Bjorn Lomborg is president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, a think tank dedicated to applying economic analysis, including cost-benefit analysis, to proposed policies around the issues of the day. He’s also a visiting professor at Copenhagen Business School and visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He's the author of many books, including the 2001 bestseller The Skeptical Environmentalist. His latest book, and the topic for this interview, is Best Things First. Offering cost-benefit analyses of many of the top-line policies of industrial and developing nations, Dr. Lomborg discusses which policies we should prioritize and which we should pay less attention to or end. Lomborg also asserts the benefits of economic growth and says that by spending on technology, we can solve all kinds of big problems, including hunger.
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Peter Robinson:
Cold calculations of benefits (00:00):
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(00:03):
and costs. "If we're serious about helping the poor," one man argues, "We need to insist on just
such calculations." Bjorn Lomborg on Uncommon Knowledge, now. Welcome to Uncommon Knowledge.
(00:25):
I'm Peter Robinson. Bjorn Lomborg is president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, a think tank
dedicated to applying economic analysis, including benefit-cost analysis to the issues of the day.
He's the author of many books, including the 2001 bestseller, The Skeptical Environmentalist.
Bjorn Lomborg's latest book, Best Things First. Bjorn, thanks for joining me again.
Bjorn Lomborg: It's great to be here. (00:53):
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Peter Robinson: Best Things First, the promise you make, (00:54):
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"For about 35 billion per year, we can save 4.2 million lives annually and we can make the
poorer half of the world more than a trillion dollars better off each and every year." We'll
come to the substance of that outlandish claim in a moment, but one question first, who's we?
Bjorn Lomborg: Yes. So we are all the people who (01:20):
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want to make the world a better place. So this would be development organizations, so USAID,
the similar ones across the world that are giving away development aid. It would be philanthropists,
like Bill Gates and many others, who want to do good. It would be you and me when we're spending
(01:41):
our small envelopes at the end of the year and giving, I don't know, a couple hundred dollars or
whatever it is on these things. And of course, it is also the individual nations. So we look
at low and lower middle-income countries, the 4 billion poor, so the poor half of the world, their
governments, of course, should also be spending it on these things. Everyone can pitch in and spend
(02:05):
just a little bit because $35 billion, although I doubt you have, I certainly don't have 35 billion-
Peter Robinson: Bill Gates does have it actually but- (02:10):
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Bjorn Lomborg: Well, but it's per year, (02:11):
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right? So he would run out.Peter Robinson:
He would run out.Bjorn Lomborg:
But the point is, it is a trivial rounding error in most of the international-
Peter Robinson: Global community. (02:20):
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Bjorn Lomborg: ... community. Yes. (02:20):
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We could definitely, do this if we wanted to. So the point here is to say, this is a push for
every we. It's a push for you. It's a push for me. It's a push for your viewers. But of course,
it's also a push for all rich world governments and poor world governments to spend smartly.
Peter Robinson: All right. Speaking of spending smartly, (02:37):
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intelligently, you contrast two United Nations schemes. One indicates the way we might want to go
and another indicates what we ought not to do, if I have that right. In 2000, the UN announced the
Millennium Development Goals which you describe as, I'm quoting you, "quite successful." Then
(02:59):
in 2015, the UN adopted something called the Sustainable Development Goals, which you write,
"Promise everything to everyone but deliver next to nothing." Explain the contrast.
Bjorn Lomborg: So fundamentally, in 2000, the UN did the first (03:15):
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successful array of goals for the world, which was a very small set of goals. They said, "We want to
get people out of poverty. We want to get people out of hunger. We want to get kids into school.
We want to get moms and kids not dying. And we want clean water and sanitation." This was a very
(03:36):
simple list. Now, I've told you all of the main things. There are actually a few more silly things
that we basically just didn't look at-Peter Robinson:
But the big ones, you can literally count on the fingers on one hand-
Bjorn Lomborg: Yes, yes. (03:45):
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Peter Robinson: All right. (03:45):
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Bjorn Lomborg: And we did a lot of this. They're (03:46):
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not all equally great, and some of them were hard to do, and some of them happened because China had
incredible growth so we lifted a lot of people out of poverty, and not predominantly because the UN
had promised it, but because China got rich. But fundamentally, we channeled money and development
aid to things that make a lot of sense, and these very simple things. Then come 2015,
(04:11):
the UN wants to redo their great scheme, but they also felt a little uncomfortable about the fact
that the original scheme had actually been made by Kofi Annan, the then UN, Secretary-General, and
five other men. They were all men in a back room in the UN. That doesn't sound all that good. So
clearly you want to ask everyone, "So what should we do?" But if you ask everyone what should we do,
(04:35):
you end up with an endless list of promises.So at one point, we had more than 1,400 promises.
The end result was an official 169 promises, but many of them are so long. I quote some of them in
the book, mostly because they're almost comically fun. But it's depressing when it's actually what
we're going to do in the world. We literally promise everything to the world. So we promise
(05:00):
to cut poverty, but we also promise social protection systems for everyone,
which is going to cost a trillion dollars that I don't see anyone have. We promised to fix hunger,
but we also promised organic apples to everyone. There's a mismatch between some of these things
that are incredibly important and we really should be focused on how we would do, and some of these
(05:21):
things that are more like, yeah, I'd like that too, in a world where we had endless resources.
Peter Robinson: So in Best Things First, (05:27):
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you produce a list of 12 objectives, a limited practical list on which the return on investment,
you make straightforward calculations and you lay them out and assign dollar amounts to them,
"Here's what it will cost, and here is a dollar amount for the benefits." So one procedural
(05:49):
question, which is, I can understand how it's relatively easy to come up with a dollar amount
for costs. What does fertilizer cost? What does R&D cost? But how do you assign dollar
amounts to the benefits? You save a human life. How do you assign a dollar amount to a human
life? You improve general welfare for people. How do you assign a dollar amount to that?
Bjorn Lomborg: That's a very good question- (06:13):
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Peter Robinson: I get the cost, but explain how (06:14):
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you would calculate the benefits.Bjorn Lomborg:
So fundamentally, this is a proven methodology in economics that exactly has to face these problems.
Many of the costs are very well-defined. Many of the benefits are not just economic,
but they're also social, that you don't die, that you don't live with disability, that your
(06:34):
kids don't die. And environmental, that you have wetlands and all kinds of other nice things that
you appreciate. The question is, how much is that worth? So take the biggest issue, which is
how much is it worth to save a human life? Now, if we just sit here and casually talk about it,
how much would you pay to save a human life? The polite answer is, "Anything. Everything. I'll do-"
Peter Robinson: But that's not a useful answer. (06:56):
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Bjorn Lomborg: But it's not a useful answer (06:58):
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because we don't. We actually very specifically don't, and there's a lot of different ways that
you can show this. If you look for instance at roundabouts, so traffic thus is a great example.
Roundabouts save lives because it's hard to just rush into it. You'll pretty much only destroy your
own car. It takes up time and it costs money to produce it, but it actually save lives. You build
(07:23):
roundabouts where you can save a lot of lives at fairly low cost. You don't build roundabouts,
what do you say? Where virtually nobody-Peter Robinson:
[inaudible 00:07:32]Bjorn Lomborg:
... well, where nobody goes through it, right?Peter Robinson:
All right.Bjorn Lomborg:
So the point is, we can actually calculate, what does government seem to indicate is the worth of a
life? Turns out in the US, it's about $10 million. This sounds a little, what? Both too expensive and
(07:47):
not expensive enough-Peter Robinson:
I'm worth at least 1,5 million, Bjorn.Bjorn Lomborg:
You're also 10. But the truth is, of course, we also do this when you take a job that is more
risky. You ask for what the Brits disarmingly call danger money. You get more money because
it's a more dangerous job. You have just revealed how much you're willing to risk your life a little
(08:11):
more for a little more money. If you calculate that into what is the full worth of one life,
turns out it's about 10 million. Now for poor countries, the willingness is much lower,
simply because they have less money and they have many more problems. We know that. If you go to
poor countries, you'll see a whole truckload of people, people going on trains and they're hanging
(08:34):
out from the side, that kind of thing. They also want to arrive alive, but they also have
many other challenges and so they'll often accept to pay little and have a greater risk of death.
So we estimate what that value is for the low and lower middle-income countries through a lot
of complicated measures. The answer is, it's worth $128,000 per life. Now, we actually do it per life
(08:58):
year because we think... And this is also what the research seems to indicate, that young people that
die have a lot of lives leftover, more than if you save an old person. They'll have a couple of years
and maybe just a couple of months extra. That's worth less. So we estimate this. Again,
there's no way this is true, but the value of this is it suddenly becomes very obvious where you can
(09:24):
do incredible amounts of good and where you can.Peter Robinson:
Okay. Okay, so it's a useful methodology?Bjorn Lomborg:
Yes.Peter Robinson:
All right. So the subtitle of Best Things First, "The 12 Most efficient solutions for the world's
poorest." As I said, you've settled on a dozen policies that would provide the
greatest deterrents. We don't have time to go through all 12, but a number deal with health,
(09:49):
you mentioned combating malaria, improving maternal and newborn health, addressing chronic
diseases. Let's take one of these in particular, and one that I have to confess, I was surprised
to learn remains a problem in much of the world and that is tuberculosis. So very briefly, what
is tuberculosis and why would a typical American be surprised to learn that it makes your book?
