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Lessons from Paris, Texas
In a recent US Congress hearing, EPA administrator Gina McCarthy refused to be drawn on how much the Paris climate treaty would cut global temperatures.
As Bjorn Lomborg explains in Wall Street Journal, that's not surprising, because the answer would be embarrassing: even under an optimistic scenario, global temperatures in 2100 would drop by 0.3°F (0.17°C), whereas the cost of the Paris treaty adds up to $100 trillion. He sets out the case for a much more efficient approach, costing just a fraction of today's misguided climate policies.
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Which Policies Should Have Priority?
Every day, policy-makers face a dizzying array of choices. But they rarely compare options explicitly to figure out where first to direct additional money. The Copenhagen Consensus Center's approach has long been used to look at global and regional problems. Now it has been applied for the first time at a national level. In Bangladesh, specialist economists studied 76 proposals to brighten the country’s future, and an eminent panel prioritized them.
Read Bjorn Lomborg's column for Project Syndicate in five languages. It was published by newspapers around the world, including The Australian, Shanghai Daily, Arab News, Myanmar Times, El Tiempo (Colombia) and La Nacion (Costa Rica).
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The benefits of climate change
Some people talk about climate change in apocalyptic terms, while others deny its existence. In a radio interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Bjorn Lomborg points out that climate change is a real problem, but not the end of the world. Right now, we even see benefits of global warming such as fewer cold deaths and global greening. Lomborg also wrote a column on this topic for Colombian magazine Semana Sostenible.
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Talking about mosquitos, not about sharks
US magazine National Review explains why politicians should not just pay attention to issues that command public attention, but focus on those where sensible politics can make a real difference at reasonable cost.
"One of the most interesting projects of recent years is the Copenhagen Consensus, the Bjørn Lomborg–led project to apply welfare economics to deep-seated global problems, inviting economists and issue scholars to do some rigorous number-crunching and come up with some projects to maximize the bang/buck ratio. The recommendations have been surprisingly unsexy: micronutrient-supplement programs, bigger and better-structured subsidies for malaria prevention (those damned mosquitos, again), immunization, the spread of better agricultural practices, water projects."
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Digital land records a must
Bangladeshi newspaper Dhaka Tribune published an editorial asking the government to "redouble efforts to digitise land records and bring in electronic procurement." They cite research for Bangladesh Priorities: Smarter Solutions for Bangladesh which estimates a return on investment of BDT 619 for each taka spent on land records digitisation, and BDT 663 for each taka for implementing e-procurement.
The project's research has also been featured in the biggest Bangla newspaper Prothom Alo as a series of 24 articles. The most recent publications include op-eds written by Bjorn Lomborg on energy policies and empowering girls.
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