Global Crises, Global Solutions: Costs and Benefits

by Bjørn Lomborg (editor)

The first edition of Global Crises, Global Solutions was nominated as one of the books of the year by The Economist in 2004. This 2009 2ns edition asks: if we had more money to spend to help the world's poorest people, where could we spend it most effectively? Using a common framework of cost-benefit analysis a team of leading economists, including five Nobel prize winners, assess the attractiveness of a wide range of policy options for combating ten of the world's biggest problems: Air pollution, Conflicts, Diseases, Education, Global Warming, Malnutrition and Hunger, Sanitation and Clean Water, Subsidies and Trade Barriers, Terrorism, Women and Development. The arguments are clearly presented and fully referenced so that readers are encouraged to make their own evaluation of the menu of policy options on offer. Whether you agree or disagree with the economists' conclusions, there is a wealth of data and ideas to discuss and debate!

Genres: Nonfiction, Economics, Science, Politics, Political Science, Business

Kindle Edition

First published October 25, 2004

About the author

Bjørn Lomborg is a Danish author and president of his think tank, the Copenhagen Consensus Center. He is former director of the Danish government's Environmental Assessment Institute (EAI) in Copenhagen. He became internationally known for his best-selling and controversial 2001 book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, in which he argues that many of the costly measures and actions adopted by scientists and policy makers to meet the challenges of global warming will ultimately have minimal impact on the world's rising temperature.

Reviews

[Harry Harman]

treating all lives as equally worthy, would simply show that we should be investing much more in the developing world– on the order of 50–80 per cent of our GDP

The scenarios with a sharp drop in carbon intensity (A1T and B1) are inconsistent with a business as usual baseline in which there is no carbon tax (or emissions ceiling)

utility-based discounting

Thereisa‘conveyorbelt’thatinvolves the sinking of cold water near the Arctic and upwelling of warm water in the Southern Atlantic, giving rise to the Gulf Stream which keeps northern Europe warm. Increased melting of polar ice could reduce the salinity and specific gravity of the cold water entering the ocean there, possibly shutting down the ocean conveyor belt.

[Andreas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great interdependent thinking

[Katy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Almost impossibly dense; however, the knowledge payoff from reading it is great.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

much better, offers some interesting thoughts on prioritizing solutions...