Global Crises, Global Solutions |  | Creator: Bjorn Lomborg
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
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Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 525428
Media: Paperback
Pages: 670
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.8
Dimensions (in): 9.5 x 6.9 x 1.7
ISBN: 0521606144
Dewey Decimal Number: 338.927
EAN: 9780521606141
ASIN: 0521606144
Publication Date: November 15, 2004
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Product Description
This volume provides a uniquely rich set of arguments and data for prioritizing our responses to some of the most serious problems facing the world today, such as climate change, communicable diseases, conflicts, education, financial instability, corruption, migration, malnutrition and hunger, trade barriers, and water access. Leading economists evaluate the evidence for costs and benefits of various programs to help gauge how we can achieve the most good with our money. Each problem is introduced by a world-renowned expert analyzing the scale of the problem and describing the costs and benefits of a range of policy options to improve the situation. Shorter pieces from experts offering alternative positions are also included; all ten challenges are evaluated by a panel of economists from North America, Europe, and China who rank the most promising policy options. Global Crises, Global Solutions provides a serious, yet accessible, springboard for debate and discussion and will be required reading for government employees, NGOs, scholars and students of public policy and applied economics, and anyone with a serious professional or personal interest in global development issues. Bjørn Lomborg is Associate Professor of Statistics at the University of Aarhus and the director of the Danish Environmental Assessment Institute. He is also the author of the controversial bestseller, The Skeptical Environmentalist (Cambridge, 2001).
Book Description
Leading economists address ten of the most serious challenges facing the world today: Climate Change, Communicable Diseases, Conflicts, Education, Financial Instability, Corruption, Migration, Malnutrition and Hunger, Trade Barriers, Access to Water. World experts evaluate various policy options for each problem, stimulating the debate on prioritising our response to global challenges.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 10
 NOT for the General Reader, Get Cool It Instead October 8, 2009
Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I was among those who considered Lomborg discredited when he produced The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World, and I now retract two thirds of my rejection in light of The Resilient Earth: Science, Global Warming and the Fate of Humanity and Lomberg's work in creating the Copenhagen Consensus as reported on in this book--37 serious people considering alternative perspectives and ranking remediation options in relation to real cost-benefit analysis, something Al Gore and other hysterics do not do.
This book is NOT recommended for the general reader--it is way too heavy, too many charts, not enough of a flow, a lot of this stuff has to be taken on faith. Instead, I recommend Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming (Vintage) for the general reader, and probably How to Spend $50 Billion to Make the World a Better Place which I may order in a few minutes.
This book I had to work hard to glean take-ways useful to me--in no way does that disparage this excellent work, but it is of, by, and for economist academics.
The simplified list of its conclusions, money best spent on:
+ Communicable diseases
+ Conflists and arms proliferation
+ Access to education
+ Financial instability (reduction of)
+ Governance and corruption
+ Migration
+ Sanitation and access to clean water
+ Subsidies and trade barriers (ending)
Although Climate Change is listed in the book as being at the top of this list, a thorough reading actually takes it off the list as not cost effective in terms of human and natural benefits.
What impressed me most--and the point is made much more fluidly in Cool It--is the compelling array of so many other better ways to spend money, and the compelling evidence that clime change, while a real problem, is a traffic accident in comparison with malnutrition, disease, education shortfalls and so all, all of which can be dramatically improved at relatively low cost which climate change remediation is not only grotesquely expensive, but yields very little return on investment.
Early on the editor (Lomborg) points out that the Copenhagen Consensus had to overcome obstacles including hard to compare alternatives, institutional regidities (within which I would include over-specialization and the fragemntation of knowledge in a reductionist society), and resentment of the idea that climate change might not be the "silver bullet" Al Gore would have us believe (I suspect at this point the Nobel Committee is flinching inwardly at their ill-considered award--Herman Daly and several others remain vastly more deserving).
The editor points out that the UN Millenium Goals are achievable at a cost of $40-70 billion a year (i.e. less than what the US pays for secret intelligence that produces less than 5% of what the US President needs to know, and nothing for everyone else), but are unlikely to be realized because the financial resources are simply not forthcoming.
I glean a few notes from across the various contributions:
+ Time discounting (future benefits at future costs versus current costs)
+ Risk of catastrophe as a separate category
+ Climate change meriting special status because it is a multi-generational problem
+ Macroeconomic literature is severely lacking (this is huge, what it really means is that no one is doing whole system or system of systems thinking--(see my images at Phi Beta Iota, I no longer load images here as Amazon destroyed over 350 images to get rid of 12 portraits of Obama-Bush sharing the same face).
