The important work of Bjorn Lomborg — the Skeptical Environmentalist and organizer of the Copenhagen Consensus Center — is the subject of this insightful essay in today’s edition of the Wall Street Journal. Here’s a slice:
Even as the U.S. Senate debates a vast new tax and
spend regime in the name of fighting climate change, a more instructive
argument was taking place in Copenhagen, Denmark. Some of the world’s
leading economists met last week to decide how to do the most good in a
world of finite resources.
Scarcity is a core economic concept, though
politicians and even many economists prefer to ignore it. There isn’t
an unlimited amount of money to be spent on every problem, so choices
have to be made. The question addressed by the Copenhagen Consensus
Center is what investments would do the most good for the most people.
The center’s blue-ribbon panel of economists, including five Nobel
laureates, weighed more than 40 proposals to improve the world by
spending a total of $75 billion over the next four years.
What would do the most good most economically? Supplements of vitamin A and zinc for malnourished children.
Number two? A successful outcome to the Doha Round of global free-trade talks. (Someone please tell Barack Obama.)
Global warming mitigation? It ranked 30th, or last,
right behind global warming mitigation research and development.
(Someone please tell John McCain.) The nearby table lists other
rankings.
"It’s true that trade doesn’t immediately save lives,"
explains Bjorn Lomborg, the political scientist who heads the
Copenhagen Consensus Center. "But it’s proven that when people have
more money" – as tends to be the case when trade barriers fall – "they
improve their health, their education and so on." The resulting
prosperity reduces such problems as malnutrition and disease, while
improving education. All three of those ranked high on the priority
list.
The benefits of freer trade were estimated in a paper
presented by Professors Kym Anderson and Alan Winters. They found that
a successful Doha Round could generate up to $113 trillion in new
wealth during the 21st century, at a cost of $420 billion or less from
inefficient industries going bust. If you like ratios, that’s a return
of $269 for every $1 of cost. A less conservative projection puts the
gains three times higher. More than 80% of this global windfall would
go to the world’s poorest countries.
Vernon Smith, Professor Emeritus of Economics at GMU (and 2002 co-winner of the Nobe Prize in Economic Science), is among the scholars active in Prof. Lomborg’s important enterprise.
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{ 24 comments }
It will take blood on the streets for European and American politicians to give up failed protectionist policies that leave African's and the rest of the 3rd world in abject poverty. Since U.S. and EU politicians will not win votes by pandering to a starving kid in Somalia tyrannical trade policy that does pander to the Iowa farmer or the Mississippi cotton grower will persist.
Free trade!? You can't buy any votes with that!
Plus you're fighting a century of government schooling and democracy worship.
I've been having this debate recently with some alarmists, or "Cassandrites" in their own words.
They do not accept any language of trade-offs. To paraphrase, there argument is essentially, "It's the WORLD man! You can't measure losing the WORLD".
I live in Montreal, where the firefighters have been in a wage dispute for a while. Because their Toronto counterparts get paid better, they've taken to putting "Toronto" decals on their firetrucks. Today I saw one such fire engine, with a quote from Toronto Mayor David Miller, to boot: "You can't put a price on a profession that saves people's lives."
There's the simple fallacy of distinguishing between professions that saves lives and those that don't – I'm a business lawyer. If I help a client do well and create jobs, does that save lives by avoiding bankruptcy and suicide? But of course the larger fallacy is that you can choose not to put a price on something. Things cost what they cost – you can pretend they don't, but that doesn't change the fact that they most certainly do. That's why people think economists are evil: because they think that it's heartless to "put" a price on something and that if you prefer, you can make things free by simply electing to do so.
What happens to the 800,000,000 people (Lomborg's figure) that are currently starving in the world? If they all died tomorrow then no one would be starving after that. Problem solved. Why address a problem that could be solved overnight with faster starving? I don't like to go hungry for more than an hour; after that it starts to get really uncomfortable. Can you imagine what it must have been like to starve to death in Auschwitz? You mean to tell me that 800,000,000 are currently starving like that and the rich countries and rich individuals are not doing anything about it? The obvious solution, delineated above, is to make them starve faster, and die quickly. That is the ONLY solution that makes any sense to end their suffering and to remove that problem from #1 on Lomborg's list.
I think global warming is a more intractable problem than is simple starving. But even that problem can be removed from the list if everybody and every living thing dies off. But the ethical thing, it seems to me, is for the people that are causing global warming to die, and to die fast, so that the innocent my continue to live and flourish.
Oh dear, my stomach is growling. It must be time for a late night snack.
Posted by: Adam | Jun 7, 2008 7:37:06 PM
That is damn good, Adam. Please move to Houston so I can work with you occasionally.
