7 ms·

Bjorn Lomborg: How to Get the Biggest Bang for 10 Billion Bucks

27 points by byrneseyeview 18y ago

stcredzero 18y ago
One of the first things to tackle would be access to clean water.
orib 18y ago
The biggest question in my mind when reading this article is "how are the relative costs and values actually being calculated?" How can we say that $1.00 spent on clean energy will bring $11.00 in benefits, when $1.00 on counter-terrorism will bring $0.30 in benefits? How much of it is speculation? In other words, what was the method for quantifying the amount of benefit that we see from the investment?
- tom_rath 18y ago
  You'll be able to find the details (or the publications which contain them) here: http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com
d0mine 18y ago
Lomborg on TED http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/bjorn_lomborg_sets_global_priorities.html http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/bjorn_lomborg_sets_global... [video] 15 min.
Alex3917 18y ago
This article doesn't make any sense. Lomborg says that cap-and-trade returns 90 cents on the dollar, but investing in clean energy would return 11 dollars on the dollar. But the whole case for cap-and-trade is that it's the most economically efficient way to invest in clean energy.
- pchristensen 18y ago
  No, cap-and-trade is supposed to be the most cost-effective way to reduce emissions. Investing in clean energy has many other benefits (improving science and tech, creating new industries, job creation, lower cost of energy, etc).
  - Alex3917 18y ago
    I understand that not all of the money under a cap-and-trade system goes to generating new clean energy. For example, in many cases using a kilowatt of energy we already have more efficiently is less expensive than generating a new kilowatt. However, the idea that we should design our energy policy around maximizing new energy creation even when it's more cost effective to make our current products more energy efficient makes no sense, assuming we take economic benefit to mean wealth created per dollar spent. Unless Lomborg simply means that investing all of our money in clean tech would create more jobs, in which case that's just an example of the broken window fallacy. (And I understand that many cap-and-trade schemes also have provisions for things like paying South American countries to reduce their rate of deforestation, which is neither a case of conservation of existing energy nor production of new energy, but this amounts to only a few million dollars per year.)
    - anamax 18y ago
      > However, the idea that we should design our energy policy around maximizing new energy creation even when it's more cost effective to make our current products more energy efficient makes no sense, assuming we take economic benefit to mean wealth created per dollar spent. Sure it does. Even if we made all of our current products us 0 energy, we might want more energy for other things than the amount saved. BTW - is it actually more cost-efficient or is that assumed because it's convenient for some other argument?
      - pchristensen 18y ago
        In the sense that pure markets are the most effective known way to efficiently allocate resources. In reality they can fall short in any number of ways. Cap-and-trade for sulfur dioxide is the poster child. It has worked well in reducing overall levels quickly and cost effectively: http://www.grinningplanet.com/2004/02-12/cap-and-trade-pollution-credits-eco.htm http://www.grinningplanet.com/2004/02-12/cap-and-trade-pollu... . But I don't know of any other examples of cap-and-trade so it's not clear it's an all-purpose strategy.
- anamax 18y ago
  > But the whole case for cap-and-trade is that it's the most economically efficient way to invest in clean energy. Is it?
lacker 18y ago
How do they have any idea of the return on R&D? It's like trying to predict the odds of fusion power becoming possible if we spend a billion dollars researching it. Who knows?
Tichy 18y ago
"Providing Vitamins for undernourished children" A "solution" proposal like that doesn't make me trust the whole approach very much. There are many underlying issues besides buying a heap of vitamins for x dollars. I think most children would not benefit so much from the vitamins if the situation that made them malnourished stays the same. Perhaps they would be slightly more efficient soldiers, though. Changing the political situation surely is more complicated than simply throwing money at it.
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
pg 18y ago
Odd how in these situations no one ever thinks of simply funding companies that would generate the most economic growth. And yet if you diff present conditions against conditions 100 or 500 years ago-- even in the poorest places-- I'd bet most of the improvement came not from explicitly benevolent projects so much as ordinary economic growth. Obviously the two are hard to disentangle, but even in a project like shipping vaccines to poor countries, think about how much better it is to have things like fridges, phones, aircraft, etc. To say nothing of all the infrastructure in the labs that make the vaccines, etc, etc.
- fbailey 18y ago
  Depends what you want to do. Which of the Y combinator startups is going to help children in developing countries?
  - pg 18y ago
    My whole point was that what actually helps children in developing countries most is not heroic rescue missions but boring infrastructure improvements. That is, the stuff that helps children in developing countries most is the stuff that helps everyone, like making power transmission more efficient, or cloth manufacture cheaper. Lots of YC funded startups make the world more efficient in some way. Octopart, for example. They make the electronics industry more efficient, and that helps everyone, just in a quiet, diffuse way.
    - fbailey 18y ago
      Absolutely true, but does it help the children now? It's a bit like antimalarial research, of course it will help millions of people when a vaccination is finally available. But it won't help those children who will be infected next week, free mosquito nets and free drugs might help. Looking only at the longterm economic development perspective you are absolutely right, but if you want to help those suffering right now, you are wrong. Your quote: "And yet if you diff present conditions against conditions 100 or 500 years ago-- even in the poorest places--" What would starving people think about us when we tell them that we are not giving them any food because it's not worth it in the long term?
mattmaroon 18y ago
"Spending an extra dollar cutting C02 to combat climate change generates less than one dollar of good, even when we add up all the economic and environmental benefits." I don't think there's any sort of consensus on that. I've seen varying figures proposed by economists. An accurate cost benefit analysis would seem to require too many facts we just don't know yet.
dfsdfsdsfdsf 18y ago
Lomborg is a menace: http://climateprogress.org/2007/09/17/debunking-bjorn-lomborg-cool-it-water-heat-waves-global-warming/ http://climateprogress.org/2007/09/17/debunking-bjorn-lombor...
mynameishere 18y ago
Not one figure passed the smell test. If you can actually say "1 dollar here or there provides x or y ROI" life would be pretty simple. It isn't simple. For my part, I would put every penny on genetic engineering R&D. The ROI would either be zero or infinite.
shard 18y ago
Of course, some of these goals counteract each other. If we treat disease, we increase population and thus hunger and climate change. I wonder what kind of ROI we get on investing in population control.

