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How to smartly write the world's to-do list

Lomborg convened many of the world’s leading economists to assess the best way to choose the next development goals. He argues that the U.N. is diluting its power by attempting to eliminate all problems. He is undoubtedly correct.
Costs in the S.D.G. plan rarely seem to be linked to benefits. “Of course, economics alone should not determine the world’s top development aims over the next decade and a half,’’ he said. “But ignoring costs doesn’t make difficult choices disappear; it makes them less clear.â€
US publication The New Yorker shows how we need to prioritize the smartest targets for the next 15 years.
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The best goals for our planet

In contrast to the MDGs, the Sustainable Development Goals include a large number of environmental targets. Bjorn Lomborg explains in The Guardian which are among the best:
Cutting indoor air pollution, halving coral reef loss, taxing pollution damage from energy and phasing out fossil fuel subsidies.
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The best goals in the fight against extreme poverty
Many of the UN’s proposed development targets are concerned with poverty reduction. But not all targets are equally good.
Some promises like 'full employment for all' just won't work, others are amazing.

Read Bjorn Lomborg's new column for Project Syndicate, available in nine languages and being published around the world, including outlets like World Economic Forum, New Vision (Uganda) and The Namibian.
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The best goals for India
Following his recent visit to New Delhi, Bjorn Lomborg has contributed to India's discussion on the smartest development goals for the next 15 years.
He writes in more than 3.5 million copies of Hindustan Times and Hindustan Dainik (Hindi) that two of the best targets for the country are investing in agricultural research and development to kick off a second Green Revolution, and intensifying the fight against TB.

In an interview with Hindustan Times, Bjorn Lomborg also explains why the target to end poverty by 2030 is over-ambitious.
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"They started with Rapunzel and ended up with Kojak"

“There is a reason why Moses came down Mount Sinai with Ten Commandments†and not 169, Bjorn Lomborg tells digital magazine OZY for their feature on the SDGs and the Post-2015 Consensus. He points out that 169 targets are impossible to remember, let alone to implement, and the world would do much better to focus on the 19 targets the Copenhagen Consensus Center's Nobel laureate economists prioritized.
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Non-communicable diseases become the big killer

For the first time in history, more people in the developing world are dying from strokes and heart attacks than from infectious diseases like TB, AIDS and malaria. Lomborg writes in Huffington Post that simple measures such as higher tobacco taxes (every dollar spent generates $22 in socio-economic benefits), reducing salt intake ($39), and providing cheap hypertension medication ($47) could avoid up to 5 million premature deaths every year.
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