Federal Reserve officials are studying whether market plumbing issues contributed to a spike in short-term lending rates this week, after the central bank said it would extend recent operations to inject cash into money markets.
Investors this week have highlighted declines in bank deposits held at the Fed, known as reserves, as a driver of this week’s funding volatility. But New York Fed officials said Friday they were also examining whether the distribution of those reserves across the banking system—and not just the absolute level—had contributed to cash shortages earlier this week.
“That ability of the system to move money around and redistribute—it didn’t work the way we’ve seen in the past,” said New York Fed President John Williams in an interview on Friday.
The New York Fed said on Friday it would continue to offer to add at least $75 billion daily to the financial system through Oct. 10, prolonging its efforts to relieve pressure in money markets.
In addition to at least $75 billion in overnight loans, the Fed said it would also offer three separate 14-day cash loans of at least $30 billion each next week. The Fed will conduct further operations as needed after Oct. 10.
“This is, I would say, Central Banking 101,” said Mr. Williams. “This is what the Fed’s open-market operations are designed to address—directly provide liquidity into the system, which supports market functioning.”
On Monday, corporate tax payments were due to the Treasury, and Treasury debt auctions settled, leading to large transfers of cash from the banking system.
The level of reserves in the system at the beginning of the week appeared “above what we thought banks’ minimum level of reserves was,” said Lorie Logan, the New York Fed executive who is interim manager of the portfolio.
But those reserves can be concentrated in a few institutions, and officials weren’t sure “what the distribution process would look like as different shocks like this take place and how those reserves would then redistribute to other entities that needed liquidity,” she said.
One of the lessons this week was that this distribution process “was definitely stickier than we expected,” and repo markets experienced greater dysfunction than anticipated as a result, she said.
The Fed is adding money to the financial system through the market for repurchase agreements, or repo. In those transactions, banks offer collateral such as government bonds in exchange for short-term loans, for periods as brief as overnight. The market is a major way that banks and financial firms raise capital to fund their businesses.
But the Fed restored confidence, particularly through its decision Friday to offer two-week cash loans. “Everybody saw that as their bazooka,” Mr. Carpenter said.
The newly scheduled operations give financial markets an assurance that the Fed will continue adding liquidity through the end of the coming quarter. Banks tend to hold on to cash at the ends of quarters because that is when regulators typically examine their balance sheets to ensure they are following rules that safeguard the banking system.
“It doesn’t take a lot of cash to right the system,” said Glenn Havlicek, the chief executive at GLMX, which provides technology to repo trading desks, and who formerly oversaw the repo desk at JPMorgan Chase & Co.
The timing is also important because there have been periods in the past year when demand for cash has exceeded the ability or willingness of investors to provide it, leading to spikes in the rates investors charge banks in repo.
That happened at the end of last year when the repo rate traded as high as 6%, pushing the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.’s GCF Repo Index to a then-record 5.14%. Repo rates also notably rose in April when people withdrew cash from the banking system to pay federal income taxes.
Separately, the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee lowered its benchmark federal-funds rate by a quarter percentage point on Wednesday to a range between 1.75% and 2%.
As a result of volatility in the repo market, the fed-funds rate spiked to trade outside of its range on Tuesday, but by Thursday was again trading firmly within the target band.
Mr. Williams said the central bank had effectively diagnosed and deployed its tools to take “forceful, decisive action that addressed the problem,” he said. “We are consistently and constructively supporting stability in these markets, and supporting the FOMC’s desired interest rate.”
On Friday, banks asked for $75.55 billion in reserves, $550 million more than the amount offered by the Fed, offering collateral in the form of Treasury and mortgage securities.
The New York Fed hasn’t had to intervene in money markets since 2008 because during and after the financial crisis, the Fed flooded the financial system with reserves. It did this by buying hundreds of billions of dollars of long-term securities to spur growth after cutting interest rates to nearly zero.
Reserves over the last five years have been declining, especially over the last two years, when the Fed began shrinking securities holdings. Reserves fell to less than $1.4 trillion this week from a peak of $2.8 trillion in 2014.
The Fed stopped shrinking its asset holdings last month. But because other Fed liabilities such as currency in circulation and the Treasury’s general financing account are rising, reserves are likely to grind lower in the weeks and months ahead.
Repo and Reverse Repo Agreements
Repurchase agreements (also known as repos) are conducted only with primary dealers; reverse repurchase agreements (also known as reverse repos) are conducted with both primary dealers and with an expanded set of reverse repo counterparties that includes banks, government-sponsored enterprises, and money market funds.
Repo and reverse repo operations were used prior to the financial crisis to adjust the supply of reserve balances and keep the federal funds ratearound the target level established by the FOMC. At that time, repo operations were typically conducted daily to fine-tune the supply of reserves in the system.
In a repo transaction, the Desk purchases Treasury, agency debt, or agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS) from a counterparty subject to an agreement to resell the securities at a later date. It is economically similar to a loan collateralized by securities having a value higher than the loan to protect the Desk against market and credit risk. Repo transactions temporarily increase the quantity of reserve balances in the banking system.
In a reverse repo transaction, the opposite occurs: the Desk sells securities to a counterparty subject to an agreement to repurchase the securities at a later date at a higher repurchase price. Reverse repo transactions temporarily reduce the quantity of reserve balances in the banking system.
Story 3: Alarmist Adult Abuses of Climate Change Children — Hysterical Greta Thunberg — A Very Ignorant and Abused Child — Brainwashed Indoctrination of Children By Parents and Schools –Seek Professional Help — Weather and Climate Have Always Been Changing — Adapt and and Live With It — Get Your Priorities and Solutions in Order — Videos —
School strike for climate – save the world by changing the rules | Greta Thunberg | TEDxStockholm
Greta Thunberg Rips World Leaders at the U.N. Over Climate Change
Bjorn Lomborg: Global priorities bigger than climate change
Greta Thunberg
Adolescent climate change protester Greta Thunberg has stage parents, literally. Her mother sang opera internationally until the teenager convinced her to quit due to greenhouse gas emissions from flying, and her father and grandfather both gained fame through acting and directing.
Now, they’ve pivoted into the parental act of every stage parent looking to secure the next generation of fame. Apparently, the Swedish version of a Teri Shields is pimping her kid out, not to Penthouse, but to the cause of climate apocalypse.
For all that, conservatives have rightly griped at the performative pointlessness of Thunberg’s schtick, and for all that, liberals have rightly griped that a waning but still significant segment of conservatives deny the reality of anthropogenic climate change; the biggest travesty lost in the hype about the Swedish activist who recently sailed to American shores is that her parents, the media, and the climate alarmist Left are basically engaging in child abuse.
Cases of kids entering public discourse out of sheer discourse, such as Parkland survivors Cameron Kasky and Kyle Kashuv, are sometimes inevitable and sometimes valuable. Some political causes require spokesmen with lived experiences. But even as we saw in the aftermath of Parkland, putting children in the public spotlight is more likely to backfire on them than not.
