Business Spectator interview

At the U.N., a Free-for-All on Setting Global Goals

MAY 6, 2014

by Eduardo Porter

"There are, of course, better and worse ideas. Bjorn Lomborg of the Copenhagen Consensus, who achieved renown by arguing that current efforts to cut carbon emissions to slow climate change cost too much and deliver too little, argues that many of the new targets also fail the test. He has been making the rounds among diplomats, showing them the results of cost-benefit analyses of some of the ideas on the table..."

By Bjorn Lomborg In a week's time, several thousand well-meaning officials from 194 countries will gather in Cancun, Mexico, for yet another global climate summit. And just as they did last year in Copenhagen, and the year before in Poznan, Poland, and in fact every year since 1995 in a variety of locales from Kyoto, Japan, to Marrakech, Morocco, they will fill the air with apocalyptic warnings about what will happen to the planet if we don't cut carbon emissions drastically. After that, they will go home, once again having done nothing meaningful about global warming. (...) 

Dr. Bjorn Lomborg and Jordan B Peterson discuss a variety of topics in the realm of climate change and worldwide problems. We examine the claims made in his latest book False Alarm. Throughout the episode we touch on sustainable development goals, prioritizing problems for the world, achieving the highest return on investment, the apocalypse lens we apply to many global issues, making the poor richer, innovation, adaptation, selling and marketing solutions, and much more.