I was going to pwn.

While everyone gallivants off to TDR, I will quickly jot down my reflection for this week.

...Dang it. That's my summary of today's class. Mostly because the reading we had to do this week, on Lomborg, I would of totally owned. Why? I'll tell you why.

I'm an environmentalist. I care about the environment. Although I'm not sure where I want to go with this International Studies thing, I know it will involve one, if not more of these things: international development (especially education), communicable disease, and the environment.

As an environmentalist, I absolutely hate An Inconvenient Truth. I find Kyoto Protocol stupid, and Kyoto II even worse. AIT is propaganda, plain and simple. The facts are distorted and warped, creating sensationalism that is more harmful then beneficial. Kyoto Protocol is a lot of money, and I mean a LOT of money, for very little benefits.

Lomborg's book, Cool It, which was released in August, agrees with my mindset. The book is a discussion about global warming in relation to his Copenhagen Consensus. Essentially, he goes, fact by fact, through the wild, and when you truly look at them they are wild statements that supposed experts on global warming are making and then logically states how they were warped, what was really said, and what will probably happen (just so you know, it isn't complete meltdown of the ice caps, or the ocean level rising 50 feet or fiercer hurricanes in large quantities). Then he discusses what should be done.

More importantly, what should be practically done. As much as I care about the environment, I agree with him: cutting carbon emissions, doing everything Kyoto says doesn't serve a lot of purpose, but putting money towards disease prevention and malnutrition, for a fraction of the cost, can save millions of lives.

Even with the environment, merely changing existing policies, not radically revolutionizing how we live (by the way, he makes an excellent point in his book, saying, as much as we don't like global warming as a population, when people on an individual level actually have to change how they live, they aren't so receptive anymore) will have a much larger, much less costly, impact.

Lomborg got a lot of crap for his Copenhagen Concensus, and his books. Priotizing people and issues? How scandalous.

How necessary. We don't have infinite resources. We can't do everything at once. We can find where we will have the most positive influence with the least amount of resources and say, "Yes, that's doable."

Sorry, Al Gore. Kyoto isn't doable.