I can't move to Canada, my ex-wife owns it.
800,000,000 people starving, trumpitduck?
I bet anything that it is because of people who have screwed up thoughts of collectivist grandeur like you that are the cause.
How Pressing a Problem is Global Warming Hysteria?
How is it necessarily the West's problem about the umpteen millions who are starving in Africa? Imagine if an asteriod struck the Earth in a way that it killed off the developed nations whilst leaving the poorest untouched? (Perhaps it'd be plausible if only those who are used to high technology won't survive) Then the poorest will still starve anyway. Apparently it's never occurred to Africans to foster wealth creation with their own people and their resources. I'm sure vidyohs & friends would point out there's no reason why anyone should be poor in the West. And besides Singapore went from a down&out country to one of the world's leaders in two generations – undoubtedly there's a many deep cultural factors in Africa that are causing poverty regardless what the West does or doesn't.
"How Pressing a Problem is Global Warming Hysteria?"
Where I live, the temperature has risen twenty degrees in two days. At this rate, the lakes will begin boiling by the end of the month.
"How Pressing a Problem is Global Warming Hysteria?"
It depends. In Venezuela, with 70% of our energy needs coming from hydro and gas going for ten cents a gallon, there is still a lot of air-conditioning to be done. (Now sorry if that makes it warmer for you)
With respect to those 800.000.000 someone suggested to knock-off I must say that their disappearance would force us to reduce our price forecast for oil since it is exactly this group we are counting on to go over from bicycles to motorcycles… and hopefully cars.
But, having said that, perhaps the greatest threat to our oil price is all those in the developed world going from cars to motorcycles and then, oh horrible thought, to bicycles. But of course that should not happen as long as US sprawl planners prefer to ignore realities… hugo chávez sends you all his thanks for that, since you all know that with oil at $30 he would be but a bad memory.
Wouldn't 800,000,000 dead create a methane surge?
Global Warming Hysteria is a religion. Nothing can be done about it.
Chávez, bin Laden and Ahmadinejad all owe the Bushtapo a thousand thanks.
"Global warming" is a very serious pressing problem.
Not because it is actually happening and it is caused by man; but because it is not clear that global warming is real and there is zero evidence that man is the cause. What makes this serious and pressing is that the government has now bought into it as another way to increase its ability to run our lives, and many big business are going along because they see no alternative since the government has taken the position it has.
And, of course the envirowhackos see it as the ultimate weapon to rule over human lives and free markets.
"How is it necessarily the West's problem about the umpteen millions who are starving in Africa?"
Who said that all the starving lived in Africa? You don't give a damn if black babies die? Is that what you mean? What if one of the starving was a white dude named Gil? Then, you might change your evil, selfish, racist tune.
"Chávez, bin Laden and Ahmadinejad all owe the Bushtapo a thousand thanks." – Martin Brock
Since Martin never engages in hyperbole, I can only assume that the name of the FBI was officially changed to Bushtapo and I missed it.
I'm curious as to why the 'Bushtapo' is owed thanks by the oil-producing dictators of the world, but the Democrats who have filibustered to prevent any currently-viable energy source from being developed domestically (oil, coal, gas, nuclear, hydro) for the past thirty years aren't owed any thanks for the $130-a-barrel oil they've helped enable?
Well Trumpit I was just saying how Africa (and places like it) are poor because they have cultural issues that keep them poor. Africa is a resources-rich continent.
LOL,
Lord! lord! lord!,
trumpitduck,
Gilduck, being a socialist, could rightly be called evil and selfish; but racist? Com'on, a socialist will steal from anyone and Gilduck has never shown himself to be picky.
Warning to Trumpit:
Libertarian Dictionary –
Socialist: noun, someone who doesn't subscribe to either super-minimalist Libertarianism or outright anarchist Libertarianism. synonyms: Communist, Marxist, Liberal, Conservative, etc. opp.: Libertarianism
Gil is actually correct. Western nations made plenty of money running Africa. Then when they left and gave control back to the Africans to a greater or lesser extent, the Africans by and large went right back to the forms of government that they had before: strong man led tribalism. As a result, the countries went to hell. (With rare exception. Botswana is doing quite well to my understanding.)
The only thing wrong with Africa as a continent is that everything wants to eat you. There is plenty wrong with the culture of the people (black, white or green), however.
Trumpit: disgraceful.
I don't know. Why do you ask? I've certainly never suggested such a thing.
I feel strongly that education is the strongest weapon we have. If we can help people help themselves a lot of good can come from it. If we can educate companies and individuals and make them reconsider what we put in the atmosphere then big strides can be made. Throwing money at a problem will do very little if education is not a big part of the picture.