The case of Thunberg is even more egregious. She began suffering from depression as a child, by her own admission, in part because she learned about climate change at age 8. She was later diagnosed with autism and obsessive compulsive disorder and gradually became despondent as she obsessed over her fear of climate change. She developed mutism and an eating disorder so severe that she once went two months without food, and she stopped going to school. Her only sibling, a sister named Beata, also suffers from Asperger’s and OCD, as well as ADHD.
Now tell me, does it seem healthy to place a child with this many mental illnesses under the spotlight of public scrutiny, with a sole focus on the very phenomenon and associated alarmism that triggered her in the first place?
If you’re a fading opera starlet married into a family of fame, and your only two children are having exceptional trouble even attending school, then I suppose you can secure a bit more fame by milking your child’s clinically diagnosed obsession. But given that Greta’s mental struggles and triggers actually led her to the brink of death, the whole thing smacks of child abuse.
Conservatives shouldn’t mock her. They should worry for her. Social media has made it too easy to prop up children as moral authorities — even children especially predisposed to crack under the pressure.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/this-greta-thunberg-thing-is-child-abuse
Greta Thunberg
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Greta Thunberg
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![]() Thunberg in April 2019
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Born | 3 January 2003 Stockholm, Sweden
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Occupation | Environmental activist |
Years active | 2018–present |
Movement | School strike for climate |
Relatives |
Greta Thunberg[a] FRSGS; (born 3 January 2003[1]) is a Swedish environmental activist focused on the risks posed by global warming.
In August 2018, when she was 15, Thunberg took time off school to demonstrate outside the Swedish parliament, holding up a sign calling for stronger climate action. Soon, other students engaged in similar protests in their own communities. Together they organized a school climate strike movement under the name Fridays for Future. After Thunberg addressed the 2018 United Nations Climate Change Conference, student strikes took place every week somewhere in the world. In 2019, there were at least two coordinated multi-city protests involving over one million pupils each.[2][3]
Thunberg is known for her blunt,[4] matter-of-fact speaking manner,[5] both in public and to political leaders and assemblies, in which she urges immediate action to address what she describes as the climate crisis. At home, Thunberg convinced her parents to adopt several lifestyle choices to reduce their own carbon footprint, including giving up air travel and not eating meat.
In May 2019, Thunberg was featured on the cover of Time magazine, which named her a “next generation leader” and noted that many see her as a role model.[6] Thunberg and the school strike movement were also featured in a 30-minute Vice documentary titled Make the World Greta Again. Some media have described her impact on the world stage as the “Greta Thunberg effect”.[7]
Contents
Life
Greta Thunberg was born on 3 January 2003 in Stockholm,[8][9] the daughter of opera singer Malena Ernman and actor Svante Thunberg.[10] Her paternal grandfather is actor and director Olof Thunberg.[11]
Thunberg says she first heard about climate change in 2011, when she was 8 years old, and could not understand why so little was being done about it.[12] Three years later she became depressed and lethargic, stopped talking and eating, and was eventually diagnosed with Asperger syndrome,[13] obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD),[13] and selective mutism.[13][14] While acknowledging that her diagnosis “has limited me before”, she does not view her Asperger’s as an illness and has instead called it her “superpower”.[14]
For about two years, Thunberg challenged her parents to lower the family’s carbon footprint by becoming vegan and giving up flying, which in part meant her mother had to give up her international career as an opera singer.[10][15] Thunberg credits her parents’ eventual response and lifestyle changes with giving her hope and belief that she could make a difference.[10] The family story is recounted in the 2018 book Scenes from the Heart.[16]
In late 2018, Thunberg began the school climate strikes and public speeches by which she has become an internationally recognized climate activist. Her father does not like her missing school, but said: “[We] respect that she wants to make a stand. She can either sit at home and be really unhappy, or protest, and be happy”.[15] Thunberg says her teachers are divided in their views about her missing class to make her point. She says: “As people they think what I am doing is good, but as teachers they say I should stop.”[15]
Thunberg published a collection of her climate action speeches, No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference, in May 2019[17] with the earnings being donated to charity.[18] In one of her first speeches demanding climate action, Thunberg described the selective mutism aspect of her condition as meaning she “only speaks when necessary”.[12] In 2019, Thunberg also contributed a voiceover for a release of “The 1975”, the theme song of an English band by the same name. Thunberg finishes by urging: “So, everyone out there, it is now time for civil disobedience. It is time to rebel.” Proceeds will go to Extinction Rebellion at Thunberg’s request.[19]
Transatlantic voyage
In August 2019, Thunberg sailed across the Atlantic Ocean from Plymouth, UK, to New York, US, in a 60 ft racing yacht equipped with solar panels and underwater turbines. The trip was announced as a carbon-neutral transatlantic crossing serving as a demonstration of Thunberg’s declared beliefs of the importance of reducing emissions.
The voyage lasted 15 days, from 14 to 28 August 2019. While in the Americas, Thunberg attended the UN Climate Action Summit in New York City, and will attend the COP 25 Climate Change Conference in Santiago, Chile, in December.[20][21]
School strike for climate
Inspiration
Thunberg in front of the Swedish parliament, holding a “Skolstrejk för klimatet” (transl. School strike for the climate) sign, Stockholm, August 2018
Bicycle in Stockholm with references to Thunberg: “The climate crisis must be treated as a crisis! The climate is the most important election issue!” (11 September 2018)
Sign in Berlin, 14 December 2018
In an interview with Amy Goodman from Democracy Now!, Thunberg said she first got the idea of a climate strike after school shootings in the United States in February 2018 led to several youths refusing to go back to school.[10]These teen activists at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, went on to organize the March for Our Lives in support of greater gun control.[22][23]
In May 2018, Thunberg won a climate change essay competition held by Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet. In part, she wrote that “I want to feel safe. How can I feel safe when I know we are in the greatest crisis in human history?”[24] The paper published her article after which she was contacted by Bo Thorén from Fossil Free Dalsland, a group interested in doing something about climate change. Thunberg attended a few of their meetings, and at one of them, Thoren also suggested that school children could strike for climate change.[25] Thunberg tried to persuade other young people to get involved but “no one was really interested” so eventually, she decided to go ahead with the strike by herself.[10]
Beginning
On 20 August 2018, Thunberg, who had just started ninth grade, decided to not attend school until the 2018 Swedish general election on 9 September after the heat waves and wildfires during Sweden’s hottest summer in at least 262 years.[15] Her demands were that the Swedish government reduce carbon emissions in accordance with the Paris Agreement, and she protested by sitting outside the Riksdag every day for three weeks during school hours with the sign Skolstrejk för klimatet (school strike for the climate).[26] She also handed out leaflets that stated: “I am doing this because you adults are shitting on my future.”[15]
