‘Chasing Rainbows’ debates green-living

“Chasing Rainbows: How the Green Agenda Defeats its Aims,” by Tim Worstall, Stacey International, 116 pages, $16.

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In “Chasing Rainbows: How the Green Agenda Defeats its Aims,” Tim Worstall takes the arguments of the Green Movement and demonstrates how the goals it wishes to achieve can be accomplished by doing pretty much the opposite of what extreme environmentalists advocate.

From the introduction — where Worstall debunks the benefit of “green” jobs — to the final chapter — where he demonstrates Britons already are paying appropriate carbon taxes — he uses the environmentalists’ givens to demonstrate that extreme solutions to environmental problems are unnecessary and counterproductive.

In one chapter, he shows how some recycling has a larger adverse environmental impact than simply dumping the refuse in a landfill.

In another, he shows why globalization is environmentally friendly and how the locovore movement can produce a larger carbon footprint than importing food from abroad. He also shows how economic growth reduces pollution, and why wealth is the most reliable means of reducing global population.

Many of Worstall’s conclusions are contrary to the conventional wisdom, but Worstall arrives at them by starting with the positions presented by major environmentalists.

He then pares away the demonstrably wrong. Next, he starts with the solutions postulated by environmentalists and filters them through a rigorous economic analysis. The results often are startling and frequently hilarious.

Worstall is not opposed to environmentalism. He wants a cleaner planet. He even makes a large chunk of income from recycling metals.

But Worstall is unwilling to undertake human sacrifice for Gaia, especially when he shows that market solutions offer the same environmental benefits without unnecessary discomfort.

Worstall is a British businessman and former member of Parliament. He tells his story from a British perspective, which gives this book enough distance that American readers can view his judgments with a dispassion that would be difficult if were focused on the United States.

He presents his arguments with compelling clarity using a razor wit. Worstall is that most annoying of heretics, one that uses orthodox dogma to demonstrate the ridiculousness of accepted doctrine. Worstall does this with a thoroughness that absolutely demolished the arguments of the chosen.

Five centuries earlier, true believers in the Church of Global Warming likely would have burned Tim Worstall for writing “Chasing Rainbows” — except for the nasty carbon footprint that burning heretics produces.

Especially since people whose beliefs are not irrevocably committed to the perils of man-made climate change will find Worstall both convincing and amusing.

Mark Lardas, an engineer, freelance writer, amateur historian and model-maker, lives in League City.