OT ~ IOW, algore sucks

How to Think About the World's Problems

By BJORN LOMBORG
May 22, 2008


The pain caused by the global food crisis has led many people to belatedly
realize that we have prioritized growing crops to feed cars instead of
people. That is only a small part of the real problem.

This crisis demonstrates what happens when we focus doggedly on one
specific - and inefficient - solution to one particular global challenge. A
reduction in carbon emissions has become an end in itself. The fortune spent
on this exercise could achieve an astounding amount of good in areas that we
hear a lot less about.

Research for the Copenhagen Consensus, in which Nobel laureate economists
analyze new research about the costs and benefits of different solutions to
world problems, shows that just $60 million spent on providing Vitamin A
capsules and therapeutic Zinc supplements for under-2-year-olds would reach
80% of the infants in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, with annual
economic benefits (from lower mortality and improved health) of more than $1
billion. That means doing $17 worth of good for each dollar spent. Spending
$1 billion on tuberculosis would avert an astonishing one million deaths,
with annual benefits adding up to $30 billion. This gives $30 back on the
dollar.

Heart disease represents more than a quarter of the death toll in poor
countries. Developed nations treat acute heart attacks with inexpensive
drugs. Spending $200 million getting these cheap drugs to poor countries
would avert 300,000 deaths in a year.

A dollar spent on heart disease in a developing nation will achieve $25
worth of good. Contrast that to Operation Enduring Freedom, which Copenhagen
Consensus research found in the two years after 2001 returned 9 cents for
each dollar spent. Or with the 90 cents Copenhagen Consensus research shows
is returned for every $1 spent on carbon mitigation policies.

Focusing first on costs and benefits means that we can reconsider the merits
of policies that have gone out of fashion.

The unpopular war in Iraq has undermined rich nations' belief in the success
of military intervention as a way of reducing conflict. But Copenhagen
Consensus research reveals that a peacekeeping force is even more effective
than aid in reducing the likelihood that a conflict-prone nation will
relapse into violence.

Four new civil wars are expected to break out in the next decade in
low-income nations. Compared with no deployment, spending $850 million on a
peacekeeping initiative reduces the 10-year risk of conflict re-emerging to
7% from around 38%, according to Copenhagen Consensus research by Oxford
University's Paul Collier.

Because of war's horrendous and lasting costs, each percentage point of risk
reduction is worth around $2.5 billion to the world. Thus, spending $850
million each year to reduce the risk of conflict by a massive 30 percentage
points means a 10-year gain of $75 billion compared to the overall cost of
$8.5 billion, or $9 back on the dollar.

In other areas, too, sound economic analysis suggests solutions that we may
at first find unpalatable.

Poor water or sanitation affects more than two billion people and will claim
millions of lives this year. One targeted solution would be to build large,
multipurpose dams in Africa.

Building new dams may not be politically correct, but there are massive
differences between the U.S. and Europe - where there are sound
environmental arguments to halt the construction of large dams and even to
decommission some - and countries like Ethiopia which have no water storage
facilities, great variability in rainfall, and where dams could be built
with relatively few environmental side effects. A single reservoir located
in the scarcely inhabited Blue Nile gorge in Ethiopia would cost a
breathtaking $3.3 billion. But it would produce large amounts of desperately
needed power for Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt, combat the regional water
shortage in times of drought, and expand irrigation. All these benefits
would be at least two-and-a-half times as high as the costs.

In each of these areas - and in the areas of air pollution, education and
trade barriers - the world's scarce resources could be used to achieve
massive amounts of benefits.

Next week, some of the world's top economists, including five Nobel
laureates, will consider new research outlining the costs and benefits of
nearly 50 solutions to world problems - from building dams in Africa to
providing micronutrient supplements to combating climate change. On May 30,
the Copenhagen Consensus panel will produce a prioritized list showing the
best and worst investments the world could make to tackle major challenges.

The research and the list will encourage greater transparency and a more
informed debate.

Acknowledging that some investments shouldn't be our top priority isn't the
same as saying that the challenges don't exist. It simply means working out
how to do the most good with our limited resources. It will send a signal,
too, to research communities about areas that need more study.

The global food crisis has sadly underlined the danger of continuing on our
current path of fixating on poor solutions to high-profile problems instead
of focusing on the best investments we could make to help the planet.

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Mr. Lomborg, organizer of Copenhagen Consensus, is the author of "Cool It:
The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming" (Knopf, 2007).

This article appeared in today's Wall Street Journal.



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