Thunberg posted her original strike photo on Instagram and Twitter and other social media accounts quickly took up her cause.[27] According to Ingmar Rentzhog, founder of a Swedish climate-focused social media company, We Don’t Have Time (WDHT), her strike began attracting public attention after he turned up with a freelance photographer and then posted Thunberg’s photograph on his Facebook page and Instagram account. He also made a video in English that he posted on the company’s YouTube channel that had almost 88,000 views.[28] A representative of the Finnish bank, Nordea, quoted one of Thunberg’s tweets to more than 200,000 followers. Thunberg’s social media profile attracted local reporters whose stories earned international coverage in little more than a week.[27]
After the general elections, Thunberg continued to strike only on Fridays. She inspired school students across the globe to take part in student strikes.[29] As of December 2018, more than 20,000 students had held strikes in at least 270 cities.[29]
After October 2018, Thunberg’s activism evolved from solitary protesting to taking part in demonstrations throughout Europe; making several high-profile public speeches, and mobilising her growing number of followers on social media platforms. By March 2019, she was still staging her regular protests outside the Swedish parliament every Friday, where other students now occasionally join her. Her activism has not interfered with her schoolwork, but she has had less spare time.[13]
Support
In February 2019, 224 academics signed an open letter of support stating they were inspired by the actions of Thunberg and the striking school children in making their voices heard.[30] United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres also endorsed the school strikes initiated by Thunberg, admitting that “My generation has failed to respond properly to the dramatic challenge of climate change. This is deeply felt by young people. No wonder they are angry.”[31]
In June 2019, Thunberg spoke by video link with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who had submitted the Green New Deal to the U.S. House of Representatives in February 2019, which calls for the United States to achieve “net-zero” greenhouse gases within a decade. They discussed how it feels when their views are not taken seriously because they are young, and what tactics really work.[32]
Speaking at an event in New Zealand in May 2019, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said his generation was “not winning the battle against climate change” and that it’s up to youth to “rescue the planet”.[33]
Thunberg’s message

Thunberg promoting her campaign at the 2019 World Economic Forum in Davos
When Thunberg began her protest outside the Swedish Parliament in 2018 at age 15, she had two simple messages: a sign which said “school strike for the climate” and leaflets she handed out which said: “I am doing this because you adults are shitting on my future.”[34] As her protest gained momentum, she was invited to give speeches at a variety of forums which enabled her to expand on her concerns. So far, she has espoused four interwoven themes. Thunberg argues that the crisis caused by global warming is so serious that humanity is facing an existential crisis,[35] “that will most likely lead to the end of our civilization as we know it,” and that she holds the current generation of adults responsible, with statements such as “You are stealing our future”.[36][37] She is especially concerned about the impact the climate crisis will have on young people like her. Speaking at Parliament in London she said: “You lied to us. You gave us false hope. You told us that the future was something to look forward to.” Thunberg also states that we need to wake up and change[38] because very little is being done to solve the problem.[39] She says the situation is so dire, we should all panic.[40] She feels that that politicians and decision-makers need to listen to the scientists,[41] pointing out in 2019 that “according to the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), we are less than 12 years away from not being able to undo our mistakes.”[42]
Thunberg uses graphic analogies to highlight her concerns and speaks bluntly to business and political leaders, often scolding them for their lack of action. For instance, she told a panel of prominent business and political leaders at Davos: “Some people, some companies, some decision-makers, in particular, have known exactly what priceless values they have been sacrificing to continue making unimaginable amounts of money. I think many of you here today belong to that group of people.”[43] She went on to say: “I want you to act as if the house was on fire—because it is”.[40] In London in October 2018, she said: “We’re facing an immediate unprecedented crisis that has never been treated as a crisis and our leaders are all acting like children.”[44]
Thunberg points out that the strategies adopted by various governments to limit global warming to 1.5 °C as part of the Paris Agreement are insufficient and that the greenhouse gas emissions curve needs to start declining steeply no later than 2020.[45] In January 2019, she told the UK parliament that Britain needs to stop talking in terms of “lowering” emissions and start thinking in terms of eliminating them.[46] In February 2019, at a conference of the European Economic and Social Committee, she said that the EU must reduce their CO
2 emissions by 80% by 2030, double the 40% goal set in Paris.[47][48]
Thunberg’s main theme is everyone needs to unite behind the science. She says if everyone listened to the scientists and acknowledged the facts, “then we (students) could all go back to school”.[49] On Thunberg’s trip across the Atlantic Ocean (en route to New York City) she travelled via a carbon-neutral yacht. Emblazoned on the yacht’s sail in capital letters were the words “UNITE BEHIND THE SCIENCE”.[50] In one of her first statements after arriving in New York, she had a similar message for Donald Trump, admonishing him to “listen to the science”.[51]
Impact
“Greta Thunberg effect”
Thunberg has inspired a number of her school-aged peers in what has been described as the “Greta Thunberg effect”.[52] In response to her outspoken stance, various politicians have also acknowledged the need to focus on climate change. Britain’s secretary for the environment, Michael Gove, said: “When I listened to you, I felt great admiration, but also responsibility and guilt. I am of your parents’ generation, and I recognise that we haven’t done nearly enough to address climate change and the broader environmental crisis that we helped to create.” Labour politician Ed Miliband, who was responsible for introducing the Climate Change Act 2008, said: “You have woken us up. We thank you. All the young people who have gone on strike have held up a mirror to our society … you have taught us all a really important lesson. You have stood out from the crowd.”[7] In June 2019, a YouGov poll in Britain found that public concern about the environment had soared to record levels in the UK since Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion had “pierced the bubble of denial”.[53]
In August 2019, a doubling in the number of children’s books being published which address the climate crisis was reported, with a similar increase in the sales of such books—all aimed at empowering young people to save the planet. Publishers attribute this to the “Greta Thunberg effect”.[54]
Inspired by Thunberg, wealthy philanthropists and investors from the United States have donated almost half a million pounds to support Extinction Rebellion and school strike groups to establish the Climate Emergency Fund.[55] Trevor Neilson, one of the philanthropists, said the three founders would be contacting friends among the global mega-rich to donate “a hundred times” more in the weeks and months ahead.[56]
In February 2019, Thunberg shared a stage with the then President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, where he outlined “In the next financial period from 2021 to 2027, every fourth euro spent within the EU budget will go towards action to mitigate climate change”.[57] Climate issues also played a significant role in European elections in May 2019[58] as Green parties nearly doubled their vote to finish second on 21%,[59] boosting their MEP numbers to a projected 71.[60] Many of the gains came from northern European countries where young people have taken to the streets inspired by Thunberg.[59] The result gives the Greens a chance of becoming ‘kingmakers’ in the new European parliament.[60]
In June 2019, Swedish Railways (SJ) reported that the number of Swedes taking the train for domestic journeys had risen by 8% from the previous year, reflecting growing public concern about the impact of flying on CO
