I've been a fan of Skeptical Environmentalist for a little while now and found this GREAT series of articles by and about the author Bjorn Lomborg on TCS.   The primary thesis of the book:

The book's conclusion answers that question pretty well: "Children born today - in both the industrialized world and developing countries - will live longer and be healthier. They will get more food, a better education, a higher standard of living, more leisure time and far more possibilities - without the global environment being destroyed."

Lomborg makes his case with excruciating detail, including 2,930 footnotes, 1,800 bibliographical references, 173 figures and nine tables. He urges costs and benefits to be weighed before an environmental policy is enacted, and, for that reason, he opposes the Kyoto regime on global warming. He lines up facts to show that the Malthusian theory that more population equals more poverty is bunk, and he shows that prosperity has increased significantly, in both the developed and developing parts of the world, and that resources like forests, food and energy aren't running out.

A different article in the series discusses the costs vs. benefits of particular environmental initiatives -- particularly Kyoto:

"For less than just one year of [the cost of] meeting Kyoto," Lomborg said by way of comparing the costs involved, "we could provide clean water and sanitation for all the developing world forever."

Arnold Kling, as usual, provides an economic angle on Lomborg's issues:

...Bjorn Lomborg's new book The Skeptical Environmentalist is such a distinctive, rare, and important work. In addition to sharing the ecologist's concerns about aquifers, sustainability, and global warming, Lomborg accepts the economist's paradigm. By combining economics with ecology, he comes up with a rational, balanced analysis. Unfortunately, environmentalists' denial of the validity of economic analysis runs through much of their criticism of Lomborg's work.

In the chapter on environmental policy in his superb 1987 manifesto Hard Heads, Soft Hearts, economist Alan Blinder noted that:

An interview survey of sixty-three environmentalists, congressional staffers, and industry lobbyists -- all of whom were intimately involved in environmental policy -- found that not one could explain why economists claim that pollution can be reduced at lower costs by emissions fees than by direct controls. Not one! This lack of knowledge, however, was not inhibiting; many of those surveyed opposed the idea anyway. [p. 137]

I hope Bjorn becomes a kazillionare due to his book and lives a rockstar lifestyle.   He certainly deserves it.