In First Things First, Bjorn Lomborg explains the Copenhagen Consensus’s unique mixture of hardnosed cost-benefit analysis and dogooder spirit:
In a world where we cannot deal with all the problems at the same time, we need to ask: what should we do first? This was the question answered by the Copenhagen Consensus, a project that brought together 38 of the world’s top economists to set up a list of the global priorities. They looked at the main challenges to humanity, and the many solutions that we already have, analysing both their benefits but also their price tag. By using cost-benefit analysis the expert panel of economists found that HIV/Aids, hunger, free trade and malaria were the world’s top priorities. Equally, the experts rated urgent responses to climate change extremely low. In fact, the panel called these ventures ‘bad projects’, simply because they cost more than the good they do.
A coalition of environmentalists finds such analysis “intellectually corrupt,” naturally, since climate change will destroy all civilization. Right?
It worries that malaria will rise in a warmer world. This claim has some theoretical validity, but forgets that malaria only persists with poor infrastructure and health care. Actually, throughout the 1500-1800s, malaria was a major epidemic disease in Europe, the US and far into the Arctic Circle. It didn’t end because it got colder, but because Europe and the US became richer and dealt with the problem.The coalition tells us that sea levels will rise by some 50cm by 2100 in the highest scenarios. This will clearly cause problems in low-lying countries such as Bangladesh. Yet what it forgets to tell us is that sea levels rose in the 20th century by up to 25cm. Sea level rise in the 21st century will be worse and should not be trivialised, but the IPCC estimates that the total cost of adaptation will be around 0.1% of gross domestic product.