2 emissions that is highlighted by Thunberg’s refusal to fly to international conferences. Being embarrassed or ashamed to take a plane because of its environmental impact has been described on social media as ‘Flygskam’ or “Shame of flying”, along with the hashtag #jagstannarpåmarken, which translates as #istayontheground.[61][62]
Criticism and response
Criticism of Thunberg and her campaign
In an opinion column, Christopher Caldwell has claimed that Thunberg’s simplistic, straightforward approach to climate change will bring climate protesters into conflict with the complexities of decision-making in Western democracies.[63][64] The French philosopher Raphaël Enthoven claims that many people “buy virtue” with their support for Thunberg but do not actually do anything to help.[65]
In July 2019, Agence France-Presse reported that OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) secretary-general Mohammed Barkindo “complained of what he called ‘unscientific’ attacks on the oil industry by climate change campaigners, calling them ‘perhaps the greatest threat to our industry going forward'”, and said he was apparently referring “to the recent wave of school strikes inspired by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg’s ‘Fridays for Future’ movement”.[66] Thunberg and other climate activists responded by calling his remarks a badge of honour.[67][68]
In the United States, opinion writer Tiana Lowe, of the Washington Examiner, stated that Thunberg’s “fame-seeking”, “stage-parents”, particularly her “fading opera starlet mother” who performed internationally, were “pimp(ing) her out” without regard for Thunberg’s alleged mental problems, which included Lowe’s long list of disabilities, by which Greta and her sister were claimed to be handicapped. By so doing, Lowe wrote, they were subjecting her to “child abuse.”[69]
Swedish opinion writer Paulina Neuding invoked mental health issues to question the idea that Thunberg should be leading climate change activism.[70] Thunberg has also been criticised by the Australian climate-change denier Andrew Bolt[71] after Thunberg announced she would travel to the United States in a carbon-zero yacht. Bolt said she had a cult following, calling her “freakishly influential”[72] for a “girl so young and with so many mental disorders”.[73]
Following Thunberg’s filing of a lawsuit against France, Germany and other countries for not being on track to meet the emission reduction targets they committed to in their Paris Agreement pledges, French president Emmanuel Macron criticized her, saying that “such radical positions (as held by Thunberg) antagonize our societies”. He added that “she should focus on those that are blocking, those that are the furthest”, and that “he doesn’t feel like either the French or the German governments are trying to block”. French secretary of state for the Ecological and Inclusive Transition Brune Poirson also criticized her, saying that “she doesn’t know what solutions she is putting forward”, adding that “you can’t mobilize with despair, even hate”.[74]
Criticism of attacks on Thunberg
By August 2019, Scientific American was reporting that Thunberg’s detractors have “launched personal attacks”, “bash (her) autism”, and “increasingly rely on ad hominem attacks to blunt her influence.”[75]
Writing in The Guardian, Aditya Chakrabortty said that columnists including Brendan O’Neill, Toby Young, the blog Guido Fawkes, as well as Helen Dale and Rod Liddle at The Spectator and The Sunday Times had been making “ugly personal attacks” on Thunberg.[76] As part of its climate change denial, Germany’s right wing Alternative for Germany party has attacked Thunberg “in fairly vicious ways”, according to Jakob Guhl, a researcher for the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.[77] British businessman Arron Banks released a post on Twitter appearing to wish harm upon Thunberg as she began her transatlantic voyage warning that “Freak yachting accidents do happen in August”.[78]
Banks’ comments outraged a number of MPs (Member of Parliament), celebrities and academics. Tanja Bueltmann, founder of EU Citizens’ Champion, said Banks had “invoked the drowning of a child” for his own amusement, and noted that most of those attacking Thunberg “are white middle-aged men from the right of the political spectrum”.[79] Writing in The Guardian, Gaby Hinsliff, said Thunberg has become “the new front in the Brexit culture war” arguing that the outrage generated by personal attacks on Thunberg by Brexiteers “gives them the welcome oxygen of publicity”.[80] British philosopher Julian Baggini said ‘thuggish’ personal criticisms of Thunberg are indicative of “a moral and intellectual bankruptcy”.[65]
Essayist Steve Silberman, writing in Vox, points out that being on the autism spectrum enables Thunberg to be fearless in her rhetoric.[81] In an interview with Suyin Haynes in Time magazine, she addressed the criticism she has received online saying: “It’s quite hilarious when the only thing people can do is mock you, or talk about your appearance or personality, as it means they have no argument or nothing else to say.”[82]
Misuse of her name
In late 2018, Ingmar Rentzhog, who claims to be one of the first to publicize Thunberg’s climate strike, asked her to become an unpaid youth advisor to his climate startup company. He then used her name and image without her knowledge or permission to raise millions for a WDHT for-profit subsidiary, We Don’t Have Time AB, of which Rentzhog is the chief executive officer.[83] Thunberg received no money from the company.[28] She terminated her volunteer advisor role with WDHT once she realised they were making money from her name, stating “[I am] not part of any organization… am absolutely independent… [and] do what I do completely for free.”[84]
List of speeches
Extinction Rebellion
In London in October 2018, she addressed the ‘Declaration of Rebellion’ organized by Extinction Rebellion opposite the Houses of Parliament. She said: “We’re facing an immediate unprecedented crisis that has never been treated as a crisis and our leaders are all acting like children. We need to wake up and change everything”.[44][85]
TEDxStockholm
On 24 November 2018, she spoke at TEDxStockholm.[12][86] She spoke about realizing, when she was eight years old, that climate change existed and wondering why it was not headline news on every channel, as if there was a world war going on. She said she did not go to school to become a climate scientist, as some suggested, because the science was done and only denial, ignorance, and inaction remained. Speculating that her children and grandchildren would ask her why they had not taken action in 2018 when there was still time, she concluded with “we can’t change the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.”[87]
COP24 summit
Thunberg addressed the COP24 United Nations climate change summit on 4 December 2018,[29] and also spoke before the plenary assembly on 12 December 2018.[88][89] During the summit, she also participated in a panel talk together with representatives of the We Don’t Have Time foundation, in which she talked about how the school strike began.[90]
Davos
On 23 January 2019, Thunberg arrived in Davos after a 32-hour train journey,[91] in contrast to the many delegates who arrived by up to 1,500 individual private jet flights,[92] to continue her climate campaign at the World Economic Forum.[93][94] She told a Davos panel “Some people, some companies, some decision makers in particular have known exactly what priceless values they have been sacrificing to continue making unimaginable amounts of money. I think many of you here today belong to that group of people.”[43]
Later in the week, she warned the global leaders that “I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act. I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if the house was on fire—because it is”.[40] She wrote in an article for The Guardian in January 2019: “According to the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), we are less than 12 years away from not being able to undo our mistakes. In that time, unprecedented changes in all aspects of society need to have taken place, including a reduction of our CO
2 emissions by at least 50%”.[42]
European Economic and Social Committee
On 21 February 2019, she spoke at a conference of the European Economic and Social Committee and to European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker, where she said that to limit global warming to less than the two degrees C goal established at the Paris Agreement, the EU must reduce their CO
2 emissions by 80% by 2030, double the 40% goal set in Paris. “If we fail to do so” she said, “all that will remain of our political leaders’ legacy will be the greatest failure of human history.” Later, she joined 7,500 Belgian students in a climate protest in Brussels.[47][95]
