From bertramonline, some comment (a couple of weeks old now, but my Internet access has been spotty) on the news that Bjorn Lomborg has resigned as head of the Danish Environmental Assessment Institute and is returning to his academic job. Like me, Bertram is somewhat surprised by the limited media reaction to, and coverage of, Lomborg's last big effort, the Copenhagen Consensus.
As attentive readers will recall, the conference concluded that fighting AIDS should be the top global priority in helping developing countries and also that climate change mitigation was a waste of money. I agree with the first of these conclusions, and more generally with the need for more spending on health poor countries, and I hope that Lomborg will put some effort into supporting it. I'll try to keep readers posted on this.
Posted by jquiggin at July 7, 2004 06:44 PM | TrackBackThe probable reason for the lack of attention is that lomborg is known as a contrarian and the idea of helping people with AIDS isn't very controversial.
Posted by: John Humphreys at July 8, 2004 04:30 PMFrom your comment, John, I take it you don't expect Lomborg to have anything to say about AIDS or, more generally, health care in poor countries.
If he is in need of something contrarian to say, he could always criticise the Danish government for cutting foreign aid.
Posted by: John Quiggin at July 8, 2004 04:39 PMforeign aid (in the form of money or food) makes things worse than doing nothing.
as an aside, fighting aids might conflict with global warming.
although if you fight aids with condoms, this has the twin benefit of reducing third world fertility rates.
Posted by: c8to at July 8, 2004 07:30 PMforeign aid (in the form of money or food) makes things worse than doing nothing.
Sure it does but fridge magnets are okay.
Posted by: John Hardy at July 9, 2004 11:37 AMMy cynical intuition says that he says fighting AIDS is good because it funnels money to big pharma, especially if the pharma companies and the US and other governments pressure poorer countries to honor questionable patents and not use generics.
Whereas, fighting global warming is bad because it would reduce profits for many companies (though it would be a boon to companies working on technologies that reduce pollution and increase efficiency - that doesn't seem to count, such spending is treated as if it's just money burned.)
Posted by: Jon H at July 14, 2004 02:23 PM