Did Lomborg always want to get involved in the environmental debate?
No. It all started in 1997, when Bjorn Lomborg read a Wired Magazine interview with economist Julian Simon claiming that the environment – contrary to common understanding – was getting better, not worse. Lomborg thought this had to be incorrect (“right wing, American propaganda”). Looking for new ways to get his students involved, in the fall of 1997 he organized a study group with some of his top students to prove Simon wrong. Much to everyone’s surprise, much (though definitely not everything) of what Simon said was right. Thus the group set out to write about their results in op-eds in Denmark’s leading newspaper, Politiken. They published four lengthy articles with fifty footnotes in each, sparking a firestorm debate spanning over 400 articles in all the major metropolitan newspapers. The articles led to the publication of a Danish book later that year and to The Skeptical Environmentalist in 2001.