+ Foreign aid and internal transparency are complementary (seems obvious, but worth noting the tie)
+ Reducing the intensity of a conflict can be easier and cheaper to do than ending the conflict
+ Education by radio WORKS and yet has not been adopted nor really understood--this ties in well with the Earth Intelligence Network of educating the five billion poor "one cell call at a time"
+ Education contributors ASSUME that only 9-18 years of "butts in seats" rote education will do, they have not conceptualized Internet and radio and cell phone based incremental and situation-relevant education
+ Governance and corruption are covered but only as a Third World problem. Although there is a literature on Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids and The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future - and What It Will Take to Win It Back I believe that we must encourage much more research on the costs of the structural corruption resident in the Western countries, and the USA in particular, as this corruption has not only bankrupted the USA, but cascaded across the world with unilateral militarlism, virtual colonialism, and predatory immoral capitalism all done in the name of the good people of America (and at their expense) but actually being a form of global looting of the many by the few.
+ The "cure" for failed states is said to consist of citizen oversight; procurement reform; improved revenue raising; improvement in business environments (end of red tape and delay); and global asset recovery and transparency. For me that boils down to ubiquitous computing and "true cost" visibility everywhere.
+ The section on water is fascinating and one of the best in terms of general reader comprehension. I learn that in the past 100 years the population has tripled while water use has gone up six times. I learn that beef requires 13 times more water than vegetarian foods.
+ There is not as much focus on legitimacy as I was expecting, and I recommend Max Manwaring's edited work, The Search for Security: A U.S. Grand Strategy for the Twenty-First Century--everything these authors address in this book is made possible by LEGITIMACY, which must be earned with honesty and transparency and integrity across the board.
I put the book down somewhat disappointed. Although in the aggregate there are connecitons made between water and nutrition and poverty and education and agriculture, the authors are lacking a strategic analytic model such as the Earth Intelligence Network had created, and I believe that a second round of the Copenhagen Consensus would benefit from adopting that model.
Another book with cost numbers that I recommend is The Future of Life. For a sense of how we are our own worst enemy, see The Next Catastrophe: Reducing Our Vulnerabilities to Natural, Industrial, and Terrorist Disasters and Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America
Global Crises, Global Solutions - Heavy on Economics April 23, 2008
Glenn Gallagher (Sacramento, CA)
Global Crises, Global Solutions; edited by Bjorn Lomborg, who brought us The Environmental Skeptic, has produced a collection of articles where experts attempt to prioritize which global problems should be dealt with, and how they should be solved. Although an excellent idea, the actual writing is extremely academic and not very easy to read. Essentially, the articles are a series of cost-benefit analyses on specific problems of global warming, conflict, communicable disease, etc. I am not an economist, and found the writing to be almost impenetrable at times, because the authors assume the reader has a very firm understanding of economics and economic jargon. Four stars for intent, only three stars for readability.
 Bjorn Lomborg: GlobalCrises, Glbal Solutions May 7, 2007
Levente Letso (Somerset NJ USA)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book appears at the first look about economy. It is not. Its starting premise is the question: if you have limited resources and have to prioritize, what would you do in our global warming situation. It is a hard
headed treatment of the subject matter by a multitude of subject experts. Their complete set of policy proposals then evaluated by eight of the world top economists.
It is interesting, how fast the discussion veers off after discussing the economics into the very conditions enabling or blocking the desirable economic developments, such as conflicts, communicable diseases, sanitation and trade barriers just to mention a few.
The book can be read on two different level.For casual reader and policy maker most the numbers are avoidable and still be a very readable and very thoughtful and interesting material. For those, who want hard numbers and hard details, that is provided too, but not necessary for understanding.
This is the multicolored, multifaceted work of many dedicated individuals who - by the work they are dedicated to perform - are forced to set priorities in expending limited resources. I was surprised by their reasoning, and I trust, so will you be.
if you care about the world March 8, 2007
G. J. De Vries (Holland)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
why arn't global politics based on these arguments? it's a pleasure to read the scientific arguments that lomborg uses to validate his claims. it's a shame that we cannot organise the solutions to make this world a better place for a lot of people at no expense to our own prosperity. all the hard (econometrical) stuff is almost easy to read.
next year i'll read it again and see how far we are...
Raising the Level of Debate About Global Problems August 9, 2006
Michael Bishop (Chicago)
5 out of 13 found this review helpful
Most people never think about the unavoidable tradeoffs involved in ameliorating social problems. With opportunity costs in mind, may we must dedicate ourselves to a better world.
I have two respectful criticisms:
1. If people focused only on the problems that we could do most to solve then that would reduce the pressure to solve problems. However rational it might seem to shift all foreign aid from funding education to funding AIDS prevention, the result would probably be less total aid. The way politics works, one big problem is sometimes treated less seriously than two problems that are half as big.
2. It is difficult to quantify any of these problems, but some of them, like global warming, are much harder to quantify. The "worst case scenario," unlikely as it may be, has the potential to do such incredible damage, that we need to act on it. Reducing global warming might be conceived of as an insurance policy, whereas preventing AIDS is more likely an investment in mutual funds.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 10
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