way we look into the future when we go down to Rio in just a few days. What are we talking about there? Well, we’re talking about going to a green economy, and we’re talking about global warming. But in reality, the real issues for most of this world is still air and water pollution. > > Why are we not talking about the important issues in the third world? Why are we talking about somewhat more esoteric issues that clearly concern first-world people? There is perhaps 0.06% of all deaths in the developing world caused by global warming. There’s 13% of all deaths caused by air and water pollution. Let’s get our priorities right. 
… > > If you read the U.N., their little leaflet that they distribute for the Rio summit, they show how we should all get electric cars and we should go organic and stuff like that. > > No. Most people in (the) developing world cannot afford an electric car. What we should do is focus on innovation to make those cars so cheap. Then the next half-century, everyone will want them. Anyway, you can read the whole article (it’s not very long) in the link above. For debate, do you think we should focus more of our efforts (i.e. money) on clean air and water, especially in the 3rd world, or continue what seems to be an irregularly successful campaign against global warming and climate change? Or do you feel we should do neither…or attempt both? Or do something else? -XT ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2012, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-focus-on-clean-air-and-water-instead-of-global-warming/625770/2 "2012-06-20T17:55:42Z")
It sounds like the fallacy of the false dilemma to me. Global warming and pollution may both be bad but those aren’t the only issues that affect the world either especially in the 3rd world. Pollution is only one of many problems that the 3rd world faces. She is concerned with pollution while others are concerned about malaria, AIDS, and droughts. All of them are cause for concern. Global warming is different in that it has the potential to affect the entire world and the impact isn’t limited to humans. It also won’t go away quickly even if most humans died off . There are plenty of problems to go around and people to work on them. Until I see an actual proposal about which resources should be taken away from one problem to focus on another and exactly why, I am not impressed with convoluted ways of saying that their are many problems in the world. I think we all already know that. ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2012, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-focus-on-clean-air-and-water-instead-of-global-warming/625770/3 "2012-06-20T17:59:57Z")
Give me two problems, and one you want me to like, and I will create for you a standard which will unequivocally show that one to be more important. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2012, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-focus-on-clean-air-and-water-instead-of-global-warming/625770/4 "2012-06-20T21:57:09Z")
So, what you both seem to be saying is that we have plenty of resources to be addressing both (plus a few more) issues, and the guy in the linked article is just crying wolf? -XT ---
**Author:** ![purplehorseshoe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/purplehorseshoe/32/2996_2.png) [@purplehorseshoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/purplehorseshoe)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2012, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-focus-on-clean-air-and-water-instead-of-global-warming/625770/5 "2012-06-20T22:37:39Z")
No, I think what they’re saying is that there are plenty of problems to go around, and there’s no sense ignoring any of them. ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2012, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-focus-on-clean-air-and-water-instead-of-global-warming/625770/6 "2012-06-20T23:11:57Z")
> [@XT](#): > > So, what you both seem to be saying is that we have plenty of resources to be addressing both (plus a few more) issues, and the guy in the linked article is just crying wolf? Not crying wolf, I think clean air and especially clean water are very important, too. He may even be right, that they’re more important. They’re definitely more immediate. If an asteroid were going to hit tomorrow, what would the author divert funds from to do something about it? What would he divert funds from in order to pay for programs that would tell us whether asteroids were going to hit us tomorrow? Next week? Ten years from now? He says, “Why are we not talking about the important issues in the third world? Why are we talking about somewhat more esoteric issues that clearly concern first-world people? There is perhaps 0.06% of all deaths in the developing world caused by global warming. There’s 13% of all deaths caused by air and water pollution. Let’s get our priorities right.” I submit that this is not damning evidence that our priorities are actually wrong. If we spend a bunch of money to clean their water, and then a severe drought from climate change destroys farming in the region, what will he have to say about that? There are no shortage of problems in the world and while “how many people die from X versus Y right now” is certainly a useable metric, I don’t know offhand that anyone really thinks this is actually a good metric. So maybe I’d like to hear thoughts from the gallery on that. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2012, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-focus-on-clean-air-and-water-instead-of-global-warming/625770/7 "2012-06-20T23:38:00Z")
Speaking as a global citizen who cares about the environment, we should be focusing on everything. But speaking as a person who enforces environmental regulations at the state level? We can’t even get people on board with controlling pollution running off their front yards. When we can crack _that_ nut, then we can start thinking about controlling CO2 emissions. I just finished writing a response to a letter sent to my agency from an environmental non-profit. It wants the state to call its coastal waters impaired for acidification stemming from increased atmospheric CO2. Normally I have to consult my manager for the party line, but I didn’t have to in this case. Very well-intentioned folks, no doubt, but what they want us to do is crazy-bananas. The state can crack down on all of its permitted facilities–which is all we can do, by law–and it wouldn’t fix global warming one little bit. It would piss people off and invite lawsuits up the wazoo, though. More importantly, though, we already have an uphill battle controlling nutrient and sediment pollution–which is really what is killing our waters. Piling global warming on top of the “to-do” list is not going to speed this up. It will actually make stakeholders (read, business and agriculture) more hesitant to cooperate with us. We tell them to install $30 million worth of improvements to their facility to control pollution and they begrudgingly sign on. But then next week we tell them that’s not good enough and they’ve got to do that and something else to meet CO2 emission standards? How will we even be able to gauge progress? Pollution is easy to track. Global warming? Do we measure that here or in Honolulu? How do we assure them we aren’t going to be knocking on their door next year with another requirement if we can’t gauge progress? So it’s a mess and I don’t know what’s going to happen.