Lessons learned from "the skeptical environmentalist": an environmental health perspective.
Few books about the environment have generated as much heated debate as Bjørn Lomborg's 'The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World', published by Cambridge University Press in 2001. A flavor of the controversy can be gleaned from a series of reviews and rebuttals published in 'Scientific American' (Rennie 2002). In general, most positive reviews appeared in the popular press (e.g., 'The Economist', 'Washington Post Book Review', 'The Wall Street Journal') and most negative reviews appeared in the scientific press (e.g., 'Science', 'Nature', 'Bioscience'). Although 'The Skeptical Environmentalist' (TSE) addresses a number of environmental health issues, voices from the environmental health community have not been prominent among the participants in this debate. Now that the dust from the initial stampede to praise and condemn the book has settled, we will explore lessons to be learned from TSE and the associated debate from an environmental health perspective.
Bodnar
Agnes
A
Division of Environmental Health Sciences, University of California, 140 Warren Hall #7360, Berkeley, California 94720-7360, USA.
Castorina
Rosemary
R
Desai
Manish
M
Duramad
Paurene
P
Fischer
Susan
S
Klepeis
Neil
N
Liang
Song
S
Mehta
Sumi
S
Naumoff
Kyra
K
Noth
Elizabeth M
EM
Schei
Morten
M
Tian
Linwei
L
Vork
Kathleen L
KL
Smith
Kirk R
KR
D004777:Environment; D004782:Environmental Health; D006291:Health Policy; D006801:Humans; D010380:Peer Review; D011639:Public Opinion; D011643:Publishing