Dr. Lomborg's claim to be a "Left-Wing guy" should remind us of the solidly materialistic side of old-fashioned Marxism, and the profound changes that the environmental movement has wrought on the left side of the political spectrum. It is not surprising that he has found common ground with Julian Simon; both traditional Marxism and free-market Capitalism are in a way different sides of the same materialistic coin, exemplifying the "Can-Do" spirit that puts the short-term welfare of humanity above any other value, albeit using different means. Spiritual values, and the fate of the Earth, are assumed to benefit from this, but only as an afterthought, at the sufferance of one system or another.
This common outlook is perfectly exemplified by the famous bet between Mr. Simon and Paul Ehrlich: they both shared the same assumption, that the retail price of a commodity is the only valid measure of its scarcity, or the toll its extraction takes on the Earth. They made the elementary mistake of failing to distinguish price from cost. Aside from the obvious fact that in a market economy prices can easily be manipulated, the price often does not reflect the costs of shifting production to Third World nations, and the attendant political, environmental and human devastation that accompanies that shift. To take but one example from your article, the claim that Canada has "reforested" more acreage than it has cut down totally ignores the possibilty that a natural forest habitat may be more valuable than a tree farm. Statistics are notoriously slippery things...
Chris Protopapas New York City