Berlin

Thunberg speaking in front of the Brandenburg Gate on 29 March 2019
In the weekend 29–31 March 2019, Thunberg visited Berlin. She spoke in front of some 25,000 people near the Brandenburg Gate on 29 March, where she argued that “We live in a strange world where children must sacrifice their own education in order to protest against the destruction of their future. Where the people who have contributed the least to this crisis are the ones who are going to be affected the most.”[96] After the speech, Thunberg and fellow climate activist Luisa Neubauer visited the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and met with scientists there. On 30 March, Thunberg received the ‘Golden Camera‘ Special Award on Germany’s annual film and television award show. In her acceptance speech at the gala, Thunberg urged celebrities everywhere to use their influence and do their fair share of climate activism to help her.[97][98][99]
EU leaders
At an April 2019 meeting at the European Parliament in Strasbourg with MEPs and EU officials, Thunberg chided those present “for three emergency Brexit summits and no emergency summit regarding the breakdown of the climate and the environment”. Climate change discussions have not been dominant at EU summits because other issues have taken precedence.[100] She said the world is facing its “sixth mass extinction” and said: “We have not treated this crisis as a crisis; we see it as another problem that needs to be fixed. But it is so much more than that. It’s an existential crisis, more important than anything else.”[100][35]
Austrian World Summit R20
In May 2019, Thunberg met with Arnold Schwarzenegger, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, and Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen at the launch of a conference organised by Schwarzenegger to speed up progress toward the Paris Agreement.[101] Quoting the most recent IPCC report she said: “If we haven’t made the changes required by approximately the year 2030, we will probably set off an irreversible chain reaction beyond human control. Then we will pass a point of no return which will be catastrophic.” 17,000 people attended the event from 30 different countries.[102]
Prix Liberté Normandy: 2019 Freedom Prize
On 21 July 2019, Thunberg received the Normandy’s Freedom Prize. In her speech she said: “Yesterday I spent the day with the D-day veteran Charles Norman Shay at Omaha beach. It was a day I will never forget. Not only because of the unimaginable bravery and sacrifices made by those who gave their lives to defend the freedom and democracy of the world. But also because they managed to do the seemingly impossible possible. I think the least we can do to honour them is to stop destroying that same world that Charles, Léon and their friends and colleagues fought so hard to save for us.”[103]
U.S. Congress on climate change
On 18 September 2019, Thunberg appeared before the United States House of Representatives Select Committee on the Climate Crisis: “Voices Leading the Next Generation on the Global Climate Crisis” and delivered an eight sentence statement instead of offering testimony. She said: “My name is Greta Thunberg. I have not come to offer prepared remarks at this hearing. I am instead attaching my testimony. It is the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C [SR1.5] which was released on October 8, 2018. I am submitting this report as my testimony because I don’t want you to listen to me. I want you to listen to the scientists. And I want you to unite behind the science. And then I want you to take action.”[104]
New York City: 2019 Global Climate Strike
On 20 September 2019, Thunberg spoke to New York City’s contingent of the Global Climate Strike. The demonstration in New York City was one of hundreds around the world with millions of people taking part. Young people were joined by adults for the first time since the strikes began. Thunberg drew laughter when she described how the politicians that she met asked her for selfies and “tell us they really, really admire what we do yet have done nothing to address the climate crisis.” [105][106]
United Nations: Climate Action Summit 2019
On 23 September 2019, Thunberg addressed the assembled world leaders at the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit held in New York City. Accusing world leaders of stealing her dreams and her childhood by their inaction on climate change, she opened her speech to the General Assembly with an impassioned introduction, which was widely covered by the media.
“This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be standing here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to me for hope? How dare you! You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction. And all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!”[107]
US President Donald Trump, who had attended the meeting for 10 minutes and then left, tweeted a video of her opening remarks and commented: “She seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future. So nice to see!”[108] Thunberg did not directly comment on Trump’s tweet but she did make a change to her Twitter bio wherein she described herself as “A very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future.”
Legal actions
Thunberg, et al, v. Argentina, et al
On 23 September 2019, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) hosted a press conference where Thunberg joined 15 other children (Ayakha Melithafa, Alexandria Villaseñor, Catarina Lorenzo, Carl Smith, et al) and together the group announced they had filed a lawsuit against five nations that are not on track to meet the emission reduction targets they committed to in their Paris Agreement pledges: Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany, and Turkey.[109][110] The lawsuit is challenging the nations under the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child (specifically the right to life, health, and peace). If the complaint is successful, the countries will be asked to respond, but any suggestions are not legally binding.[111][112]
Honours and awards
Svenska Dagbladet: writing competition: Before starting her climate strike, Thunberg was one of the winners of Svenska Dagbladet‘s debate article writing competition on the climate for young people in May 2018.[24]
Children’s Climate Prize: In November 2018, about three months into her school climate strike, Thunberg was nominated for the Children’s Climate Prize, which is awarded by the Swedish electricity company Telge Energi. However, Thunberg declined to accept the award because many of the finalists would have to fly to Stockholm for the ceremony and a required meeting with one another.[113][114]
Fryshuset Scholarship: 2018 Young Role Model of the Year: Thunberg was awarded the Fryshuset scholarship of the Young Role Model of the Year.[115]
Time Magazine: 2018 World’s 25 Most Influential Teenagers: Time magazine named Thunberg one of the world’s 25 most influential teenagers of 2018.[116]
International Women’s Day: Swedish Woman of the Year: On the occasion of International Women’s Day Thunberg was proclaimed the most important woman of the year in Sweden in 2019. The award was based on a survey by the institute Inizio on behalf of the newspaper Aftonbladet.[117]
Nobel Peace Prize Nominee: On 13 March 2019, two deputies of the Swedish parliament and three deputies of the Norwegian parliament nominated Thunberg as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize. The nominating politicians explained their decision by arguing that global warming will be the cause of “wars, conflict and refugees” if nothing is done to halt it. Thunberg responded that she was “honoured and very grateful” for the nomination.[118] If Thunberg receives the Prize later this year, she will become the youngest person ever to receive it.[119]
Golden Kamera 2019: On 31 March 2019, Thunberg received the German Goldene Kamera Special Climate Protection award.[120]
Prix Liberté Normandy: 2019 Freedom Prize: On 1 April 2019, the Prix Liberté from France’s region Normandy was awarded to Thunberg, which she received in Caen on 21 July that year.[121] Thunberg is the first recipient of this new award, which was designed to honour a young person engaged in a fight for peace and freedom.[122] Thunberg said she would donate the $25,000 Euro prize money to four organisations working for climate justice and helping areas already affected by climate change.[103]
