In this last section, Lomborg puts forward his main assertion: based on a cost-benefit analysis, the environmental threats to human prosperity are overstated and much of policy response is misguided. As an example, Lomborg cites worries about pesticides and their link to cancer. He argues that such concerns are vastly exaggerated in the public perception, as alcohol and coffee are the foods that create by far the greatest risk of cancer, as opposed to vegetables that have been sprayed with pesticides. Furthermore, if pesticides were not used on fruit and vegetables, their cost would rise, and consequently their consumption would go down, which would cause cancer rates to increase. He goes on to criticize the fear of a vertiginous decline in biodiversity, proposing that 0.7% of species have gone extinct in the last 50 years (as compared to a maximum of 50%, as claimed by some biologists). While Lomborg admits that extinctions are a problem, he asserts that they are not the catastrophe claimed by some, and have little effect on human prosperity.