27 points by byrneseyeview 18y ago

One of the first things to tackle would be access to clean water.

orib 18y ago

The biggest question in my mind when reading this article is "how are the relative costs and values actually being calculated?" How can we say that $1.00 spent on clean energy will bring $11.00 in benefits, when $1.00 on counter-terrorism will bring $0.30 in benefits? How much of it is speculation? In other words, what was the method for quantifying the amount of benefit that we see from the investment?

tom_rath 18y ago
You'll be able to find the details (or the publications which contain them) here: http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com

d0mine 18y ago

Lomborg on TED http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/bjorn_lomborg_sets_global_priorities.html http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/bjorn_lomborg_sets_global... [video] 15 min.

Alex3917 18y ago

This article doesn't make any sense. Lomborg says that cap-and-trade returns 90 cents on the dollar, but investing in clean energy would return 11 dollars on the dollar. But the whole case for cap-and-trade is that it's the most economically efficient way to invest in clean energy.

pchristensen 18y ago
No, cap-and-trade is supposed to be the most cost-effective way to reduce emissions. Investing in clean energy has many other benefits (improving science and tech, creating new industries, job creation, lower cost of energy, etc).
- Alex3917 18y ago
  I understand that not all of the money under a cap-and-trade system goes to generating new clean energy. For example, in many cases using a kilowatt of energy we already have more efficiently is less expensive than generating a new kilowatt. However, the idea that we should design our energy policy around maximizing new energy creation even when it's more cost effective to make our current products more energy efficient makes no sense, assuming we take economic benefit to mean wealth created per dollar spent. Unless Lomborg simply means that investing all of our money in clean tech would create more jobs, in which case that's just an example of the broken window fallacy. (And I understand that many cap-and-trade schemes also have provisions for things like paying South American countries to reduce their rate of deforestation, which is neither a case of conservation of existing energy nor production of new energy, but this amounts to only a few million dollars per year.)
  - anamax 18y ago
    > However, the idea that we should design our energy policy around maximizing new energy creation even when it's more cost effective to make our current products more energy efficient makes no sense, assuming we take economic benefit to mean wealth created per dollar spent. Sure it does. Even if we made all of our current products us 0 energy, we might want more energy for other things than the amount saved. BTW - is it actually more cost-efficient or is that assumed because it's convenient for some other argument?
    - pchristensen 18y ago
      In the sense that pure markets are the most effective known way to efficiently allocate resources. In reality they can fall short in any number of ways. Cap-and-trade for sulfur dioxide is the poster child. It has worked well in reducing overall levels quickly and cost effectively: http://www.grinningplanet.com/2004/02-12/cap-and-trade-pollution-credits-eco.htm http://www.grinningplanet.com/2004/02-12/cap-and-trade-pollu... . But I don't know of any other examples of cap-and-trade so it's not clear it's an all-purpose strategy.
anamax 18y ago
> But the whole case for cap-and-trade is that it's the most economically efficient way to invest in clean energy. Is it?

