Bjorn Lomborg: Global Priorities

Bjorn Lomborg speaks on TED about how we should prioritise in global decision-making.


Some might balk at prioritising some issues over others, perceiving something of an callous neglect in that process. But to be frank,

a) Any decision we make is a prioritisation, if only implicitly, and it would be more effective to be clear about the trajectory we're taking when it comes to tackling the needs in the world.

b) Whilst in an ideal world that would be great, the reality is that we don't do all the things we'd like to do, and we certainly don't do them well, so we may as well start zeroing in on the solutions we can apply that will reap the most impact.

He suggests that we ought to apply something of a 'political triage', that looks to explicitly prioritise the global issues that we can do the most about for the smallest cost.

This is an approach taken by a bunch of super smart economists, who came up with what's been called 'The Copenhagen Consensus List'. Essentially, it lists 10 of the biggest issues/problems/insert another euphemism for the crap in this world. It then categorises them into projects that are not cost-efficient, if you will, and projects that are.

For example: the issue on the bottom of the list was Climate Change. Why? We can spend billions on it, and not make much progress.

Good projects that should be prioritised?

4. Malaria: Dealing with this would significantly increase millions of people's ability to deal with other issues, such as climate change etc.
3. Free trade: It would pull 200-300 m people out of poverty very quickly, i.e. in the space of about 5 years.
2. Malnutrition: Investing $12bn would make significant inroads into addressing widespread vitamin and nutrient deficiencies that cripple work productivity and economies and make people susceptible to disease.
1. HIV/AIDS: Spending $27b over the next 8 years would avoid 27m new cases. There's the issue of deciding which way we will address HIV/AIDS, in that we can treat or we can prevent. We can do both, but considering we don't do either particularly well (massive understatement), we may as well start a concerted effort towards investing in the most efficient - prevention.

Basically, the gist of what he was saying was that if we focus on problems, let's focus on the right ones.

In an ideal world, we would do all of these things. But we don't. So let's be wise in the things we do!