[lbo-talk] 8.8 EQ in Chile

[Alan Rudy]

That is a very very kind reading of Lomborg.  His argument is not only that
affluent societies may handle the consequences of climate change more easily
than will the impoverished - which is simultaneously facile and ignores
stratification in affluent societies - but it is also that climate science
is too uncertain, regulation too authoritarian of the state and mandated
reductions too bad for "the economy".  I disagree with his scientific
analysis - and not only because he cherry-picks data, misreads studies and
misrepresents research of climate change researchers pro and con and find it
stunning that an argument could be made on this list that someone who argues
that we can trust private and public scientific and technological
development, in the name of market and productive efficiencies to solve the
long-term minor problem of climate change should be taken seriously.  He
further argues that we should dedicate far more in the way of essentially
(naturally) limited public resources to issues of poverty, public health,
etc. across the global south... which'd be fine except that his argument is
that we should do this not alongside greenhouse gas regulation but
instead... because of the inherently limited resources governments have.

On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 11:36 AM, Somebody Somebody
<philos_case at yahoo.com>wrote:


> The low casualty count is further evidence, if it was needed, that the
> primary factor in natural disasters is the level of development and
> infrastructure in a particular society. Although Lomborg is demonized on the
> left, this is his essential point - that global warming, bad as it is, can
> be handled much more easily by affluent societies. The main issue then, is
> poverty, as it always was.
>
>
>
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>

-- 
*********************************************************
Alan P. Rudy
Dept. Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work
Central Michigan University
124 Anspach Hall
Mt Pleasant, MI 48858
517-881-6319