LA Times Bjorn Lomborg, the controversial Danish economist/political scientist at the center of filmmaker Ondi Timoner's energetic new documentary, doesn't find Gore's truth inconvenient so much as distorted, a position that has made him about as popular as a toxic spill in many circles both left and right.
Just how inculcated the precepts of filmmaker Davis Guggenheim's Oscar-winning "An Inconvenient Truth" have become is laid out in the artwork and answers of a classroom of articulate elementary school kids in Britain that Timoner uses to open the film. Their hand-drawn paintings of an Earth mostly covered by water, dying penguins and massive deserts pretty much sum up the current consensus on the toll of unchecked global warming. Their solutions will sound just as familiar: recycling, carbon offsetting, hybrid cars, a lot of light bulb replacement and, as one puts it, "I pray a lot."
Lomborg isn't suggesting we shouldn't worry, but he does resist what he contends are the fear tactics and overstatements being used to get our attention. He is, after all, a numbers guy, so when he convened a think tank to look at how the $250 billion a year the European Union plans to spend on carbon offsets might be better spent, the group was packed with top economists drawn from around the world.
Basically, he argues there are ways to divert some of those funds to address poverty, disease and education without slowing things on the global warming front if we look for ways to spend more wisely. Needless to say, he has a few ideas.
Basically, he argues there are ways to divert some of those funds to address poverty, disease and education without slowing things on the global warming front if we look for ways to spend more wisely. Needless to say, he has a few ideas.
With its follow-the-money mind-set, the documentary works its way through problem and solution many times over, always in a brisk, no-nonsense way. By bringing in a diverse group of big thinkers to take part in a very animated, sometimes agitated, discussion, the filmmaker has succeeded in bringing what could have been a very dry mountain of data, theories and experimental research to vibrant life.
Timoner came to the project a skeptic herself, and that serves the film well. Though the charismatic Lomborg is very much the center of the storm, she lines up an impressive number of experts from the environmental and scientific research community to stand on either side of the divide. Nearly every assertion Lomborg makes is met by a devil's advocate — though the late Stephen Schneider, Nobel winner, MacArthur fellow and long a professor of environmental biology at Stanford University, carries much of that load.
Still, there is little doubt from the beginning who will win the final round.
Read full review at LA Times
Filed under Nutty... wow.
A Republican congressman hoping to chair the powerful House Energy Committee refers to the Bible and God on the issue of global warming. Representative John Shimkus insists we shouldn't concerned about the planet being destroyed because God promised Noah it wouldn't happen again after the great flood.