Bjorn Lomborg: Global priorities bigger than climate change

Ok, what if we just decided to concentrate on the first most important priority as Lomborg suggested but we still didn't find enough money to solve it. My point is that it is not about the lack of money but mere fact that our governments don't give world problems any serious attention. And this is why we always wouldn't have enough money to solve anyting no matter how shortened our problems list becomes.
US alone spends more than 650 billion $ ayear on its DOD. The world spends more than 1400 billion $ ayear on defence. We don't lack money, we lack GOOD governments.

I see one major problems with this reasonning. The resolution of those big problems aren't independant. Perhaps the next question we should ask ourselves with is What impact each problem solving could have on the others? What are the effect of investing on the fight against malaria on world hunger? Investing on some problems may reduce the cost of others. In the other hand not investing on not solving some problems may increase the cost of others

13 billion to cure malaria worldwide. Thats like 0.1 percent of the US millitary budget. The beneficts would be 10x times that. Both in trade and in people you dont have to shoot.

Funny to see about 10 years later now after this talk and this guy is 100% right since we now know human caused climate change/global warming is total bullshit and the warming we are having is NOT in any way a crisis or unnatural or anything to worry about.... SO LETS CURE AIDS!
Can you imagine lives saved by all those wasted global warming carbon tax enviro scam dollars we wasted on this faulty science?? Ugh.. Gross. Humans are stupid and gross.

Suppose you have the opportunity to make an investment that is very safe and which will give you the very best return on your capital, enough to make you as much money as you have ever dreamt of. But then you also have cancer. The treatment is very expensive, and there is no guarantee it will work, among other inconveniences. If you don't possess enough resources to spend on both, you'll have to make a choice. For the great majority of people, that's an easy one. Isn't climate change like the world has cancer? Also, maybe the treatment being offered is not good enough.

I would go with Thorium Power. The cheap power from that would solve a lot of those others.

You plebeians are completely missing his point. He is not saying that Climate change is not an issue. In fact it is a big problem, and at no point is he denying that.

He is simply saying that every dollar spent on HIV/AIDS will be much more effective at reducing the incidence of HIV/AIDS than every dollar spent battling climate change will be effective at battling climate change.

So if we only have a limited amount of money to spend solving global issues, then it would make the most sense to spend it where it will be the most effective.

Really. It's that simple.

This talk is incredibly outdated right now, in 2016. In fact I find it even offensive to keep this talk still on TED. Climate change is number one priority in the world right now, because so much bad climate-induced things have happened since 2005 so now the alarm is very visible and a lot of institutions and politicians realized it already. There is no point to focus all efforts on smaller scale problems if a little bit later this century we all will burn in the climate chaos.
It is immoral to state publicly that one mustn't prioritize climate change.
(The whole thing looks like lobbying.)

Climate chaneg is a "bad project" according to economists. Um. No. Not really. I subscribe to Elon Musk's argument: This is a single planet. The one and only planet we have. Sure, climate change is not going to be TOO bad over the course of the next 100 years. But a thousand year, 2,0000, 10,000 year from now? This planet could go completely extinct. The other option, is to leave this planet. Or at least, a significant portion of the population to leave. That would probably take at least 2 - 3 more centuries.

I know. I get it. He is referring to a cost-benefit analysis regarding the CURRENT situation, in the short-run. In the long-run, this is backasswards and wrong.

lobby

I kind of get what he is saying. For example if I have two children, one of them has down syndrome and the other not, I'll just spend more time and caring in the second child, because it's easier, cheaper and has better opportunities of success in adulthood :)

This guy just killed Man-Bear-Pig!

umm money is made up by the government?! they can solve all problems....

Good thinking.
I think that this video teach us solving the problems at low costs

strange that reducing malaria wasn't #1 as it affects roughly a thousand times as many people as hiv/aids per year and costs only half as much to halve the problem in each case.

All this talk about "prioritizing" he failed to mention the ridiculously large military budget.
I smell something fishy about this dude.

The earth is about 4.5 billion years old. The first billion the surface was a smoldering 
mass. The earth cooled by raining for a million years. Now that's some climate change. Even before the SUV

He doesn't take into account the enormous future costs of not acting on climate change.

Once you drink the kool aid, than anything that contradicts that must be the Koch brothers -- it is so cliche and worn out; especially when there are 20+ liberals that contribute more $$ to Democrats... so grow up and simply consider that what he says may make sense and if you disagree... why? Is it fear? There ARE better things to worry about than the natural fluctuation of the sun cycle

It seems a bit superficial to imply that becoming a "rich dutch man" is every Bangladeshi's goal and to assume that cost-benefit and economists are best placed to do this "prioritising". He also doesn't address underlying issues of distribution of wealth. The truth is there is not a scarcity of financial resources in the World, just inequity in their distribution.