Fritt Ords Prize: On 12 April 2019, Thunberg shared the Norwegian Fritt Ords Prize, which celebrates freedom of speech, with the Nature and Youth organization. The conferring organization, Fritt Ord noted their determined committed activism even in the face of pervasive online and media harassment. Thunberg donated her share of the prize money to a lawsuit which seeks to halt Norwegian oil exploration in the Arctic.[123]
Time Magazine: 100 Most Influential People of 2019: In April 2019, Time magazine named Thunberg as one of the 100 most influential people of 2019.[124] In the same month, the Chilean-based organization, Fundación Milarepa para el Diálogo con Asia, headed by Mario Aguilar of the University of St Andrews, announced that Thunberg had been selected as the recipient of the organization’s Laudato Si’ Prize.[125]
Doctor Honoris Causa: On 16 May 2019, the University of Mons announced it had awarded a doctor honoris causa (honorary degree) to Thunberg. The doctoral diploma and insignia will be bestowed at the official opening of the university’s 2019-2020 academic year on 10 October 2019.[126]
Thunberg mural: In May 2019, artist Jody Thomas painted a 50-foot-high (15 m) mural of Thunberg on a wall in Bristol. It portrays the bottom half of her face as if under rising sea water.[127]
Time Magazine: In May 2019, Thunberg was featured on the cover of Time magazine where she was described as a role model,[82] and one of the “next generation leaders”.[6]
Vice Documentary: In May 2019, Vice released a 30-minute documentary, Make the World Greta Again. It features interviews with a number of youth protest leaders in Europe.[128][129]
Amnesty International: Ambassador of Conscience Award: On 7 June 2019, Amnesty International announced that it will give Thunberg their most prestigious award, the Ambassador of Conscience Award, to Thunberg for her leadership in the climate movement. Thunberg then said the prize equally belongs to everyone who has taken part in the Fridays for Future Movement in school strike for climate.[130]On 17 September 2019, Thunberg received the award during a ceremony that took place in Washington D.C. The activist said the award is “for all those millions of people, young people, around the world who together make up the movement called Friday’s for Future.”[131][132]
Royal Scottish Geographical Society: Geddes Environment Medal: On 12 July 2019, Thunberg was awarded the Geddes Environment Medal by the Royal Scottish Geographical Society,[133] which automatically granted her its Honorary Fellowship.[134]
British Vogue: The September 2019 issue of British Vogue magazine’s cover featured Thunberg (along with fifteen women); the cover was created by guest editor Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.[135]
Right Livelihood Award: On 25 September 2019, Thunberg was named as one of four winners of the 2019 Right Livelihood Award, known as Sweden’s alternative Nobel Prize. Thunberg won the award “for inspiring and amplifying political demands for urgent climate action reflecting scientific facts,” the Right Livelihood Foundation said in a statement.[136]
See also
- List of school climate strikes
- Juliana v. United States, a lawsuit by 21 youths against the United States for significantly harming their right to life and liberty, and seeks to force the government to adopt methods for reducing greenhouse gas emissions
- Severn Cullis-Suzuki – as a minor was also a notable environmental activist in 1992
- Environmentalism
- Youth activism
- Rachel Parent
Notes
- ^ /ˈtʊnbɜːrɡ/TUUN-burg,[citation needed]Swedish: [²ɡreːta ²tʉːnbærj] (
listen).
References
Bjørn Lomborg
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Bjørn Lomborg
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![]() Bjørn Lomborg
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Born | 6 January 1965 Frederiksberg, Denmark |
Occupation | Author, visiting professor, think tank director |
Subject | Environmental economics |
Website | |
lomborg.com |
Bjørn Lomborg (Danish: [pjɶɐ̯n ˈlɒmpɒːˀʊ̯]; born 6 January 1965) is a Danish author and President of his think tank, Copenhagen Consensus Center. He is former director of the Danish government’s Environmental Assessment Institute (EAI) in Copenhagen. He became internationally known for his best-selling and controversial book, The Skeptical Environmentalist (2001), in which he argues that many of the costly measures and actions adopted by scientists and policy makers to meet the challenges of global warming will ultimately have minimal impact on the world’s rising temperature.[1]
In 2002, Lomborg and the Environmental Assessment Institute founded the Copenhagen Consensus, a project-based conference where prominent economists sought to establish priorities for advancing global welfare using methods based on the theory of welfare economics.
In 2009, Business Insider cited Lomborg as one of “The 10 Most-Respected Global Warming Skeptics”.[2] While Lomborg campaigned against the Kyoto Protocol and other measures to cut carbon emissions in the short-term, he argued for adaptation to short-term temperature rises, and for spending money on research and development for longer-term environmental solutions. His issue is not with the reality of climate change, but rather with the economic and political approaches being taken (or not taken) to meet the challenges of that climate change. He is a strong advocate for focusing attention and resources on what he perceives as far more pressing world problems, such as AIDS, malaria and malnutrition.[3][4] In his critique of the 2012 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, Lomborg stated: “Global warming is by no means our main environmental threat.”[5]
Contents
Education
Lomborg was an undergraduate at the University of Georgia, earned an M.A. degree in political science at the University of Aarhus in 1991, and a Ph.D. degree in political science at the University of Copenhagen in 1994.
Career
Lomborg lectured in statistics in the Department of Political Science at the University of Aarhus as an assistant professor (1994–1996) and associate professor (1997–2005). He left the university in February 2005 and in May of that year became an adjunct professor in Policy-making, Scientific Knowledge and the Role of Experts at the Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School.[6]
Early in his career, his professional areas of interest lay in the simulation of strategies in collective action dilemmas, simulation of party behavior in proportional voting systems, and the use of surveys in public administration. In 1996, Lomborg’s paper, “Nucleus and Shield: Evolution of Social Structure in the Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma”, was published in the academic journal, American Sociological Review.[7]
Later, Lomborg’s interests shifted to the use of statistics in the environmental arena. In 1998, Lomborg published four essays about the state of the environment in the leading Danish newspaper Politiken, which according to him “resulted in a firestorm debate spanning over 400 articles in major metropolitan newspapers.”[8] This led to the Skeptical Environmentalist, whose English translation was published as a work in environmental economics by Cambridge University Press in 2001. He later edited Global Crises, Global Solutions, which presented the first conclusions of the Copenhagen Consensus, published in 2004 by the Cambridge University Press. In 2007, he authored a book entitled Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming.
In March 2002, the newly elected center-right prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, appointed Lomborg to run Denmark’s new Environmental Assessment Institute (EAI). On 22 June 2004, Lomborg announced his decision to resign from this post to go back to the University of Aarhus,[9] saying his work at the Institute was done and that he could better serve the public debate from the academic sector.
Lomborg has created several short videos for the educational website Prager University, a US-based conservative think tank founded by talk show host Dennis Prager. His videos focus on environmental science.[10]
Copenhagen Consensus
Lomborg (right) with DeAnne Julius (center) and Stephen Sackur (left), at WTTC Global Summit 2014
Lomborg and the Environmental Assessment Institute founded the Copenhagen Consensus in 2002, which seeks to establish priorities for advancing global welfare using methodologies based on the theory of welfare economics. A panel of prominent economists was assembled to evaluate and rank a series of problems every four years. The project was funded largely by the Danish government and was co-sponsored by The Economist. A book summarizing the conclusions of the economists’ first assessment, Global Crises, Global Solutions, edited by Lomborg, was published in October 2004 by Cambridge University Press.