Bjorn Lomborg: Yes. Tuberculosis is an infectious disease. (10:16):
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You typically get it in crowded conditions. It's been around forever. We also have references in
the antique era, but it really was only when we started building up cities and people living close
to each other, then we started to infect each other. In the 1800s, every fourth person that
(10:38):
died in North America and in Europe died from tuberculosis. This was a huge deal. Anyway,
now I'm giving away the ending, in Moulin Rouge-Peter Robinson:
[inaudible 00:10:51]Bjorn Lomborg:
Yes. In Moulin Rouge, Satine dies from tuberculosis, but also in La bohème... Oh God,
I'm also giving away the answer to the opera. Anyway, but lots and lots of people died from
(11:01):
tuberculosis. This was a tsunami of death, and then we fixed it with antibiotics. We used to
send people off to sanitariums. It probably didn't work, but it kept them away from us. But the point
is, around 1930, we basically fixed this. So more than 50 years, we have fixed this for
the rich world. That's why virtually nobody dies from tuberculosis in the rich world. But in the
(11:24):
poor world, 1.4 million people still die each and every year from this very treatable disease. Now,
it's hard to treat. You actually need to take medication for half a year.
If you've ever had medication for two weeks, once you start getting better,
you start to forget to take your medication. And actually, keeping you on this medication
for half a year is incredibly important because otherwise, it starts becoming resistant. You may
(11:49):
actually make a drug-resistant TB and transfer that on. So you want to make sure that people
take it. You also want to find all the people who have it. Many people don't go to doctors or don't
get diagnosed. For obvious reasons, there's a lot of stigma in having TB. So in Kenya, for instance,
it turns out that every fourth person that gets TB and gets diagnosed with it also ends up with
(12:14):
a divorce, because his or her partner don't want to live with a TB person. You will lose your job.
There'll be lots of other things-Peter Robinson:
So you keep quiet about it.Bjorn Lomborg:
Yeah. So you go to the doctor, often a private doctor, and he or she knows
that you don't actually want the tuberculosis diagnosis. It sounds like a lot of other things,
so chances are you're going to say, "You know what? It's just a cold. Here, have a Vicks," kind
(12:35):
of thing. And of course, that means that we don't get all those extra people, so we estimate three,
four million people still have the virus and don't get treated from it. So it's about getting people
treated and getting people diagnosed. This is fairly cheap, simple. We estimate it'll cost
about $6 billion at least-Peter Robinson:
A year.Bjorn Lomborg:
A year.Peter Robinson:
Right.Bjorn Lomborg:
And you can save in the long run about a million lives each and every year.
Peter Robinson: Now, one thing, (13:00):
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can you clear this up for me? It's $6.2 billion in addition to anything that we already spent, right?
Bjorn Lomborg: Yes. (13:09):
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Peter Robinson: So do you have numbers on what we already spent? (13:09):
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Bjorn Lomborg: So we're spending, (13:11):
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as I believe, 12 to $13 billion.Peter Robinson:
Okay, we'll come back to that. So again, to put this, you said these numbers sound big,
but I put this in perspective. I just did a little math myself, $6.2 billion
would equal about one-tenth of 1% of the 2023 US federal budget of 6.3 trillion.
(13:37):
Or we'll even take a small country, your beloved Denmark, $6.2 billion would represent only 3.4%
of the Danish budget. So we're talking about a number that seems as though it ought to be
attainable, as you-Bjorn Lomborg:
Can I just mention... Because in some ways, it's unreasonable to compare it with the US,
budget because there's a lot of other things you want to spend that money on.
(14:00):
So in the book, I actually compared to the increase in our spending on pet food globally,
which is about $60 billion more. So we're talking about a very small fraction of the increase in our
spending on pet food, or the increase in makeup spending in the world over the last two years.
(14:21):
This is not something that we can't afford. Now, I still want people to have makeup and pet food,
but we could afford to do this.Peter Robinson:
All right. Agriculture, a couple of the 12 most efficient policies deal with what we eat,
improving nutrition, for example, but let's take another... You had one chapter, Agricultural R&D,
(14:42):
Best Things First, "Just a century ago, two-thirds of the world lived in a permanent state of hunger.
Now, hunger affects less than one in 10 people," less than 10%. "The first main driver of this
sweeping change was economic growth. The second was increased agricultural productivity." So,
(15:06):
describe those two. Before we come to the problem that remains and how to fix that, just describe
how we got this staggering statistic that it goes from in a century, two-thirds of humanity
is hungry, to only a 10th of humanity is hungry.Bjorn Lomborg:
This is one of the incredible unsung victories of humanity. Two-thirds of everyone you knew back
(15:27):
100 years ago were starving, in a permanent state of starvation. And the way we fixed it is partly,
when people get richer, they can actually afford to buy the food, whatever it costs,
and they can also afford it to their kids. So this simply makes a lot of the poverty issue in hunger
go away. But at the same time, we also managed to get many more of the great seeds that we
(15:52):
used to for corn and rice and wheat and so on, to produce much more per acre. So if you make these
seeds much more productive, that was basically what the first Green Revolution did back in the
1960s, ushered in by Norman Borlaug, who then went on to win a Nobel Prize for it. According to the
news stories, he's one of the few people, possibly the only person in the world who can put on his CV
(16:17):
that he saved a billion people all by himself.He made you and me pay much less for our food,
but mostly it was rice, wheat, and corn. What we also need to do is all the other stuff,
all the food stuffs that is used for instance in Africa and Southeast Asia, so sorghum and cassava,
(16:38):
these less sexy things that also Monsanto has very little financial incentive to try to make better,
but we should help make better because both, if you can make them more productive,
obviously you'll end up with more food, but you also have fewer people who need to work the land,
which of course is how we got rich. We got rich by the fact that we don't anymore have 50 or 70%
(17:04):
of the workforce working in agriculture, but maybe 1, 2 or 3%. And that means everybody else can do
other productive... Or sit here and just talk in a studio. But the beauty of that is we need to get
better productivity to the poor half of the world.Peter Robinson:
All right, so let me give you a couple of quotations, a handful of quotations here,
(17:24):
Bjorn. Here's Paul Ehrlich in his 1968 book, The Population Bomb, "The Battle to feed humanity is
already lost, in the sense that we will not be able to prevent large-scale famines in
the next decade or so." Well, along came Norman Borlaug, this tremendous increase in productivity,
agricultural productivity that you just mentioned. And in fact, as the population grew,
(17:49):
people actually were better nourished, not less so. So we grant that 1968 was a long time ago,
but even today, Paul Ehrlich, who is still with us, insists that he got the overall argument right
even if the timing was off. Here he is in 2018 on the 50th anniversary of The Population Bomb,
"A shattering collapse of civilization is a near certainty in the next few decades,
(18:14):
and the risk is increasing continually as long as perpetual growth remains the goal of economic
and political systems. As I've said many times, perpetual growth is the creed of the cancer cell."
Here's Bjorn Lomborg in Best Things First, "Spending $74 billion will make farmers and
(18:34):
consumers $2.5 trillion better off while reducing the number of malnourished by more than 130
million by 2030." You insist that economic growth is a good thing, not a bad thing, and there is a
certain underlying fundamental optimism about what human creativity, imagination... This is
(19:01):
the emphasis on R&D, research and development, that runs through this entire book. What makes
you quite such a techno-optimist?Bjorn Lomborg:
I would say I'm a techno-realist and the obvious answer is, well, he was wrong 50 years ago. The
simple point is, Paul Ehrlich is making some good points. We are making problems, so we should be
(19:27):
aware of those problems, but fundamentally, it's a failure of imagination to believe, oh, there's
only so much food, so when we can't really do anything about increasing the food, more and more
people are just going to starve. Turned out to be wrong because technology is much, much stronger.
We doubled or tripled yields, and that meant not only could fewer people produce much more food,
(19:51):
they could produce it much more efficiently and cheaper, which meant that most people could do
other things and become much more productive. It was just simply a fantastic opportunity. Not
surprisingly, everyone in the poor half of the world want to redo this. And the point that we
tried to do with this book is, it's not that there's not a lot of great ideas out there,
(20:11):
but there are only a few ones that are incredibly effective. Now remember, a lot of people will tell
you we need to get more fertilizer, or we need to get more extension services, or more... What do
you call the big machines that-Peter Robinson:
Harvesters.Bjorn Lomborg:
Harvesters.Peter Robinson:
Combines.Bjorn Lomborg:
Combines. We need to get all of that out. Well, those are all fairly expensive things. And yes,
they're probably a good idea, but they only deliver say 2 or 3 or $4 back on the dollar.
(20:37):
But if you make this little tiny grain, or in the cassava [inaudible 00:20:41] make the little lump
a little more effective, you can just do that once in a laboratory and then you distribute
it to everyone, and everyone grows more. This is why R&D is often an incredibly effective
policy. So the point is, we're simply saying, of all the things you can do in agriculture,
(20:59):
this is the one that will really make a huge difference. And again, remember,
because there's also a distributional issue here, obviously farmers love to produce more,
but they're also a little worried about, well, when I produce more,
prices are going to down-Peter Robinson:
Price will collapse, right.Bjorn Lomborg:
Yeah. But this actually turns out that both farmers will make more overall because they'll
(21:21):
make up for it in volume, so they'll actually make more, but it'll also be great for people who live
in the cities who typically buy the food because they can buy cheaper food for each of their kids.
