🥵 Hot Take: "False Alarm" by Bjørn Lomborg

I found this book by Bjørn Lomborg (website) a refreshingly optimistic antidote to the apocalyptic and depressing vision of the dire futures we often hear about regarding climate change.

It challenged a lot of assumptions I hadn't fully thought about before. Summary: Climate change is real and manmade, but cutting CO2 not only (1) costs too much to the humans most negatively affected by rising temperatures, (2) it doesn't actually solve most of the problems we're worried about (rising sea levels, drought, flooding, heat deaths, and even polar bears). (3) Furthermore, alarmism obscures the subtleties of what's really going on and therefore misdirects our attention, efforts, and dollars away from the best solutions—many of these issues have really good things that we can and do already do to prevent harm done or to adapt (eg: dikes, building less in hurricane zones, hunting regulations for 🐻‍❄️🐻‍❄️🐻‍❄️). And (4) finally, there are other incredibly cheap uses of resources—like educating women and vaccinating against Tuberculosis—that get underfunded because of our global focus on climate. This book speaks from an overall Orange perspective, focusing on the costs and efficiencies, suggesting there's only one rational way to see this (which includes a modest carbon tax), and doesn't attend to kosmocentric views or do much including of interiors—but, our integral embrace of "everyone is right" finds value in this too.

Finally, I know not everyone in the CA team agrees with the content of this book, much less all y'all reading this email, but we stand together on practicing this Integral ideal of "a more gracious, spacious, and compassionate embrace”.

With love, Jordan