The smartest ways to fight non-communicable diseases in Bangladesh

2013-05-29 By Bjørn Lomborg, in Huffington Post. The UN is pondering which goals to set for the next decades to advance human development and sustainability. A high-level panel including Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and UK Prime Minister David Cameron will be making their recommendations this Friday. They could get a treasure trove of ideas from some of the world's top economists. In a new book, these economists summarize humanity's smartest ideas and best investments.

When India found itself at the 103rd position in the recent World Economic Forum ranking of 130 nations on the preparedness of talent, it was just another indication of the skills challenge. In just five years, the government’s skill gap analysis report estimates that an extra 40 crore workers need to be skilled, reskilled or upskilled. The current official estimate is that slightly more than half a crore people are being trained annually.

The latest alarming news about climate change is that huge swaths of densely inhabited land will be underwater by 2050, with their cities “erased.” These reports – which appeared in The New York Times and many other media outlets – are based on a good research paper by scientists at Climate Central, but they get the story wrong.

This is part of a damaging pattern. Climate change is a man-made problem that we need to tackle, but many of the news stories about its purported effects are scaring us without justification and misleading us about how to act.