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The Skeptical Environmentalist
Abstract
The Skeptical Environmentalist challenges widely held beliefs that the environmental situation is getting worse and worse. The author, himself a former member of Greenpeace, is critical of the way in which many environmental organisations make selective and misleading use of the scientific evidence. Using the best available statistical information from internationally recognised research institutes, BjA¸rn Lomborg systematically examines a range of major environmental problems that feature prominently in headline news across the world. His arguments are presented in non-technical, accessible language and are carefully backed up by over 2500 footnotes allowing readers to check sources for themselves. Concluding that there are more reasons for optimism than pessimism, BjA¸rn Lomborg stresses the need for clear-headed prioritisation of resources to tackle real, not imagined problems. The Skeptical Environmentalist offers readers a non-partisan stocktaking exercise that serves as a useful corrective to the more alarmist accounts favoured by campaign groups and the media.
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Citations
Cited by
A globally coherent fingerprint of climate change impacts across natural systems
Parmesan, C., & Yohe, G. (2003) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature01286 · Cited by 11,265
Gray, R. (2010) · Accounting, Organizations and Society · doi:10.1016/j.aos.2009.04.006 · Cited by 1,312
Lengai, G. M. W., Muthomi, J. W., & Mbega, E. R. (2020) · Scientific African · doi:10.1016/j.sciaf.2019.e00239 · Cited by 516
Have we overstated the tropical biodiversity crisis?
Laurance, W. F. (2007) · Trends in Ecology & Evolution · doi:10.1016/j.tree.2006.09.014 · Cited by 284
Metadata
- Authors
- Visser, W., & Lomborg, B.
- Venue
- The Top 50 Sustainability Books
- Publisher
- Greenleaf Publishing Limited
- Published
- 2013-04-22
- Pages
- 171-175
- OpenAlex
- W3122611793
- Cited by
- 310
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 63.60
- Type
- book chapter
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: The Skeptical Environmentalist. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.9774/gleaf.978-1-907643-44-6_37
- The paper
- Visser, W., & Lomborg, B. (2013). The Skeptical Environmentalist. The Top 50 Sustainability Books. https://doi.org/10.9774/gleaf.978-1-907643-44-6_37
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