So overall, everybody wins with us. Not all solutions are like that, but this is just one
of those things where for little money, we can do an amazing amount of good. And again, we should.
Peter Robinson: Another of the 12 policy prescriptions, (21:41):
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Best Things First, "Trade still offers a good deal for rich countries. And for poorer nations,
it's an incredible deal." Bjorn?Bjorn Lomborg:
Yes. So trade is one of those things. Ask an economist and they'll say, "Oh,
we should do this." Trade is fundamentally a good idea because if you and I trade, it means you can
(22:05):
do what you're best at, and I can do what I'm best at, and we end up being better off. That's
the fundamental point that we realized back in the late 1700s. This is a good idea, but there's often
a lot of vested interests too who don't want this trade. Because if I do what you're better at, I'd
like you to not be able to trade with me because then I get to just do my inefficient stuff. So
(22:27):
there's a lot of reasons why this has been a hard, long slog. One of the things that economists
forgot to talk about was the fact that when you do trade, some people legitimately lose out.
This is essentially the Rust Belt conversation that we've now had the last 20 years where we
realize if you open up for a lot of trade for China, some people in the US are actually going
(22:49):
to be working in import exposed industries, and they're going to lose out. They will either see
their pay cut, or maybe their job's simply gone. This is a real cost of trade. We forgot
to talk about that. Economists in general just simply didn't talk about it. They were
just all elated about this, and that's one of the reasons why a lot of the West has soured
(23:11):
on free trade. It was like, sure, they promised us all this great stuff and we did get a lot of
great stuff, but there were also real problems.What our research does, and again, I should say,
this is not me being incredibly brilliant. These are some of the best economists who've done all
these papers based on period research, and they are the ones who did the first model,
(23:32):
as I understand, the first free trade economic model that actually tries to estimate not just
the benefits that we all get better off, but also the cost that some people lose their jobs.
Turns out in the rich world, this is a real issue. So for every $7 that the US would win
by opening up its economy, you also lose $1. So that's a real dollar loss that somebody-
Peter Robinson: The $7 in benefits are diffused and spread out- (23:55):
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Bjorn Lomborg: They're diffused. (23:58):
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Peter Robinson: ... across all consumers. (23:58):
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Everybody who shops at Walmart gets cheaper clothes and toys because of China. But in
South Carolina where they used to have textile mills, this town and this town, and this town,
and this town are going to be wiped out.Bjorn Lomborg:
Exactly. And that's a real problem, but also, of course, something that a smart society ought to be
(24:18):
able to handle, because you have $7 to compensate-Peter Robinson:
To help out.Bjorn Lomborg:
... these guys, make sure that they get an education so they can go and do something else,
that they can become productive in a 21st century economy. We should not all be sewing T-shirts,
and we've learned that lesson, but there are many other lessons that are waiting out there. But this
is the reason why a lot of rich countries are a little skeptical. But remember, most of the
(24:44):
poor countries are going to be doing the jobs that will create more trade for them. So they're going
to win, so we find that while in the rich world, the benefit-cost ratio is only 7:1. For the poor
half of the world, it's 95:1. That's why this is a fantastic deal for poor countries. And of
course also, if you want to help poor countries with all their problems, you should also say,
(25:09):
"They should have access to free trade."Peter Robinson:
Okay. Let me go through, because I find it so compelling, a few of the facts that you present
here in Best Things First. You note that China cut its tariffs from an average of 32% in 1992 to
2.5% in 2020. At the same time, they're lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.
(25:33):
Actually, I think it would probably be better to say hundreds of millions of Chinese were then able
to lift themselves out of poverty-Bjorn Lomborg:
Yes.Peter Robinson:
All right. India, similar story. Cuts tariffs from 56% in 1990 to 6% in 2020. It's opening itself
to the world. It sees its incomes quadruple. You refer to a study by Dartmouth economist
Douglas Irwin showing that declining trade barriers "have been a feature of virtually
(25:57):
all rapid growth developing countries in the past half century, South Korea, Chile, Vietnam,
and on it goes." Then we come to the heart of this argument on trade, and again, this theme that
runs through the book, and the theme is economic growth. One study shows that over the past four
(26:19):
decades of economic growth, the bottom 20% and the bottom 40% generally rose in the same proportion
as the mean economic growth in a country. As the whole economy grows,
the poor become better off. Prosperity really is shared. That's the heart of your argument.
Bjorn Lomborg: Well, I would actually argue, the heart (26:45):
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of my argument is that this is a cost-benefit analysis that shows that this is a great idea.
But one of the concerns that a lot of people would have is, "Well, but you're just talking about
money. And sure, on average, America and China and India are going to get richer, but what about
the poorest? Aren't they going to be left behind? Aren't they not going to be part of this economy?"
(27:09):
And the research shows, well, that's actually not the concern. They're going to grow just as
much. Now again, you might argue you'd like them to grow even faster, and that's not what happens,
but they grow just as fast-Peter Robinson:
But John Kennedy said, "A rising tide lifts all boats," and he was right.
Bjorn Lomborg: He was right. (27:26):
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Peter Robinson: Okay. [inaudible 00:27:27] I'd like (27:26):
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to show you a brief video clip, Bjorn.Donald Trump:
The whole topic of tariffs to me is so simple. Number one, it's great economically for us and
it brings our companies back, because if you charge tariffs to China, they're going to build
their car plans here and they're going to employ our people. They're right now building big plants
(27:49):
because of Biden. They're building big plants in Mexico. So they build a big China plant in Mexico,
then they sell it across the border with very little tax. It's ridiculous. We want them to build
their plants in the United States. We don't want to get cars from China. We want to get cars made
by China in the United States, using our workers-Speaker 4:
(28:10):
Mr. President-Donald Trump:
But it also gives us a big political power. Tariffs are tremendously powerful in terms of
stopping wars because they don't want tariffs. And frankly, I made them sing. I made other countries
sing with the threat of tariffs. And if you don't have tariffs, we have nothing whatsoever on them.
Peter Robinson: So, this guy has half of the country (28:32):
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supporting him. 47%, I think, in the latest poll. And of course, versions of this argument appear in
democracy after democracy, after democracy. How does a working politician answer the argument?
Bjorn Lomborg: So I think fundamentally, this is one (28:53):
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of the challenges. This is why it's not happening, because it's a powerful argument to say we want
to have our work in our nation and that's how it should work. That feels right, except for when you
realize that the reason why you're so well-off is because everyone in the world do what they
(29:14):
do best, and we all trade. This is what we found for the last couple hundred years. Now, there's
no doubt that Donald Trump could get everyone to sing if you threaten with stuff. Yes, I
would sing too if he was going to threaten me with tariffs, but it doesn't mean it's a good argument.
Fundamentally, putting tariffs on anything simply means it becomes more expensive for Americans and
(29:37):
it becomes less efficient for the whole world. It also becomes worse for China, which is why they're
singing. But the fundamental point here is again, remember, surely this is about making the world
as well-off as we can rather than just simply getting... Actually, I don't want someone to sing.
I want the world to be better off.Peter Robinson:
Right. Bjorn, there is one topic that appears nowhere in Best Things First. I thought, well,
(30:07):
there's 12 of these. There has to be one that addresses this. Well, here I have another
video to play for you.President Joe Biden:
And the only existential threat humanity faces, even more frightening than a nuclear war,
is global warming going above 1.5 degrees in the next 10 years. It'd be real trouble. There's no
(30:31):
way back from that.Peter Robinson:
Climate change, Bjorn, is the only existential threat to humans, and you don't put it in Best
Things First. Is it because you don't think it's a threat, or because there's no efficient way of
addressing it?Bjorn Lomborg:
So it's a little of both. So fundamentally, global warming is a real problem. It's not an existential
(30:52):
threat. Any kind of estimates, even the worst kind of estimates will still leave us with 80%,
more likely with 97% of what we would otherwise have. So remember, by the end of the century,
we're likely, according to the UN, to be 450% as rich per person as we are today. Because of global
(31:13):
warming and because of the problems, there'll be more problems than benefits, we will feel
like we're only 434% as rich. That's a problem, but it's not the end of the world. Actually,
we'll be much, much better off-Peter Robinson:
The planet is not going to be reduced to a cinder?Bjorn Lomborg:
No. And this is more a politician or a campaigner talking. That's just not what the climate science
(31:36):
is telling us. Again, there's a real problem, but then you have to ask, "What can you do about it?"
And in the short run, the things you can do about it... So for instance, put in a carbon tax, which
most economists would say is a good idea, is also very expensive. So what we find is typically, that
carbon tax will deliver $2 back on the dollar, which is a nice thing to do. If you have enough
(32:00):
money and if you have enough policy capital, you should also be doing this, but it's not the first
thing you should be doing. So these are the 12 best things, and we've defined best by saying they
deliver more than $15 back on the dollar. Climate change in any shape, form or way is far away from
that. Now, there are some things that are great, and I also mentioned that we estimate for climate
(32:26):
change, you should, for instance, focus on research and development into green energy.