In 2006, Lomborg became director of the newly established Copenhagen Consensus Center, a Danish government-funded institute intended to build on the mandate of the EAI, and expand on the original Copenhagen Consensus conference.[11] Denmark withdrew its funding in 2012 and the Center faced imminent closure.[12][13] Lomborg left the country and reconstituted the Center as a non-profit organization in the United States.[14][15] The Center was based out of a “Neighborhood Parcel Shipping Center” in Lowell, Massachusetts, though Lomborg himself was based in Prague in the Czech Republic.[16] In 2015, Lomborg described the Center’s funding as “a little more than $1m a year…from private donations”,[13] of which Lomborg himself was paid $775,000 in 2012.[16]
In April 2015, it was announced that an alliance between the Copenhagen Consensus Center and the University of Western Australia would see the establishment of the Australian Consensus Centre, a new policy research center at the UWA Business School. The University described the Center’s goals as a “focus on applying an economic lens to proposals to achieve good for Australia, the region and the world, prioritizing those initiatives which produce the most social value per dollar spent.”.[17] This appointment came under intense scrutiny, particularly when leaked documents revealed that the Australian government had approached UWA and offered to fund the Consensus Centre, information subsequently confirmed by a senior UWA lecturer.[18] Reports indicated that Prime Minister Tony Abbott‘s office was directly responsible for Lomborg’s elevation.[19] $4 million of the total funding for the Center was to be provided by the Australian federal government,[13] with UWA not contributing any funding for the centre.[20]
On 8 May 2015, UWA cancelled the contract for hosting the Australian Consensus Centre as “the proposed centre was untenable and lacked academic support”.[21][22] The Australian federal education minister, Christopher Pyne, said that he would find another university to host the ACC.
In July 2015, Flinders University senior management began quietly canvassing its staff about a plan to host the renamed Lomborg Consensus Centre at the University, likely in the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences. A week later the story was broken on Twitter by the NTEU (National Tertiary Education Union)[23] and Scott Ludlam.[24] The story appeared the next day in The Australian,[25] but described as “academic conversations” with no mention of Bjorn Lomborg’s involvement and portrayed as a grassroots desire for the Centre by the University.[26] The following week, a story appeared in The Guardian quoting two Flinders University academics and an internal document demonstrating staff’s withering rejection of the idea.[27] Flinders staff and students vowed to fight against the establishment of any Centre or any partnership with Lomborg,[28] citing his lack of scientific credibility, his lack of academic legitimacy and the political nature of the process of establishing the Centre with the Abbott federal government. The Australian Youth Climate Coalition and 350.orglaunched a national campaign to support staff and students in their rejection of Lomborg.[29]
On 21 October 2015, education minister Simon Birmingham told a senate committee the offered funding had been withdrawn.[30] It was subsequently unclear whether the Australian Government would honour its original commitment and transfer the funds directly to the Centre to cover the costs incurred, in particular given Lomborg’s unique expertise and contribution.
Several of Bjørn Lomborg’s articles in newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal and The Telegraph have been checked by Climate Feedback, a worldwide network of scientists who collectively assess the credibility of influential climate change media coverage. The Climate Feedback reviewers assessed that the scientific credibility ranged between “low” and “very low”. The Climate Feedback reviewers come to the conclusion that in one case Lomborg “practices cherry-picking”,[31] in a second case he “had reached his conclusions through cherry-picking from a small subset of the evidence, misrepresenting the results of existing studies, and relying on flawed reasoning”,[32] in a third case “[his] article [is in] blatant disagreement with available scientific evidence, while the author does not offer adequate evidence to support his statements”,[33] and, in a fourth case, “The author, Bjorn Lomborg, cherry-picks this specific piece of research and uses it in support of a broad argument against the value of climate policy. He also misrepresents the Paris Agreement to downplay its potential to curb future climate change.”[34]
The Skeptical Environmentalist
In 2001, he attained significant attention by publishing The Skeptical Environmentalist, a controversial book whose main thesis is that many of the most-publicized claims and predictions on environmental issues are wrong.
In the chapter on climate change in The Skeptical Environmentalist, he states: “This chapter accepts the reality of man-made global warming but questions the way in which future scenarios have been arrived at and finds that forecasts of climate change of 6 degrees by the end of the century are not plausible”.[35] Cost–benefit analyses, calculated by the Copenhagen Consensus, ranked climate mitigation initiatives lowest on a list of international development initiatives when first done in 2004.[36] In a 2010 interview with the New Statesman, Lomborg summarized his position on climate change: “Global warming is real – it is man-made and it is an important problem. But it is not the end of the world.”[37]
Formal accusations of scientific dishonesty
After the publication of The Skeptical Environmentalist, Lomborg was formally accused of scientific dishonesty by a group of environmental scientists, who brought a total of three complaints against him to the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty (DCSD), a body under Denmark’s Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MSTI). Lomborg was asked whether he regarded the book as a “debate” publication, and thereby not under the purview of the DCSD, or as a scientific work; he chose the latter, clearing the way for the inquiry that followed.[38] The charges claimed that The Skeptical Environmentalist contained deliberately misleading data and flawed conclusions. Due to the similarity of the complaints, the DCSD decided to proceed on the three cases under one investigation.
In January 2003, the DCSD released a ruling that sent a mixed message, finding the book to be scientifically dishonest through misrepresentation of scientific facts, but Lomborg himself not guilty due to his lack of expertise in the fields in question.[39] That February, Lomborg filed a complaint against the decision with the MSTI, which had oversight over the DCSD. In December, 2003, the Ministry annulled the DCSD decision, citing procedural errors, including lack of documentation of errors in the book, and asked the DCSD to re-examine the case. In March 2004, the DCSD formally decided not to act further on the complaints, reasoning that renewed scrutiny would, in all likelihood, result in the same conclusion.[38][40]
Response of the academic community
The original DCSD decision about Lomborg provoked a petition[41] signed by 287 Danish academics, primarily social scientists, who criticised the DCSD for evaluating the book as a work of science, whereas the petitioners considered it clearly an opinion piece by a non-scientist.[42][43] The Danish Minister of Science, Technology, and Innovation then asked the Danish Research Agency (DRA) to form an independent working group to review DCSD practices.[44] In response to this, another group of Danish scientists collected over 600 signatures, primarily from the medical and natural sciences community, to support the continued existence of the DCSD and presented their petition to the DRA.[42]
Recognition
The alumni network of the Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership (CPSL) voted The Skeptical Environmentalist among its list of the top 50 sustainability books.[45]
Continued debate and criticism
The rulings of the Danish authorities in 2003–2004 left Lomborg’s critics frustrated. Lomborg claimed vindication as a result of MSTI’s decision to set aside the original finding of DCSD.
The Lomborg Deception, a book by Howard Friel, claims to offer a “careful analysis” of the ways in which Lomborg has “selectively used (and sometimes distorted) the available evidence”,[46] and that the sources Lomborg provides in the footnotes do not support—and in some cases are in direct contradiction to—Lomborg’s assertions in the text of the book;[47] Lomborg has denied these claims in a 27-page argument-by-argument response.[48] Friel has written a reply to this response, in which he admits two errors, but otherwise in general rejects Lomborg’s arguments.[49]
Arthur Rörsch, Thomas Frello, Ray Soper and Adriaan De Lange published an article in 2005 in the Journal of Information Ethics,[50] in which they concluded that most criticism against Lomborg was unjustified, and that the scientific community misused its authority to suppress Lomborg.
