Danish professors of statistics aren't known for lighting fires under anyone. But there was Bjérn Lomborg sparking an inferno in 2001 with his book The Skeptical Environmentalist, in which he methodically demolished widely held ideas that the earth was, well, going to hell. Since then, Lomborg has fought a running battle with the eco establishment, which calls him a 21st-century Dr. Pangloss. But Lomborg doesn't deny the existence of global scourges; he just wants to face them honestly. Which brings us to the Copenhagen Consensus, his ambitious effort to set priorities for the top 10 issues facing the world: climate change, disease, war, education, financial instability, corruption, hunger, population, water, and trade. The project has tapped nine respected economists - four of them Nobelists - to create a hot list for spending limited resources. Wired spoke with Lomborg from Copenhagen, where he directs the Danish government's Environmental Assessment Institute.
WIRED: Global warming, communicable diseases, education, corruption - you're biting off a lot here.
LOMBORG: We have to bite off a lot. If you put a climatologist and a malaria researcher together, they'll agree that both problems are important - but not on which should receive more funding. Everyone defends their turf. What we really need is a way of knowing where our resources will do the most good.
Will anyone actually pay attention? A lot of this is pretty wonky.
I think there is a very deep thirst for good information that can help us make better prioritization. There are plenty of people shouting "Fire!" We're telling people that if you're going to spend $50 billion a year on the world's problems, here are the best opportunities, the best investments.
OK, but then what happens?
Of course this is not the end. It's not like we'll be able to say, "Now we agree, and we can abolish all the politicians." But this list will put a focus on why we are not spending more on number one - and perhaps as important, why we are focusing so much on number 30.
Double-digit economic growth would make a lot of problems go away.
You're assuming we know how to generate 10 percent growth; I'm not sure we do.
Cost-benefit analysis is a well-known tool. Why hasn't anyone tried this before?
There's no institutional interest. Every UN agency would love to be number one, but everyone fears being last.
Should this be attempted in the US?
There's nothing to stop someone from doing a Copenhagen Consensus on US infrastructure, environmental policies in France, or health care in China.
You've gotten a lot of grief for criticizing the Kyoto climate change treaty, which requires countries to take steps to curb global warming.
The treaty does very little good at a fairly high cost. Even its defenders accept that, when you press them. But we don't want a debate. We want instead to show where Kyoto fits on a list of global priorities.
Won't new technologies change all the rules?
Sure, technology allows you to do a lot more, often at lower cost. But the problems most of the world still faces have very little to do with new technology - or to put it differently, they're about old technology.
How do you make smart predictions today about tomorrow's spending priorities?
We can never see all the opportunities. When I asked Stanford economist Kenneth Arrow to join, he said he thought we'd be too preoccupied with things that are big problems right now and miss the real issues. He may be right. The Copenhagen Consensus can't see the future, but it will make sure that we don't act more stupidly now than we have to.
What happens when someone's pet project turns out to be a waste of money?
People will get pissed off because their priorities end up at the bottom of the list. But isn't that what we want - for good ideas to have an easier time getting funded? And for the worst ideas to face an uphill battle? We're not making decisions - we're just telling some people that you need to think about what you're doing and how you're doing it.
And yet there was shock and horror at The Skeptical Environmentalist's idea that the world is getting better, not worse.
People think "things are getting better" also means "everything is fine." Well, I don't think everything is fine. There is still lots to do. The point is to not be panicked by the myth that "everything is going to hell." In fact, we can't afford to not be rational.
One way to read the aftershocks from your book is to fear for the future of rationality.
There are a lot of people who want to use science as a way of doing politics, and that of course debases science. But there's a huge demand for good science. The theory of evolution eventually got through the church - we'll be OK in the long run.
Speaking of evolution: humans - bug or feature?
It depends on your point of view. I'm sure the dodo bird didn't think of us as a feature. Yes, we create problems, but we tend to solve more problems than we create. That's why in general we've been moving forward.
You were once a member of Greenpeace. Are you still green?
I used to have one of those posters with the American Indian saying, "Only when they've caught the last fish and felled the last tree will they realize they can't eat gold." It turns out to be fake - no one said that. But I cared a lot about the planet and still do. I also feared for it - that's the part that I've shed since doing The Skeptical Environmentalist. I still want to make great strides in the right direction. But now I care about doing it sensibly.
Any thought about being the first Danish statistics professor in history to be branded a media star and a devil?
I really thought The Skeptical Environmentalist was just saying something interesting about the data, the real state of the planet. But if people react so strongly, maybe it's a conversation we need to have.
Contributing editor Spencer Reiss (spencer@upperroad.net) interviewed John Poindexter in Wired 12.05.
Bjorn Lomborg
credit Photo by Patrick Voigt