Make green energy incredibly much cheaper through innovation, and everyone will buy it. That will be
a game changer. And of course then, you can get China, India, and Africa and everybody else on
board if you could do that. Even that very, very effective policy is going to cost a $100 billion
(32:47):
a year, so three times the total cost of this project, and that will deliver about $11 back
in the dollar. And this assumes essentially first world growth rates, that we care a lot about the
future because we are pretty safe right now. This is not where most people in the poor half
of the world is. If your kids are dying or have a risk of dying tonight, if they don't
(33:10):
have enough food, or if you have bad education, there is not good jobs, corruption, all kinds of
other problems, this is what you worry about, not what the temperatures was 100 years ago-
Peter Robinson: 100 hundred years fro now. (33:23):
undefined
Bjorn Lomborg: 100 years ahead. Now, in a rich world, (33:23):
undefined
we can care about both. I'm not saying we should do nothing about climate, but I'm simply saying
this is what we should do first-Peter Robinson:
One more question about climate. And by the way, you and I have recorded whole shows on this very
topic, and our viewers can find them on YouTube and listeners can find them on Apple Podcast.
You've written books about this. The material and viewers can find more of Bjorn on climate. But for
(33:48):
present purposes, what is it about climate change? The climate is changing, but why has it fixed the
attention of the Western world to such an extent that Joe Biden can say preposterous things like
climate change represents an existential threat, when as you point out, the science indicates no
(34:13):
such thing, not even close to any such thing. What is there about human psychology, the state of the
West that we find ourselves fixating on something overstating the problem enormously. And I think I
might argue, I would tend to suspect that it's distracting us from real, tangible good that we
could actually do. Why?Bjorn Lomborg:
(34:34):
Oh, absolutely. For the same reason that Paul Ehrlich could have got away with it more than
50 years ago, to say. Yeah, we've already lost the game. We're all going to die in... Or many,
many people, many billions are going to die in-Peter Robinson:
Doom sells, somehow?Bjorn Lomborg:
... starvation. Doom is fantastically good TV. So obviously, you're just going to constantly argue
(34:57):
this. So if you think about what was before climate change, we worried a lot about acid
rain. Do you remember that?Peter Robinson:
Yes, I do. Yes, I do.Bjorn Lomborg:
[inaudible 00:35:04] 1980s. Again, acid rain was a real problem, mainly in lakes,
for instance, in Norway and up in Canada, some vulnerable lakes. There were some real issues
near Czechoslovakia where there was a lot of air pollution that actually killed some forests. But
(35:23):
most people thought, and this is how the media portrayed it, that there's going to be no forests
by the year 2000. And of course, that turned out to be entirely wrong-
Peter Robinson: Totally true. (35:32):
undefined
Bjorn Lomborg: ... but it was a great (35:32):
undefined
TV for 10 years. And this is essentially the same issue. There's a real problem underlying this, but
we're fixing it badly, partly because we're scared witless and do all kinds of dumb things. But as
you also point out, it means we end up forgetting all the other important problems. But remember,
the poor half of the world, the 4 billion people who live in low and lower middle-income countries,
(35:58):
they know that while they also care about climate change, they do actually care about
the fact that we could save their kids from dying from easily curable infectious diseases
tonight. Why aren't we? Because we're not focusing on the smart things first.
Peter Robinson: The question of what we already spent, (36:11):
undefined
Best Things First, "This book doesn't try to reanalyze everything the world is already spending
money on. There may well be useful changes to countries' current policies on one issue or
another, but that's a discussion for elsewhere." Here's a quotation from the Wall Street Journal
(36:32):
on the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, a couple of years ago, big Biden... Now being portrayed
during this presidential campaign is a big Biden accomplishment, the act includes 1.2 trillion in
supposed climate spending over the next decade. Wall Street Journal, "Apart from wartime,
we doubt there has ever been a bigger splurge of government subsidies." This act's "1.2 trillion in
(36:57):
subsidies will inevitably cause investment distortions and unseen economic damage."
I can see why Bjorn Lomborg wants to keep the focus on this specific list of things
we can achieve and not get drawn into different arguments. But all you need is 35 billion a year
(37:19):
to accomplish every task in this book. That's $350 billion over a decade. Don't you feel at least a
little urge to pipe up when you see the United States wasting $1.2 trillion over a decade? Or
some substantial portion-Bjorn Lomborg:
Yeah, I know.Peter Robinson:
... of that is very clearly a payoff to political constituencies.
Bjorn Lomborg: So as you've said, we've had that conversation (37:42):
undefined
many times, and I find that one of the things I really appreciate about this book is it does
not try to say, "Here's what you shouldn't do. This is dumb, you're a idiot," all that kind of
stuff. This is about saying, "Here are 12 amazing things. Whatever else it is that we're doing,
shouldn't we do that first?" And then-Peter Robinson:
(38:03):
And you're such a sweet, upbeat guy.Bjorn Lomborg:
Well, but it's also... Look, it's a question of realizing there's much
more power in getting everybody on board with saying, "Oh yes, we should actually do this-"
Peter Robinson: All right. (38:15):
undefined
Bjorn Lomborg: "We will do lots (38:15):
undefined
of other things that everybody will disagree on. That's fine. But we should do this first."
Peter Robinson: Okay. I just want you fighting some fights (38:20):
undefined
alongside me, but I understand you want to be-Bjorn Lomborg:
I do that often.Peter Robinson:
All right, all right. So Bjorn, here's the last question for you. I address you as a friend. Here
you are in your trademark T-shirt and jeans, a man very proud of his native country of Denmark,
(38:44):
which is so often held up as a socialist paradise. And yet in this book, you engage in benefit-cost
analysis and close calculations, and you ceaselessly extol the benefits of economic growth.
(39:04):
So I put it to you, Bjorn, that you are running a scam. You look like a cheerful Scandinavian
progressive, but you are actually bougie. You are actually a capitalist. Bjorn, defend yourself.
Bjorn Lomborg: I'm not sure I need to defend myself. (39:23):
undefined
I think if you look at most of the Scandinavian countries, they're unabashedly capitalist. This
is why they're rich. They're also just very aware that they want to recycle some of that revenue
into good schools and other kinds of good things. We could have a whole show on that conversation.
But fundamentally, we have learned very clearly if you're poor, you're vulnerable to pretty much
(39:47):
everything. If you're not poor, you're much more resilient to pretty much everything. This is an
argument of how we can make a very large portion of the world have much better starting positions.
Remember, if you start out and-Peter Robinson:
And you're really smart in markets.Bjorn Lomborg:
Yes, but if you're really smart, but if you die from an easily curable infectious
(40:08):
disease in the first years of your life or if you don't get a good education,
or if you don't get good nutrition, or if you get into all of these other problems,
you're not going to get anywhere. This is a way to make sure that much more of the world get
a fighting chance to actually live the life that you and I and many others in the rich world live.
Peter Robinson: Okay. I said that was (40:28):
undefined
the last question. Here's the last question, I lied to you. This book has been out about a year
now. Any response? Do you see the UN saying, "Oh, you know, Lomborg makes a point. We need a tight,
reasonable, almost modest list of items that we can actually achieve and we'll rank them in order
(40:50):
of RO. What a good idea, let's do it?" I don't see it happening in the federal government of this
country, and I'm not aware that USAID has shifted. Who's responding to you? This is compelling-
Bjorn Lomborg: First of all, (41:02):
undefined
the UN not surprisingly decided to say, "Oh my God, we're failing on all these tasks, so give us
much more money," which is the standard approach of any bureaucracy. I understand why they'd say
it. I also understand why they wouldn't embrace this book. It's essentially saying you should have
done it differently. But the main point here is to say that a lot of people within USAID, a lot of
(41:27):
people in the administration and everywhere else, a lot of people that do philanthropy realize that
this is some of the things that they should do. Now I'm marking for all 12 point, but the reality
is that most people will pick up on one or two and say, "Oh, I want to do that. I want to help doing
that." And that's exactly what this is about. This is not about getting everything right. It's about
(41:49):
getting things slightly less wrong. Moving in the right direction. And what we're doing now
is we're working with a lot of governments around the world in trying to take their priorities...
So I just came back from Tonga in the South Pacific where it's a fairly small nation,
but they have their own priorities, and what we've done is to go through all their priorities
(42:09):
and say, "Of all these things, what does the economic literature tell us is an incredibly
good investment and what is not?" And try to help them both spend their own money, but also,
New Zealand and Australia spends a lot of money in these countries and often they feel a little
bit like they get pushed from New Zealand and Australia, what the answer is. Now they suddenly
have an argument of saying, "No, this is actually what the literature tells us is the most effective
(42:33):
thing for Tonga." We're doing the same thing for Namibia, for Uzbekistan, for many other places
around the world. And I think that's how you make change. Yes, I would love to get everybody on
board right away, but this is not how that works. It's simply getting people slightly more towards,
"Oh, let's do smart things-"Peter Robinson:
But that's fascinating that it's not rich philanthropists or even rich countries that seem
(42:55):
to be responding. It's poor countries-Bjorn Lomborg:
Yes.Peter Robinson:
... who are responding.Bjorn Lomborg:
This is about poor country problems. Obviously, if you're trying to sell the Inflation Reduction Act,
this is not your main thing-Peter Robinson:
Tonga doesn't care about that.Bjorn Lomborg:
Well, Tonga cares less about that and more about the fact that they want better healthcare,
they want better infrastructure, they want better education, these very,
(43:17):
very simple things, and that's where you really have a big chance to influence.
