Word: lomborg
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...That's how the Copenhagen Consensus works. Over the past two years, some of the world's top economists have been crunching the numbers on the most efficient way to spend that $75 billion, roughly the sum total of global foreign aid budgets. Led by Bjorn Lomborg - an idiosyncratic author best known for his skeptical views on global warming - the organization last month gathered eight major economists, including five Nobel Prize winners, to come up with an answer. The results are surprising. According to the numbers, the biggest problem facing the world isn't global warming or terrorism...
...prevented with iodized salt.) For $19 million, this problem can essentially be solved. Delivering salt to the developing world isn't as dramatic as saving the polar bear, but the benefit of reducing human suffering is real. "It shouldn't be about who has the cutest animal," says Lomborg. "It's about the value of life...
...Lomborg says the Copenhagen Consensus tends to focus on problems that have clear, applicable and economical solutions - which explains why climate change, despite its potential for long-term catastrophe, ranks beneath threats like parasitic worms and malaria on the group's list. To Lomborg - who says he believes in global warming but is skeptical of its severity - fighting climate change just isn't a good way to spend our money. We know for certain that supplying vitamins to impoverished children will save lives - but we don't know for sure that spending billions to reduce carbon emissions will have...
...some degree, Lomborg is right. It would be a mistake to let fears over warming in the future overwhelm the endless list of ills today, and at times it does seem as if environmentalists care more about climate in the abstract than real human suffering. But not every threat can be broken down in terms of dollars and cents. Climate change is a unique challenge because if the dire predictions turn out to be right, our planet - and our civilization - might no longer be recognizable. We remain frustratingly incapable of nailing down how much warming we'll experience over...
Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg's claim that global warming will only cause us to wear "slightly fewer layers of winter clothes" is not credible [Oct. 15]. My new book, Global Warming and Agriculture, uses averages from six climate models and two schools of agricultural-impact models to estimate that in the absence of action, by the 2080s global warming will reduce agricultural productivity 30% to 40% in India, 15% to 25% in Africa and Latin America and 20% to 35% in the southern U.S. and Mexico. And if we consider the longer-term catastrophic risks from the runaway greenhouse effect...