The claim that the accusations against Lomborg were unjustified was challenged in the next issue of Journal of Information Ethics[51] by Kåre Fog, one of the original plaintiffs. Fog reasserted his contention that, despite the ministry’s decision, most of the accusations against Lomborg were valid. He also rejected what he called “the Galileo hypothesis”, which he describes as the conception that Lomborg is just a brave young man confronting old-fashioned opposition. Fog and other scientists have continued to criticize Lomborg for what one called “a history of misrepresenting” climate science.[52][53]
In 2014, the government of Australia offered the University of Western Australia $4 million to establish a “consensus centre” with Lomborg as director. The university accepted the offer, setting off a firestorm of opposition from its faculty and students and from climate scientists around the world. In April 2015 the university reversed the decision and rejected the offer. The government continued to seek a sponsor for the proposed institution.[54] On 21 October 2015 the offered funding was withdrawn.[30] (For further details see the “Copenhagen Consensus” sub-section of the “Career” section, above.)
Lomborg’s approach evolved in directions more compatible with action to restrain climate change. In April 2015 he gained further attention when he issued a call for all subsidies to be removed from fossil fuels on the basis that “a disproportionate share of the subsidies goes to the middle class and the rich”…making fossil fuel so “inexpensive that consumption increases, thus exacerbating global warming”.[55] In publications such as the Wall Street Journal he argued that the most productive use of resources would be a massive increase in funding for research to make renewable energy economically competitive with fossil fuels.[56]
Personal life
Lomborg is gay and a vegetarian.[57] As a public figure he has been a participant in information campaigns in Denmark about homosexuality, and states that “Being a public gay is to my view a civic responsibility. It’s important to show that the width of the gay world cannot be described by a tired stereotype, but goes from leather gays on parade-wagons to suit-and-tie yuppies on the direction floor, as well as everything in between”.[58]
Recognitions and awards
- The Global Leaders of Tomorrow (Class 2002) – World Economic Forum (2002)[59]
- The Stars of Europe (category: Agenda Setters) – BusinessWeek (17 June 2002): “No matter what they think of his views, nobody denies that Bjorn Lomborg has shaken the environmental movement to its core.”[60]
- The 2004 TIME 100 (in Scientists & Thinkers) – TIME (26 April 2004): “Our list of the most influential people in the world today: He just might be the Martin Luther of the environmental movement.”[61]
- Top 100 Public Intellectuals Poll (#14) Foreign Policy and Prospect Magazine(2005)[62]
- Top 100 Public Intellectuals Poll (#41) Foreign Policy and Prospect Magazine (2008)[63]
- 50 people who could save the planet – The Guardian (5 January 2008)[64]
- Glocal Hero Award – Transatlantyk – Poznań International Film and Music Festival (2011)[65]
- FP Top 100 Global Thinkers – Foreign Policy (2012): “For taking the black and white out of climate politics”[66]
Discussions in the media
After the release of The Skeptical Environmentalist in 2001, Lomborg was subjected to intense scrutiny and criticism in the media, where his scientific qualifications and integrity were both attacked and defended. The verdict of the Danish Committees for Scientific Dishonesty fueled this debate and brought it into the spotlight of international mass media. By the end of 2003 Lomborg had become an international celebrity, with frequent appearances on radio, television and print media around the world. He is also a regular contributor to Project Syndicate since 2005.
- Scientific American published strong criticism of Lomborg’s book. Lomborg responded on his own website, quoting the article at such length that Scientific American threatened to sue for copyright infringement. Lomborg eventually removed the rebuttal from his website; it was later published in PDF format on Scientific American‘s site.[67] The magazine also printed a response to the rebuttal.[68]
- The Economist defended Lomborg, claiming the panel of experts that had criticised Lomborg in Scientific American was both biased and did not actually counter Lomborg’s book. The Economist argued that the panel’s opinion had come under no scrutiny at all, and that Lomborg’s responses had not been reported.[69]
- Penn & Teller: Bullshit! — the U.S. Showtime television programme featured an episode entitled “Environmental Hysteria” in which Lomborg criticised what he claimed was environmentalists’ refusal to accept a cost-benefit analysis of environmental questions, and stressed the need to prioritise some issues above others.[70]
- Rolling Stone stated, “Lomborg pulls off the remarkable feat of welding the techno-optimism of the Internet age with a lefty’s concern for the fate of the planet.”[71]
- The Union of Concerned Scientists strongly criticised The Skeptical Environmentalist, claiming it to be “seriously flawed and failing to meet basic standards of credible scientific analysis”, accusing Lomborg of presenting data in a fraudulent way, using flawed logic and selectively citing non-peer-reviewed literature.[72] The review was conducted by Peter Gleick, Jerry D. Mahlman, Edward O. Wilson, Thomas Lovejoy, Norman Myers, Jeff Harvey, and Stuart Pimm.
Publications
- Lomborg, Bjørn, “Nucleus and Shield: Evolution of Social Structure in the Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma”, American Sociological Review, 1996.
- Lomborg, Bjørn, The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World, Cambridge University Press, 2001. ISBN 0521010683
- Lomborg, Bjørn (ed.), Global Crises, Global Solutions, Copenhagen Consensus, Cambridge University Press, 2004
- Lomborg, Bjørn (ed.), How to Spend $50 Billion to Make the World a Better Place, Cambridge University Press, 2006. ISBN 978-0-521-68571-9
- Lomborg, Bjørn (ed.), Solutions for the World’s Biggest Problems – Costs and Benefits, Cambridge University Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-521-71597-3, offers an “… overview of twenty-three of the world’s biggest problems relating to the environment, governance, economics, and health and population. Leading economists provide a short survey of the state-of-the-art analysis and sketch out some policy solutions for which they provide cost-benefit ratios.”
- Lomborg, Bjørn, Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming, 2007, argues against taking immediate and “drastic” action to curb greenhouse gases while simultaneously stating that “Global warming is happening. It’s a serious and important problem …”. He argues that “… the cost and benefits of the proposed measures against global warming. … is the worst way to spend our money. Climate change is a 100-year problem — we should not try to fix it in 10 years.”
- Lomborg, Bjørn, Smart Solutions to Climate Change, Comparing Costs and Benefits, Cambridge University Press, November 2010, ISBN 978-0-521-76342-4.[73][74]
- Lomborg, Bjørn, The Nobel Laureates Guide to the Smartest Targets for the World 2016–2030, Copenhagen Consensus Center, April 2015. ISBN 978-1940003115
- Lomborg, Bjørn (editor), Prioritizing Development: A Cost Benefit Analysis of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals Cambridge University Press 2018 ISBN 1108415458
Documentary film
Bjørn Lomborg released a documentary feature film, Cool It, on 12 November 2010 in the US.[75][76] The film in part explicitly challenged Al Gore‘s 2006 Oscar-winning environmental awareness documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, and was frequently presented by the media in that light, as in the Wall Street Journal headline, “Controversial ‘Cool It’ Documentary Takes on ‘An Inconvenient Truth’.”[77][78] The film received a media critic collective rating of 51% from Rotten Tomatoes[79] and 61% from Metacritic.[80] The Atlantic review by Clive Crook, who describes himself in the article as a “friend” of Lomborg’s and having taken “his side in the controversy that followed the publication of the Skeptical Environmentalist–a terrific book,” called it “An urgent, intelligent, and entertaining account of the climate policy debate, with a strong focus on cost-effective solutions.”[81]
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