Peter Robinson: Bjorn Lomborg, just back from Tonga, (43:21):
undefined
author of Best Things First, thank you.Bjorn Lomborg:
Thank you.Peter Robinson:
For Uncommon Knowledge, the Hoover Institution, and Fox Nation, I'm Peter Robinson.
undefined
(00:03):
and costs. "If we're serious about helping the poor," one man argues, "We need to insist on just
such calculations." Bjorn Lomborg on Uncommon Knowledge, now. Welcome to Uncommon Knowledge.
(00:25):
I'm Peter Robinson. Bjorn Lomborg is president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, a think tank
dedicated to applying economic analysis, including benefit-cost analysis to the issues of the day.
He's the author of many books, including the 2001 bestseller, The Skeptical Environmentalist.
Bjorn Lomborg's latest book, Best Things First. Bjorn, thanks for joining me again.
Bjorn Lomborg: It's great to be here. (00:53):
undefined
Peter Robinson: Best Things First, the promise you make, (00:54):
undefined
"For about 35 billion per year, we can save 4.2 million lives annually and we can make the
poorer half of the world more than a trillion dollars better off each and every year." We'll
come to the substance of that outlandish claim in a moment, but one question first, who's we?
Bjorn Lomborg: Yes. So we are all the people who (01:20):
undefined
want to make the world a better place. So this would be development organizations, so USAID,
the similar ones across the world that are giving away development aid. It would be philanthropists,
like Bill Gates and many others, who want to do good. It would be you and me when we're spending
(01:41):
our small envelopes at the end of the year and giving, I don't know, a couple hundred dollars or
whatever it is on these things. And of course, it is also the individual nations. So we look
at low and lower middle-income countries, the 4 billion poor, so the poor half of the world, their
governments, of course, should also be spending it on these things. Everyone can pitch in and spend
(02:05):
just a little bit because $35 billion, although I doubt you have, I certainly don't have 35 billion-
Peter Robinson: Bill Gates does have it actually but- (02:10):
undefined
Bjorn Lomborg: Well, but it's per year, (02:11):
undefined
right? So he would run out.Peter Robinson:
He would run out.Bjorn Lomborg:
But the point is, it is a trivial rounding error in most of the international-
Peter Robinson: Global community. (02:20):
undefined
Bjorn Lomborg: ... community. Yes. (02:20):
undefined
We could definitely, do this if we wanted to. So the point here is to say, this is a push for
every we. It's a push for you. It's a push for me. It's a push for your viewers. But of course,
it's also a push for all rich world governments and poor world governments to spend smartly.
Peter Robinson: All right. Speaking of spending smartly, (02:37):
undefined
intelligently, you contrast two United Nations schemes. One indicates the way we might want to go
and another indicates what we ought not to do, if I have that right. In 2000, the UN announced the
Millennium Development Goals which you describe as, I'm quoting you, "quite successful." Then
(02:59):
in 2015, the UN adopted something called the Sustainable Development Goals, which you write,
"Promise everything to everyone but deliver next to nothing." Explain the contrast.
Bjorn Lomborg: So fundamentally, in 2000, the UN did the first (03:15):
undefined
successful array of goals for the world, which was a very small set of goals. They said, "We want to
get people out of poverty. We want to get people out of hunger. We want to get kids into school.
We want to get moms and kids not dying. And we want clean water and sanitation." This was a very
(03:36):
simple list. Now, I've told you all of the main things. There are actually a few more silly things
that we basically just didn't look at-Peter Robinson:
But the big ones, you can literally count on the fingers on one hand-
Bjorn Lomborg: Yes, yes. (03:45):
undefined
Peter Robinson: All right. (03:45):
undefined
Bjorn Lomborg: And we did a lot of this. They're (03:46):
undefined
not all equally great, and some of them were hard to do, and some of them happened because China had
incredible growth so we lifted a lot of people out of poverty, and not predominantly because the UN
had promised it, but because China got rich. But fundamentally, we channeled money and development
aid to things that make a lot of sense, and these very simple things. Then come 2015,
(04:11):
the UN wants to redo their great scheme, but they also felt a little uncomfortable about the fact
that the original scheme had actually been made by Kofi Annan, the then UN, Secretary-General, and
five other men. They were all men in a back room in the UN. That doesn't sound all that good. So
clearly you want to ask everyone, "So what should we do?" But if you ask everyone what should we do,
(04:35):
you end up with an endless list of promises.So at one point, we had more than 1,400 promises.
The end result was an official 169 promises, but many of them are so long. I quote some of them in
the book, mostly because they're almost comically fun. But it's depressing when it's actually what
we're going to do in the world. We literally promise everything to the world. So we promise
(05:00):
to cut poverty, but we also promise social protection systems for everyone,
which is going to cost a trillion dollars that I don't see anyone have. We promised to fix hunger,
but we also promised organic apples to everyone. There's a mismatch between some of these things
that are incredibly important and we really should be focused on how we would do, and some of these
(05:21):
things that are more like, yeah, I'd like that too, in a world where we had endless resources.
Peter Robinson: So in Best Things First, (05:27):
undefined
you produce a list of 12 objectives, a limited practical list on which the return on investment,
you make straightforward calculations and you lay them out and assign dollar amounts to them,
"Here's what it will cost, and here is a dollar amount for the benefits." So one procedural
(05:49):
question, which is, I can understand how it's relatively easy to come up with a dollar amount
for costs. What does fertilizer cost? What does R&D cost? But how do you assign dollar
amounts to the benefits? You save a human life. How do you assign a dollar amount to a human
life? You improve general welfare for people. How do you assign a dollar amount to that?
Bjorn Lomborg: That's a very good question- (06:13):
undefined
Peter Robinson: I get the cost, but explain how (06:14):
undefined
you would calculate the benefits.Bjorn Lomborg:
So fundamentally, this is a proven methodology in economics that exactly has to face these problems.
Many of the costs are very well-defined. Many of the benefits are not just economic,
but they're also social, that you don't die, that you don't live with disability, that your
(06:34):
kids don't die. And environmental, that you have wetlands and all kinds of other nice things that
you appreciate. The question is, how much is that worth? So take the biggest issue, which is
how much is it worth to save a human life? Now, if we just sit here and casually talk about it,
how much would you pay to save a human life? The polite answer is, "Anything. Everything. I'll do-"
Peter Robinson: But that's not a useful answer. (06:56):
undefined
Bjorn Lomborg: But it's not a useful answer (06:58):
undefined
because we don't. We actually very specifically don't, and there's a lot of different ways that
you can show this. If you look for instance at roundabouts, so traffic thus is a great example.
Roundabouts save lives because it's hard to just rush into it. You'll pretty much only destroy your
own car. It takes up time and it costs money to produce it, but it actually save lives. You build
(07:23):
roundabouts where you can save a lot of lives at fairly low cost. You don't build roundabouts,
what do you say? Where virtually nobody-Peter Robinson:
[inaudible 00:07:32]Bjorn Lomborg:
... well, where nobody goes through it, right?Peter Robinson:
All right.Bjorn Lomborg:
So the point is, we can actually calculate, what does government seem to indicate is the worth of a
life? Turns out in the US, it's about $10 million. This sounds a little, what? Both too expensive and
(07:47):
not expensive enough-Peter Robinson:
I'm worth at least 1,5 million, Bjorn.Bjorn Lomborg:
You're also 10. But the truth is, of course, we also do this when you take a job that is more
risky. You ask for what the Brits disarmingly call danger money. You get more money because
it's a more dangerous job. You have just revealed how much you're willing to risk your life a little
(08:11):
more for a little more money. If you calculate that into what is the full worth of one life,
turns out it's about 10 million. Now for poor countries, the willingness is much lower,
simply because they have less money and they have many more problems. We know that. If you go to
poor countries, you'll see a whole truckload of people, people going on trains and they're hanging
(08:34):
out from the side, that kind of thing. They also want to arrive alive, but they also have
many other challenges and so they'll often accept to pay little and have a greater risk of death.
So we estimate what that value is for the low and lower middle-income countries through a lot
of complicated measures. The answer is, it's worth $128,000 per life. Now, we actually do it per life
(08:58):
year because we think... And this is also what the research seems to indicate, that young people that
die have a lot of lives leftover, more than if you save an old person. They'll have a couple of years
and maybe just a couple of months extra. That's worth less. So we estimate this. Again,
there's no way this is true, but the value of this is it suddenly becomes very obvious where you can
(09:24):
do incredible amounts of good and where you can.Peter Robinson:
Okay. Okay, so it's a useful methodology?Bjorn Lomborg:
Yes.Peter Robinson:
All right. So the subtitle of Best Things First, "The 12 Most efficient solutions for the world's
poorest." As I said, you've settled on a dozen policies that would provide the
greatest deterrents. We don't have time to go through all 12, but a number deal with health,
(09:49):
you mentioned combating malaria, improving maternal and newborn health, addressing chronic
diseases. Let's take one of these in particular, and one that I have to confess, I was surprised
to learn remains a problem in much of the world and that is tuberculosis. So very briefly, what
is tuberculosis and why would a typical American be surprised to learn that it makes your book?
