Al Gore Nobel Peace Prize? Cool it!

Saint…? Anti-Christ…? Or neither?

In the public debate on environmental policy and global warming, there appear to be only alarmists and deniers. There are those who feel that global warming is the greatest threat facing humanity today, that we must devote all our resources to countering its effect to prevent utter catastrophe for human civilization. And then there are deniers who think the Earth is not warming, that even if it is man is not the cause, and that even if it could be fixed it would cost too much and doing so would cause more harm than good.

That Al Gore has won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on encouraging world governments to tackle global warming shows how much a leftist joke the post-Cold War Nobel committe has become. (Not since Arafat (1994) Jimmy Carter (2002) has the prize been such a big joke.) But I don’t say that because I’m a denier. Although it’s hard to stay in the middle of this debate, there is a third way: Bjorn Lomborg, the Danish author of “The Skeptical Environmentalist” (2001) who challenged the belief that the environment is going to pieces, has a new book titled “Cool It,” which is brimming with useful facts and common sense on how to tackle global warming.

The book starts with a calm review of the many supposed calamities that will result from a hotter planet—extreme hurricanes, flooding rivers, malaria, heat deaths, starvation, water shortages. It turns out that, when these problems are looked at from all sides and stripped of the spin, they aren’t as worrisome as the alarmists would suggest. In some cases, they even have an upside.

• FLOODS: After the 2002 floods of Prague and Dresden, Blair, Chirac and Schroeder all argued that the floods “proved” the need for Western governments to commit themselves to Kyoto. Mr. Lomborg agrees that global warming increases precipitation. Yet truly bad floods have historically accompanied colder climates, since plentiful snow and a late thaw produce ice jams that block rivers and produce high water levels. These sorts of floods have in fact decreased in the 20th century, at least in part because of global warming.

• SEA LEVELS: Yes they will rise, perhaps a foot over this century. But they have already risen a foot since 1860, and the world has coped. More people will die from heat, but significantly more people will not die from cold.

• KYOTO: Implementing Kyoto will cost trillions of dollars that would only result in a 3% reduction in flooding damages. If we instead adopted smart flood policies—an end to subsidies that encourage people to settle in flood plains, levees—we could achieve a 91% reduction in damages at a fraction of the Kyoto cost.

In short, Bjorn makes the case to be concerned about the environment we live in resource consumption, but not sacrificing economic development for meaningless benefits. His argument is convincing, and we can only hope it wins out the day.