Environmentalism ravaged by weakness of human condition. (Commentary).

Bjorn Lomborg is back in the news again, which is right where he likes to be as he would probably be the first to admit. Lomborg calls himself a "skeptical environmentalist," using the title of the book that made him famous two years ago.

A better job description would be "controversialist." And in the world of environmental activism, where a smug orthodoxy has taken hold, people who stir controversy are generally unwelcome -- especially if it's the wrong kind of controversy.

Last month, the Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty condemned Lomborg and his book. On close inspection, the Danish committee's statement makes no allegations of dishonesty by Lomborg. Instead, the analysis is based on an 11-page article published last year in Scientific American magazine that found errors in the 2001 book.

The magazine article was a rebuttal of sorts to "The Skeptical Environmentalist," which is a refutation of what Lomborg calls the Litany -- the widely accepted view of environmental activists. He summarizes the Litany like so: "We are defiling our Earth, the fertile topsoil is disappearing, we are paving over nature, destroying the wilderness, decimating the biosphere, and will end up killing ourselves in the process," he wrote. "The world's ecosystem is breaking down."

Lomborg, a professor of statistics and a self-described leftist, accepted the Litany on faith, until he led his students in a project to examine its claims. They discovered that the state of the earth was much less alarming than commonly thought. In fact, the earth and the human race are doing rather nicely: generally, the air and water are cleaner, forests are healthier and more numerous, food is cheaper and more abundant and human beings are healthier than ever.

"The Skeptical Environmentalist" is a work of statistical analysis, dissecting data culled from numerous scientific disciplines, and it can be tough sledding for a layman. But it clearly isn't the work of a radical. Lomborg acknowledges global warming, for instance, and is alarmed at ecological deterioration in the developing world, even as he asserts that the cure for our remaining environmental woes is greater economic growth and more, not less, prosperity.

His moderate tone contrasts sharply with the wild hyperventilation of his critics. This was seen in the usually snoozy pages of Scientific American, which commissioned four eminent scientists to refute Lomborg's environmental optimism.

A fair-minded observer, hoping for a sober and comprehensive rebuttal to Lomborg's book, would be disappointed by the effort. Boiled down, the "careless mistakes" he is accused of making turn out to be a handful of relatively insignificant errors.

Most notable, however, were his accusers' tactics. One compared him to a Holocaust denier.

The wide discrepancy between the significance of Lombord's errors and the hysteria of his critics should set off alarms in a neutral observer. Yet the environmental debate has become so fraught with hidden ideologies, so polarized by political gamesmanship, that a layman's greatest challenge is to find disinterested experts.

One place to look is Resources for the Future in Washington, the oldest environmental think tank in the world, and perhaps the only institution viewed respectfully from both sides of the environmental divide.

Two of its researchers have paid particular attention to the Lomborg controversy, and both are appalled. "There's a book-burning dimension to this, a viciousness, that should trouble everyone," says Roger Sedjo, author of 13 books and director of the group's Forest Economics and Policy Program.

Sedjo and Pierre Crosson, a specialist in energy and natural resources, say they have looked at Lomborg's treatment of their own specialties and have found no inaccuracies. Says Crosson, "Their response makes one wonder about their motives."

What lies behind the overreaction of Lomborg's critics?

Crosson and Sedjo decline to answer; human psychology is outside their fields of expertise.

Crosson did point me to a famous quote from Stephen Schneider, a climate-change specialist who was one of Lomborg's critics. "We'd like to see the world a better place. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have," Schneider told Discover magazine in 1989.

This isn't science but politics -- and worth remembering the next time a "controversialist" dares to cross the environmental establishment.

Andrew Ferguson is a columnist for Bloomberg News.