Bjorn Lomborg: Yes. Tuberculosis is an infectious disease. (10:16):
undefined
You typically get it in crowded conditions. It's been around forever. We also have references in
the antique era, but it really was only when we started building up cities and people living close
to each other, then we started to infect each other. In the 1800s, every fourth person that
(10:38):
died in North America and in Europe died from tuberculosis. This was a huge deal. Anyway,
now I'm giving away the ending, in Moulin Rouge-Peter Robinson:
[inaudible 00:10:51]Bjorn Lomborg:
Yes. In Moulin Rouge, Satine dies from tuberculosis, but also in La bohème... Oh God,
I'm also giving away the answer to the opera. Anyway, but lots and lots of people died from
(11:01):
tuberculosis. This was a tsunami of death, and then we fixed it with antibiotics. We used to
send people off to sanitariums. It probably didn't work, but it kept them away from us. But the point
is, around 1930, we basically fixed this. So more than 50 years, we have fixed this for
the rich world. That's why virtually nobody dies from tuberculosis in the rich world. But in the
(11:24):
poor world, 1.4 million people still die each and every year from this very treatable disease. Now,
it's hard to treat. You actually need to take medication for half a year.
If you've ever had medication for two weeks, once you start getting better,
you start to forget to take your medication. And actually, keeping you on this medication
for half a year is incredibly important because otherwise, it starts becoming resistant. You may
(11:49):
actually make a drug-resistant TB and transfer that on. So you want to make sure that people
take it. You also want to find all the people who have it. Many people don't go to doctors or don't
get diagnosed. For obvious reasons, there's a lot of stigma in having TB. So in Kenya, for instance,
it turns out that every fourth person that gets TB and gets diagnosed with it also ends up with
(12:14):
a divorce, because his or her partner don't want to live with a TB person. You will lose your job.
There'll be lots of other things-Peter Robinson:
So you keep quiet about it.Bjorn Lomborg:
Yeah. So you go to the doctor, often a private doctor, and he or she knows
that you don't actually want the tuberculosis diagnosis. It sounds like a lot of other things,
so chances are you're going to say, "You know what? It's just a cold. Here, have a Vicks," kind
(12:35):
of thing. And of course, that means that we don't get all those extra people, so we estimate three,
four million people still have the virus and don't get treated from it. So it's about getting people
treated and getting people diagnosed. This is fairly cheap, simple. We estimate it'll cost
about $6 billion at least-Peter Robinson:
A year.Bjorn Lomborg:
A year.Peter Robinson:
Right.Bjorn Lomborg:
And you can save in the long run about a million lives each and every year.
Peter Robinson: Now, one thing, (13:00):
undefined
can you clear this up for me? It's $6.2 billion in addition to anything that we already spent, right?
Bjorn Lomborg: Yes. (13:09):
undefined
Peter Robinson: So do you have numbers on what we already spent? (13:09):
undefined
Bjorn Lomborg: So we're spending, (13:11):
undefined
as I believe, 12 to $13 billion.Peter Robinson:
Okay, we'll come back to that. So again, to put this, you said these numbers sound big,
but I put this in perspective. I just did a little math myself, $6.2 billion
would equal about one-tenth of 1% of the 2023 US federal budget of 6.3 trillion.
(13:37):
Or we'll even take a small country, your beloved Denmark, $6.2 billion would represent only 3.4%
of the Danish budget. So we're talking about a number that seems as though it ought to be
attainable, as you-Bjorn Lomborg:
Can I just mention... Because in some ways, it's unreasonable to compare it with the US,
budget because there's a lot of other things you want to spend that money on.
(14:00):
So in the book, I actually compared to the increase in our spending on pet food globally,
which is about $60 billion more. So we're talking about a very small fraction of the increase in our
spending on pet food, or the increase in makeup spending in the world over the last two years.
(14:21):
This is not something that we can't afford. Now, I still want people to have makeup and pet food,
but we could afford to do this.Peter Robinson:
All right. Agriculture, a couple of the 12 most efficient policies deal with what we eat,
improving nutrition, for example, but let's take another... You had one chapter, Agricultural R&D,
(14:42):
Best Things First, "Just a century ago, two-thirds of the world lived in a permanent state of hunger.
Now, hunger affects less than one in 10 people," less than 10%. "The first main driver of this
sweeping change was economic growth. The second was increased agricultural productivity." So,
(15:06):
describe those two. Before we come to the problem that remains and how to fix that, just describe
how we got this staggering statistic that it goes from in a century, two-thirds of humanity
is hungry, to only a 10th of humanity is hungry.Bjorn Lomborg:
This is one of the incredible unsung victories of humanity. Two-thirds of everyone you knew back
(15:27):
100 years ago were starving, in a permanent state of starvation. And the way we fixed it is partly,
when people get richer, they can actually afford to buy the food, whatever it costs,
and they can also afford it to their kids. So this simply makes a lot of the poverty issue in hunger
go away. But at the same time, we also managed to get many more of the great seeds that we
(15:52):
used to for corn and rice and wheat and so on, to produce much more per acre. So if you make these
seeds much more productive, that was basically what the first Green Revolution did back in the
1960s, ushered in by Norman Borlaug, who then went on to win a Nobel Prize for it. According to the
news stories, he's one of the few people, possibly the only person in the world who can put on his CV
(16:17):
that he saved a billion people all by himself.He made you and me pay much less for our food,
but mostly it was rice, wheat, and corn. What we also need to do is all the other stuff,
all the food stuffs that is used for instance in Africa and Southeast Asia, so sorghum and cassava,
(16:38):
these less sexy things that also Monsanto has very little financial incentive to try to make better,
but we should help make better because both, if you can make them more productive,
obviously you'll end up with more food, but you also have fewer people who need to work the land,
which of course is how we got rich. We got rich by the fact that we don't anymore have 50 or 70%
(17:04):
of the workforce working in agriculture, but maybe 1, 2 or 3%. And that means everybody else can do
other productive... Or sit here and just talk in a studio. But the beauty of that is we need to get
better productivity to the poor half of the world.Peter Robinson:
All right, so let me give you a couple of quotations, a handful of quotations here,
(17:24):
Bjorn. Here's Paul Ehrlich in his 1968 book, The Population Bomb, "The Battle to feed humanity is
already lost, in the sense that we will not be able to prevent large-scale famines in
the next decade or so." Well, along came Norman Borlaug, this tremendous increase in productivity,
agricultural productivity that you just mentioned. And in fact, as the population grew,
(17:49):
people actually were better nourished, not less so. So we grant that 1968 was a long time ago,
but even today, Paul Ehrlich, who is still with us, insists that he got the overall argument right
even if the timing was off. Here he is in 2018 on the 50th anniversary of The Population Bomb,
"A shattering collapse of civilization is a near certainty in the next few decades,
(18:14):
and the risk is increasing continually as long as perpetual growth remains the goal of economic
and political systems. As I've said many times, perpetual growth is the creed of the cancer cell."
Here's Bjorn Lomborg in Best Things First, "Spending $74 billion will make farmers and
(18:34):
consumers $2.5 trillion better off while reducing the number of malnourished by more than 130
million by 2030." You insist that economic growth is a good thing, not a bad thing, and there is a
certain underlying fundamental optimism about what human creativity, imagination... This is
(19:01):
the emphasis on R&D, research and development, that runs through this entire book. What makes
you quite such a techno-optimist?Bjorn Lomborg:
I would say I'm a techno-realist and the obvious answer is, well, he was wrong 50 years ago. The
simple point is, Paul Ehrlich is making some good points. We are making problems, so we should be
(19:27):
aware of those problems, but fundamentally, it's a failure of imagination to believe, oh, there's
only so much food, so when we can't really do anything about increasing the food, more and more
people are just going to starve. Turned out to be wrong because technology is much, much stronger.
We doubled or tripled yields, and that meant not only could fewer people produce much more food,
(19:51):
they could produce it much more efficiently and cheaper, which meant that most people could do
other things and become much more productive. It was just simply a fantastic opportunity. Not
surprisingly, everyone in the poor half of the world want to redo this. And the point that we
tried to do with this book is, it's not that there's not a lot of great ideas out there,
(20:11):
but there are only a few ones that are incredibly effective. Now remember, a lot of people will tell
you we need to get more fertilizer, or we need to get more extension services, or more... What do
you call the big machines that-Peter Robinson:
Harvesters.Bjorn Lomborg:
Harvesters.Peter Robinson:
Combines.Bjorn Lomborg:
Combines. We need to get all of that out. Well, those are all fairly expensive things. And yes,
they're probably a good idea, but they only deliver say 2 or 3 or $4 back on the dollar.
(20:37):
But if you make this little tiny grain, or in the cassava [inaudible 00:20:41] make the little lump
a little more effective, you can just do that once in a laboratory and then you distribute
it to everyone, and everyone grows more. This is why R&D is often an incredibly effective
policy. So the point is, we're simply saying, of all the things you can do in agriculture,
(20:59):
this is the one that will really make a huge difference. And again, remember,
because there's also a distributional issue here, obviously farmers love to produce more,
but they're also a little worried about, well, when I produce more,
prices are going to down-Peter Robinson:
Price will collapse, right.Bjorn Lomborg:
Yeah. But this actually turns out that both farmers will make more overall because they'll
(21:21):
make up for it in volume, so they'll actually make more, but it'll also be great for people who live
in the cities who typically buy the food because they can buy cheaper food for each of their kids.
So overall, everybody wins with us. Not all solutions are like that, but this is just one
of those things where for little money, we can do an amazing amount of good. And again, we should.
