FASHION INDUSTRY SCOOPS WASHINGTON POST * ON CLIMATE CHANGE
THE AGE, AUSTRALIA - Leading international fashion designers and
industry experts say unpredictable and typically warmer weather
worldwide is wreaking havoc on the industry. It is forcing fashion
houses to ditch traditional seasonal collections for transeasonal
garments that may lead to a drastic overhaul of fashion show schedules
and retail delivery dates.
"The whole fashion system will have to change," Beppe Modenese, founder
of Milan Fashion Week, told The New York Times last week.
"The fashion system must adapt to the reality that there is no strong
difference between summer and winter any more. . . You can't have
everyone showing four times a year to present the same thing. People are
not prepared to invest in these clothes that, from one season to the
other, use the same fabrics at the same weight."
So worried are some fashion houses about the impact climate change is
having on the way we dress and shop, they are calling in the climate
experts.
The Wall Street Journal reported last month that American retail giant
Liz Claiborne Inc had enlisted a New York climatologist to speak to 30
of its executives on topics ranging from the types of fabrics they
should be using to the timing of retail deliveries and seasonal markdowns.
Other US fashion retailer giants, including Target and Kohl's, have also
started using climate experts to plan their collections and schedule
end-of-season sales. And from January, Target will sell swimwear
year-round.
Closer to home, fashion designers say they are increasingly designing
transeasonal collections using lighter- weight fabrics for a more
temperate climate and readjusting their in-store delivery dates in line
with the unpredictable seasons.
UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS - Groups with a vested interest in
maintaining the status quo are using the book to promote their 'no need
to take action to address global environmental problems' agenda. For
example, the "Cooler Heads Coalition" -- formed by the Competitive
Enterprise Institute and others to "dispel the myths of global warming"
-- featured Lomborg in a Capitol Hill briefing on global warming.
NY TIMES - "We could spend all that money to cut emissions and end up
with more land flooded next century because people would be poorer," Dr.
Lomborg said as we surveyed Manhattan's expanded shoreline. "Wealth is a
more important factor than sea-level rise in protecting you from the
sea. You can draw maps showing 100 million people flooded out of their
homes from global warming, but look at what's happened here in New York.
It's the same story in Denmark and Holland � we've been gaining land as
the sea rises."
Dr. Lomborg, who's best known (and most reviled in some circles) for an
earlier book, "The Skeptical Environmentalist," runs the Copenhagen
Consensus Center, which gathers economists to set priorities in tackling
global problems. In his new book, he dismisses the Kyoto emissions cuts
as a "feel-good" strategy because it sounds virtuous and lets
politicians make promises they don't have to keep. He outlines an
alternative "do-good" strategy that would cost less but accomplish more
in dealing with climate change as well as more pressing threats like
malaria, AIDS, polluted drinking water and malnutrition.
If you're worried about stronger hurricanes flooding coasts, he says,
concentrate on limiting coastal development and expanding wetlands right
now rather than trying to slightly delay warming decades from now. To
give urbanites a break from hotter summers, concentrate on reducing the
urban-heat-island effect. If cities planted more greenery and painted
roofs and streets white, he says, they could more than offset the impact
of global warming.
UNION OF CONCERNS SCIENTISTS - UCS invited several of the world's
leading experts on water resources, biodiversity, and climate change to
carefully review the sections in Lomborg's book that address their areas
of expertise. . . The authors note how Lomborg consistently misuses,
misrepresents or misinterprets data to greatly underestimate rates of
species extinction, ignore evidence that billions of people lack access
to clean water and sanitation, and minimize the extent and impacts of
global warming due to the burning of fossil fuels and other human-caused
emissions of heat-trapping gases. Time and again, these experts find
that Lomborg's assertions and analyses are marred by flawed logic,
inappropriate use of statistics and hidden value judgments. . .
These reviews show that The Skeptical Environmentalist fits squarely in
a tradition of contrarian works on the environment that may gain
temporary prominence but ultimately fail to stand up to scientific
scrutiny. Others, such as Julian Simon and Gregg Easterbrook, have come
before him, and others no doubt will follow. Correcting the
misperceptions these works foster is an essential task, for, as noted
above, groups with anti-environmental agendas use these works to promote
their objectives. It is also an unfortunate, time-consuming distraction,
for it pulls talented scientists away from the pressing research needed
to help us understand the environmental challenges we face and their
prospective solutions. . .
Editor's note: In addition to these UCS-solicited reviews, critiques of
Lomborg's book have also been published in Scientific American, Nature,
Science, and other scientific journals. . .
IN THE MIDST of an unseasonal heat wave causing, among other things, the
mid-run cancellation of the Chicago Marathon, the Washington Post
published an article minimizing the need for dealing seriously with
climate change by one the carbon lovers' favorite authors, Bjorn
Lomborg. What makes Lomborg so appealing to these people is his
acceptance of some degree of climate change combined with an insistence
that there are better ways of going about the problem than the targeting
energy-gobbling industries. For example, if we used money slated for
carbon control and cured malaria instead we wouldn't have to worry about
climate change causing more of the disease. On the other hand, by the
same sort of soulless logic, we could take the money we are now spending
on AIDS prevention and use it to eliminate such far more deadly
phenomena like cancer, heart disease, murder, auto accidents and
Alzheimer's. Fortunately, most of us, unlike some economists, are able
to think about two or more problems at once.
In the end, Lomborg's solutions are like the filter cigarette as a cure
for lung cancer among smokers - a sort of Al Gore Lite for the Hummer
crowd. When the cigarette industry began being pressed on cancer, it
came up with the idea of filter tips. Here's a Time account from 1962:
"Do filter tips really work? Yes, reported an eminent cancer researcher
in last week's A.M.A. Journal. They make smoking safer�up to a point.
Dr. George E. Moore's research team at Buffalo's Roswell Park Memorial
Institute tested six brands of cigarettes, four plain and two filtered,
by 'smoking' them in a machine and collecting the tar. The tar yields
from plain cigarettes differed by less than 20%, but the filtered brands
yielded 67% less than the unfiltered average. Of 76 mice painted with
tar from 'straights, 41 developed tumors, and 16 of these turned to
cancer; of 60 mice treated with the tar from the same number of filter
tips, 15 got tumors, of which three became cancerous.'"
Eventually, we decided that this was not good enough, but it reminds us
of the grand corporate tradition of stalling the bad news with partial
remedies in keeping with Lomborg's cool it theory. Another example would
be auto manufacturers resisting safety devices by calling for better
traffic enforcement, which - like Lomborg - created a dichotomy among
solutions where there should have been symbiosis.
It's a neat trick and it works, especially if you're dealing with
corporaphilic press gnomes of sort that inhabit the Washington Post. The
Post, by the way, had previously run a review written by a philosophy
professor hailing Lomborg's book as "a magnificent achievement: and "the
most significant work on the environment since the appearance of its
polar opposite, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, in 1962."
Which isn't all that surprising given that as late at 1995 the Post ran
a story on global warming that split the arguments so neatly one could
easily reach the author's own conclusion: "When you sort through the
confusion, how much you worry about greenhouse warming turns out not to
be a matter of science." A MIT professor was quoted who said, "It comes
down to personality, it comes down to politics."
Given that the issue is probably the most important of our lifetimes,
journalism doesn't get much worse that that.
Why is the Post chillin' with the intelligent design crowd of ecology?
One clue may be found in its deep relationship with the local big
businesses which led it advocate planning and transportation policies
that - despite the most expensive mass transit system in America -
resulted in the area having the second worst traffic jams in the
country. The Post has always had a hard time separating its friends and
the facts.