lacker 18y ago

How do they have any idea of the return on R&D? It's like trying to predict the odds of fusion power becoming possible if we spend a billion dollars researching it. Who knows?

Tichy 18y ago

"Providing Vitamins for undernourished children" A "solution" proposal like that doesn't make me trust the whole approach very much. There are many underlying issues besides buying a heap of vitamins for x dollars. I think most children would not benefit so much from the vitamins if the situation that made them malnourished stays the same. Perhaps they would be slightly more efficient soldiers, though. Changing the political situation surely is more complicated than simply throwing money at it.

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

pg 18y ago

Odd how in these situations no one ever thinks of simply funding companies that would generate the most economic growth. And yet if you diff present conditions against conditions 100 or 500 years ago-- even in the poorest places-- I'd bet most of the improvement came not from explicitly benevolent projects so much as ordinary economic growth. Obviously the two are hard to disentangle, but even in a project like shipping vaccines to poor countries, think about how much better it is to have things like fridges, phones, aircraft, etc. To say nothing of all the infrastructure in the labs that make the vaccines, etc, etc.

fbailey 18y ago
Depends what you want to do. Which of the Y combinator startups is going to help children in developing countries?
- pg 18y ago
  My whole point was that what actually helps children in developing countries most is not heroic rescue missions but boring infrastructure improvements. That is, the stuff that helps children in developing countries most is the stuff that helps everyone, like making power transmission more efficient, or cloth manufacture cheaper. Lots of YC funded startups make the world more efficient in some way. Octopart, for example. They make the electronics industry more efficient, and that helps everyone, just in a quiet, diffuse way.
  - fbailey 18y ago
    Absolutely true, but does it help the children now? It's a bit like antimalarial research, of course it will help millions of people when a vaccination is finally available. But it won't help those children who will be infected next week, free mosquito nets and free drugs might help. Looking only at the longterm economic development perspective you are absolutely right, but if you want to help those suffering right now, you are wrong. Your quote: "And yet if you diff present conditions against conditions 100 or 500 years ago-- even in the poorest places--" What would starving people think about us when we tell them that we are not giving them any food because it's not worth it in the long term?

mattmaroon 18y ago

"Spending an extra dollar cutting C02 to combat climate change generates less than one dollar of good, even when we add up all the economic and environmental benefits." I don't think there's any sort of consensus on that. I've seen varying figures proposed by economists. An accurate cost benefit analysis would seem to require too many facts we just don't know yet.

dfsdfsdsfdsf 18y ago

Lomborg is a menace: http://climateprogress.org/2007/09/17/debunking-bjorn-lomborg-cool-it-water-heat-waves-global-warming/ http://climateprogress.org/2007/09/17/debunking-bjorn-lombor...

mynameishere 18y ago

Not one figure passed the smell test. If you can actually say "1 dollar here or there provides x or y ROI" life would be pretty simple. It isn't simple. For my part, I would put every penny on genetic engineering R&D. The ROI would either be zero or infinite.

shard 18y ago

Of course, some of these goals counteract each other. If we treat disease, we increase population and thus hunger and climate change. I wonder what kind of ROI we get on investing in population control.