Peter Robinson: Another of the 12 policy prescriptions, (21:41):
undefined
Best Things First, "Trade still offers a good deal for rich countries. And for poorer nations,
it's an incredible deal." Bjorn?Bjorn Lomborg:
Yes. So trade is one of those things. Ask an economist and they'll say, "Oh,
we should do this." Trade is fundamentally a good idea because if you and I trade, it means you can
(22:05):
do what you're best at, and I can do what I'm best at, and we end up being better off. That's
the fundamental point that we realized back in the late 1700s. This is a good idea, but there's often
a lot of vested interests too who don't want this trade. Because if I do what you're better at, I'd
like you to not be able to trade with me because then I get to just do my inefficient stuff. So
(22:27):
there's a lot of reasons why this has been a hard, long slog. One of the things that economists
forgot to talk about was the fact that when you do trade, some people legitimately lose out.
This is essentially the Rust Belt conversation that we've now had the last 20 years where we
realize if you open up for a lot of trade for China, some people in the US are actually going
(22:49):
to be working in import exposed industries, and they're going to lose out. They will either see
their pay cut, or maybe their job's simply gone. This is a real cost of trade. We forgot
to talk about that. Economists in general just simply didn't talk about it. They were
just all elated about this, and that's one of the reasons why a lot of the West has soured
(23:11):
on free trade. It was like, sure, they promised us all this great stuff and we did get a lot of
great stuff, but there were also real problems.What our research does, and again, I should say,
this is not me being incredibly brilliant. These are some of the best economists who've done all
these papers based on period research, and they are the ones who did the first model,
(23:32):
as I understand, the first free trade economic model that actually tries to estimate not just
the benefits that we all get better off, but also the cost that some people lose their jobs.
Turns out in the rich world, this is a real issue. So for every $7 that the US would win
by opening up its economy, you also lose $1. So that's a real dollar loss that somebody-
Peter Robinson: The $7 in benefits are diffused and spread out- (23:55):
undefined
Bjorn Lomborg: They're diffused. (23:58):
undefined
Peter Robinson: ... across all consumers. (23:58):
undefined
Everybody who shops at Walmart gets cheaper clothes and toys because of China. But in
South Carolina where they used to have textile mills, this town and this town, and this town,
and this town are going to be wiped out.Bjorn Lomborg:
Exactly. And that's a real problem, but also, of course, something that a smart society ought to be
(24:18):
able to handle, because you have $7 to compensate-Peter Robinson:
To help out.Bjorn Lomborg:
... these guys, make sure that they get an education so they can go and do something else,
that they can become productive in a 21st century economy. We should not all be sewing T-shirts,
and we've learned that lesson, but there are many other lessons that are waiting out there. But this
is the reason why a lot of rich countries are a little skeptical. But remember, most of the
(24:44):
poor countries are going to be doing the jobs that will create more trade for them. So they're going
to win, so we find that while in the rich world, the benefit-cost ratio is only 7:1. For the poor
half of the world, it's 95:1. That's why this is a fantastic deal for poor countries. And of
course also, if you want to help poor countries with all their problems, you should also say,
(25:09):
"They should have access to free trade."Peter Robinson:
Okay. Let me go through, because I find it so compelling, a few of the facts that you present
here in Best Things First. You note that China cut its tariffs from an average of 32% in 1992 to
2.5% in 2020. At the same time, they're lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.
(25:33):
Actually, I think it would probably be better to say hundreds of millions of Chinese were then able
to lift themselves out of poverty-Bjorn Lomborg:
Yes.Peter Robinson:
All right. India, similar story. Cuts tariffs from 56% in 1990 to 6% in 2020. It's opening itself
to the world. It sees its incomes quadruple. You refer to a study by Dartmouth economist
Douglas Irwin showing that declining trade barriers "have been a feature of virtually
(25:57):
all rapid growth developing countries in the past half century, South Korea, Chile, Vietnam,
and on it goes." Then we come to the heart of this argument on trade, and again, this theme that
runs through the book, and the theme is economic growth. One study shows that over the past four
(26:19):
decades of economic growth, the bottom 20% and the bottom 40% generally rose in the same proportion
as the mean economic growth in a country. As the whole economy grows,
the poor become better off. Prosperity really is shared. That's the heart of your argument.
Bjorn Lomborg: Well, I would actually argue, the heart (26:45):
undefined
of my argument is that this is a cost-benefit analysis that shows that this is a great idea.
But one of the concerns that a lot of people would have is, "Well, but you're just talking about
money. And sure, on average, America and China and India are going to get richer, but what about
the poorest? Aren't they going to be left behind? Aren't they not going to be part of this economy?"
(27:09):
And the research shows, well, that's actually not the concern. They're going to grow just as
much. Now again, you might argue you'd like them to grow even faster, and that's not what happens,
but they grow just as fast-Peter Robinson:
But John Kennedy said, "A rising tide lifts all boats," and he was right.
Bjorn Lomborg: He was right. (27:26):
undefined
Peter Robinson: Okay. [inaudible 00:27:27] I'd like (27:26):
undefined
to show you a brief video clip, Bjorn.Donald Trump:
The whole topic of tariffs to me is so simple. Number one, it's great economically for us and
it brings our companies back, because if you charge tariffs to China, they're going to build
their car plans here and they're going to employ our people. They're right now building big plants
(27:49):
because of Biden. They're building big plants in Mexico. So they build a big China plant in Mexico,
then they sell it across the border with very little tax. It's ridiculous. We want them to build
their plants in the United States. We don't want to get cars from China. We want to get cars made
by China in the United States, using our workers-Speaker 4:
(28:10):
Mr. President-Donald Trump:
But it also gives us a big political power. Tariffs are tremendously powerful in terms of
stopping wars because they don't want tariffs. And frankly, I made them sing. I made other countries
sing with the threat of tariffs. And if you don't have tariffs, we have nothing whatsoever on them.
Peter Robinson: So, this guy has half of the country (28:32):
undefined
supporting him. 47%, I think, in the latest poll. And of course, versions of this argument appear in
democracy after democracy, after democracy. How does a working politician answer the argument?
Bjorn Lomborg: So I think fundamentally, this is one (28:53):
undefined
of the challenges. This is why it's not happening, because it's a powerful argument to say we want
to have our work in our nation and that's how it should work. That feels right, except for when you
realize that the reason why you're so well-off is because everyone in the world do what they
(29:14):
do best, and we all trade. This is what we found for the last couple hundred years. Now, there's
no doubt that Donald Trump could get everyone to sing if you threaten with stuff. Yes, I
would sing too if he was going to threaten me with tariffs, but it doesn't mean it's a good argument.
Fundamentally, putting tariffs on anything simply means it becomes more expensive for Americans and
(29:37):
it becomes less efficient for the whole world. It also becomes worse for China, which is why they're
singing. But the fundamental point here is again, remember, surely this is about making the world
as well-off as we can rather than just simply getting... Actually, I don't want someone to sing.
I want the world to be better off.Peter Robinson:
Right. Bjorn, there is one topic that appears nowhere in Best Things First. I thought, well,
(30:07):
there's 12 of these. There has to be one that addresses this. Well, here I have another
video to play for you.President Joe Biden:
And the only existential threat humanity faces, even more frightening than a nuclear war,
is global warming going above 1.5 degrees in the next 10 years. It'd be real trouble. There's no
(30:31):
way back from that.Peter Robinson:
Climate change, Bjorn, is the only existential threat to humans, and you don't put it in Best
Things First. Is it because you don't think it's a threat, or because there's no efficient way of
addressing it?Bjorn Lomborg:
So it's a little of both. So fundamentally, global warming is a real problem. It's not an existential
(30:52):
threat. Any kind of estimates, even the worst kind of estimates will still leave us with 80%,
more likely with 97% of what we would otherwise have. So remember, by the end of the century,
we're likely, according to the UN, to be 450% as rich per person as we are today. Because of global
(31:13):
warming and because of the problems, there'll be more problems than benefits, we will feel
like we're only 434% as rich. That's a problem, but it's not the end of the world. Actually,
we'll be much, much better off-Peter Robinson:
The planet is not going to be reduced to a cinder?Bjorn Lomborg:
No. And this is more a politician or a campaigner talking. That's just not what the climate science
(31:36):
is telling us. Again, there's a real problem, but then you have to ask, "What can you do about it?"
And in the short run, the things you can do about it... So for instance, put in a carbon tax, which
most economists would say is a good idea, is also very expensive. So what we find is typically, that
carbon tax will deliver $2 back on the dollar, which is a nice thing to do. If you have enough
(32:00):
money and if you have enough policy capital, you should also be doing this, but it's not the first
thing you should be doing. So these are the 12 best things, and we've defined best by saying they
deliver more than $15 back on the dollar. Climate change in any shape, form or way is far away from
that. Now, there are some things that are great, and I also mentioned that we estimate for climate
(32:26):
change, you should, for instance, focus on research and development into green energy.
