Skeptical Environmentalism

Skeptical environmentalism is an umbrella term used, sometimes pejoratively, to describe dissent from mainstream views on environmental problems. Skeptical environmentalists tend to dispute the authenticity of specific environmental problems, especially anthropogenic climate change, but also the more general idea that the human enterprise is in a dangerous state of ecological overshoot. Historically, skeptical environmentalists have been known to take an antiregulatory stance, arguing that the environmental movement intentionally distorts scientific data to support its own political agenda, that environmental threats are exaggerated in the public debate, and that most environmental protection policies are based on “junk science.” Despite this alleged concern with scientific standards, it is striking to note that almost no work by skeptical environmentalists has been published in refereed academic journals or by publishers who subject their books to peer review. Instead, skeptical environmentalism is primarily published as monographs, often by conservative or libertarian think tanks such as the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Hudson Institute. These connections have recently been studied in a large literature survey that concluded that of 141 English-language environmental skeptical books published between 1972 and 2005, 92 percent were linked to different conservative think tanks.

Witnessing the global warming controversy, some have argued that skeptical environmentalism may be more about creating sufficient “noise” and conflict within epistemic communities than about settling a sincere debate between claims. Yet if skeptical environmentalism may be mistaken in its dismissal of scientific evidence on empirical conditions, it does not follow that there should not be legitimate room for debate on the politics of the environment, in particular, on the role of technology in securing sustainability. Although many authors in the green field believe that environmental sustainability will require radical decentralization and an end to consumer capitalism, skeptical environmentalists have argued that exactly the opposite; namely, sustained economic growth and accelerated technological innovation, may offer a more promising path to long-term sustainability, especially when considering the needs for a dramatic improvement of living standards in the developing world.

Much of the debate on these issues has been focused around the existence of an Environmental Kuznets Curve. The curve suggests that the pattern of environmental degradation follows an inverted parabolic curve, meaning that environmental degradation increases during the early stages of industrial development but then begins to decrease as the economy matures. Empirical studies have shown that there is indeed such a U-shaped pattern for certain specific pollutants and that, for instance, air quality has improved dramatically in many large cities over the last century. Yet green critics have argued that much [Page 370]of the improvement in environmental performance can be attributed to the migration of polluting industries to the developing world (pollution haven hypothesis) and that studies employing ecological footprint analysis have shown that the increased eco-efficiency of mature economies remains insufficient to compensate for their larger productive capacity and consumption rates. At the same time, skeptical environmentalists may argue that with rising affluence comes an accelerated innovation rate and that the real substantial improvements in environmental performance may still be ahead of us as breakthrough technologies (such as nuclear fusion, geoengineering, or space industrialization) are made available. All these questions seem to offer ample room for reasonable disagreement and political debate. To understand why such debates nonetheless often remain fruitless, it is important to realize that for skeptical environmentalists and radical greens alike, this is not merely a debate about specific policy measures but, rather, a debate about modernity as such. Although radical greens may advance a kind of “future primitivism,” skeptical environmentalists like to cast themselves as defenders of civilization and of the very idea of scientific progress. With such an underlying polarization, it is only natural that learning from each others' positions becomes frustratingly difficult.

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