Why Should We Care About Oversea Programs?

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There's certainly a good argument for saying, I don't care all that much about the rest of the world, but surely we care a tiny bit about it. And so in the US and everywhere else, we're willing to spend maybe half a percent of our income or GDP on doing good for the world. But my point is just, why don't we spend a small fraction of that half percent really, really well?

World leaders have promised everything to everyone. But they are failing. Together with more than a hundred of the world’s top economists, Bjorn Lomborg has worked for years to identify the world’s best solutions. Based on 12 new, peer-reviewed papers, forthcoming in Cambridge University Press’ Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis, Lomborg’s latest book highlights the world’s best policies.

Shermer and Lomborg discuss: perfect solutions vs. practical trade-offs • benefit-cost analysis • time horizons and discounting the future • the value of a statistical life • saving the environment, the poor, the diseased • the millennium development goals • the sustainable development goals • tuberculosis • education • maternal and newborn health • agricultural R&D (more and cheaper food) • malaria • land tenure security • nutrition • chronic diseases • childhood immunization • corruption • highly skilled migration.

Bjorn Lomborg is an academic and the author of the best-selling The Skeptical Environmentalist and Cool It. He is a visiting professor at Copenhagen Business School, and president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center which brings together top economists, including seven Nobel Laureates, to set data-driven priorities for the world. Lomborg is a frequent commentator in print and broadcast media, for outlets including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, CNN, FOX, and the BBC. His monthly column is published in 19 languages, in 30+ newspapers with more than 30 million readers globally. Follow him on twitter @BjornLomborg.