Make green energy incredibly much cheaper through innovation, and everyone will buy it. That will be
a game changer. And of course then, you can get China, India, and Africa and everybody else on
board if you could do that. Even that very, very effective policy is going to cost a $100 billion
(32:47):
a year, so three times the total cost of this project, and that will deliver about $11 back
in the dollar. And this assumes essentially first world growth rates, that we care a lot about the
future because we are pretty safe right now. This is not where most people in the poor half
of the world is. If your kids are dying or have a risk of dying tonight, if they don't
(33:10):
have enough food, or if you have bad education, there is not good jobs, corruption, all kinds of
other problems, this is what you worry about, not what the temperatures was 100 years ago-
Peter Robinson: 100 hundred years fro now. (33:23):
undefined
Bjorn Lomborg: 100 years ahead. Now, in a rich world, (33:23):
undefined
we can care about both. I'm not saying we should do nothing about climate, but I'm simply saying
this is what we should do first-Peter Robinson:
One more question about climate. And by the way, you and I have recorded whole shows on this very
topic, and our viewers can find them on YouTube and listeners can find them on Apple Podcast.
You've written books about this. The material and viewers can find more of Bjorn on climate. But for
(33:48):
present purposes, what is it about climate change? The climate is changing, but why has it fixed the
attention of the Western world to such an extent that Joe Biden can say preposterous things like
climate change represents an existential threat, when as you point out, the science indicates no
(34:13):
such thing, not even close to any such thing. What is there about human psychology, the state of the
West that we find ourselves fixating on something overstating the problem enormously. And I think I
might argue, I would tend to suspect that it's distracting us from real, tangible good that we
could actually do. Why?Bjorn Lomborg:
(34:34):
Oh, absolutely. For the same reason that Paul Ehrlich could have got away with it more than
50 years ago, to say. Yeah, we've already lost the game. We're all going to die in... Or many,
many people, many billions are going to die in-Peter Robinson:
Doom sells, somehow?Bjorn Lomborg:
... starvation. Doom is fantastically good TV. So obviously, you're just going to constantly argue
(34:57):
this. So if you think about what was before climate change, we worried a lot about acid
rain. Do you remember that?Peter Robinson:
Yes, I do. Yes, I do.Bjorn Lomborg:
[inaudible 00:35:04] 1980s. Again, acid rain was a real problem, mainly in lakes,
for instance, in Norway and up in Canada, some vulnerable lakes. There were some real issues
near Czechoslovakia where there was a lot of air pollution that actually killed some forests. But
(35:23):
most people thought, and this is how the media portrayed it, that there's going to be no forests
by the year 2000. And of course, that turned out to be entirely wrong-
Peter Robinson: Totally true. (35:32):
undefined
Bjorn Lomborg: ... but it was a great (35:32):
undefined
TV for 10 years. And this is essentially the same issue. There's a real problem underlying this, but
we're fixing it badly, partly because we're scared witless and do all kinds of dumb things. But as
you also point out, it means we end up forgetting all the other important problems. But remember,
the poor half of the world, the 4 billion people who live in low and lower middle-income countries,
(35:58):
they know that while they also care about climate change, they do actually care about
the fact that we could save their kids from dying from easily curable infectious diseases
tonight. Why aren't we? Because we're not focusing on the smart things first.
Peter Robinson: The question of what we already spent, (36:11):
undefined
Best Things First, "This book doesn't try to reanalyze everything the world is already spending
money on. There may well be useful changes to countries' current policies on one issue or
another, but that's a discussion for elsewhere." Here's a quotation from the Wall Street Journal
(36:32):
on the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, a couple of years ago, big Biden... Now being portrayed
during this presidential campaign is a big Biden accomplishment, the act includes 1.2 trillion in
supposed climate spending over the next decade. Wall Street Journal, "Apart from wartime,
we doubt there has ever been a bigger splurge of government subsidies." This act's "1.2 trillion in
(36:57):
subsidies will inevitably cause investment distortions and unseen economic damage."
I can see why Bjorn Lomborg wants to keep the focus on this specific list of things
we can achieve and not get drawn into different arguments. But all you need is 35 billion a year
(37:19):
to accomplish every task in this book. That's $350 billion over a decade. Don't you feel at least a
little urge to pipe up when you see the United States wasting $1.2 trillion over a decade? Or
some substantial portion-Bjorn Lomborg:
Yeah, I know.Peter Robinson:
... of that is very clearly a payoff to political constituencies.
Bjorn Lomborg: So as you've said, we've had that conversation (37:42):
undefined
many times, and I find that one of the things I really appreciate about this book is it does
not try to say, "Here's what you shouldn't do. This is dumb, you're a idiot," all that kind of
stuff. This is about saying, "Here are 12 amazing things. Whatever else it is that we're doing,
shouldn't we do that first?" And then-Peter Robinson:
(38:03):
And you're such a sweet, upbeat guy.Bjorn Lomborg:
Well, but it's also... Look, it's a question of realizing there's much
more power in getting everybody on board with saying, "Oh yes, we should actually do this-"
Peter Robinson: All right. (38:15):
undefined
Bjorn Lomborg: "We will do lots (38:15):
undefined
of other things that everybody will disagree on. That's fine. But we should do this first."
Peter Robinson: Okay. I just want you fighting some fights (38:20):
undefined
alongside me, but I understand you want to be-Bjorn Lomborg:
I do that often.Peter Robinson:
All right, all right. So Bjorn, here's the last question for you. I address you as a friend. Here
you are in your trademark T-shirt and jeans, a man very proud of his native country of Denmark,
(38:44):
which is so often held up as a socialist paradise. And yet in this book, you engage in benefit-cost
analysis and close calculations, and you ceaselessly extol the benefits of economic growth.
(39:04):
So I put it to you, Bjorn, that you are running a scam. You look like a cheerful Scandinavian
progressive, but you are actually bougie. You are actually a capitalist. Bjorn, defend yourself.
Bjorn Lomborg: I'm not sure I need to defend myself. (39:23):
undefined
I think if you look at most of the Scandinavian countries, they're unabashedly capitalist. This
is why they're rich. They're also just very aware that they want to recycle some of that revenue
into good schools and other kinds of good things. We could have a whole show on that conversation.
But fundamentally, we have learned very clearly if you're poor, you're vulnerable to pretty much
(39:47):
everything. If you're not poor, you're much more resilient to pretty much everything. This is an
argument of how we can make a very large portion of the world have much better starting positions.
Remember, if you start out and-Peter Robinson:
And you're really smart in markets.Bjorn Lomborg:
Yes, but if you're really smart, but if you die from an easily curable infectious
(40:08):
disease in the first years of your life or if you don't get a good education,
or if you don't get good nutrition, or if you get into all of these other problems,
you're not going to get anywhere. This is a way to make sure that much more of the world get
a fighting chance to actually live the life that you and I and many others in the rich world live.
Peter Robinson: Okay. I said that was (40:28):
undefined
the last question. Here's the last question, I lied to you. This book has been out about a year
now. Any response? Do you see the UN saying, "Oh, you know, Lomborg makes a point. We need a tight,
reasonable, almost modest list of items that we can actually achieve and we'll rank them in order
(40:50):
of RO. What a good idea, let's do it?" I don't see it happening in the federal government of this
country, and I'm not aware that USAID has shifted. Who's responding to you? This is compelling-
Bjorn Lomborg: First of all, (41:02):
undefined
the UN not surprisingly decided to say, "Oh my God, we're failing on all these tasks, so give us
much more money," which is the standard approach of any bureaucracy. I understand why they'd say
it. I also understand why they wouldn't embrace this book. It's essentially saying you should have
done it differently. But the main point here is to say that a lot of people within USAID, a lot of
(41:27):
people in the administration and everywhere else, a lot of people that do philanthropy realize that
this is some of the things that they should do. Now I'm marking for all 12 point, but the reality
is that most people will pick up on one or two and say, "Oh, I want to do that. I want to help doing
that." And that's exactly what this is about. This is not about getting everything right. It's about
(41:49):
getting things slightly less wrong. Moving in the right direction. And what we're doing now
is we're working with a lot of governments around the world in trying to take their priorities...
So I just came back from Tonga in the South Pacific where it's a fairly small nation,
but they have their own priorities, and what we've done is to go through all their priorities
(42:09):
and say, "Of all these things, what does the economic literature tell us is an incredibly
good investment and what is not?" And try to help them both spend their own money, but also,
New Zealand and Australia spends a lot of money in these countries and often they feel a little
bit like they get pushed from New Zealand and Australia, what the answer is. Now they suddenly
have an argument of saying, "No, this is actually what the literature tells us is the most effective
(42:33):
thing for Tonga." We're doing the same thing for Namibia, for Uzbekistan, for many other places
around the world. And I think that's how you make change. Yes, I would love to get everybody on
board right away, but this is not how that works. It's simply getting people slightly more towards,
"Oh, let's do smart things-"Peter Robinson:
But that's fascinating that it's not rich philanthropists or even rich countries that seem
(42:55):
to be responding. It's poor countries-Bjorn Lomborg:
Yes.Peter Robinson:
... who are responding.Bjorn Lomborg:
This is about poor country problems. Obviously, if you're trying to sell the Inflation Reduction Act,
this is not your main thing-Peter Robinson:
Tonga doesn't care about that.Bjorn Lomborg:
Well, Tonga cares less about that and more about the fact that they want better healthcare,
they want better infrastructure, they want better education, these very,
(43:17):
very simple things, and that's where you really have a big chance to influence.
Peter Robinson: Bjorn Lomborg, just back from Tonga, (43:21):
undefined
author of Best Things First, thank you.Bjorn Lomborg:
Thank you.Peter Robinson:
For Uncommon Knowledge, the Hoover Institution, and Fox Nation, I'm Peter Robinson.
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