Best Things First
The 12 most efficient solutions for the world’s poorest and our global SDG promises
-
-
5.0 • 1 Rating
-
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
Now selected as one of the Best Books of 2023 by The Economist.
In this urgent, thought-provoking book, Bjorn Lomborg presents the 12 most efficient solutions for the world's poorest and our global SDG promises. • If you want to make the world better, Best Things First is the book to read.
World leaders have promised everything to everyone. But they are failing. The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals are supposed to be delivered by 2030. The goals literally promise everything, like eradicating poverty, hunger and disease; stopping war and climate change, ending corruption, fixing education along with countless other promises. This year, the world is at halftime for its promises, but nowhere near halfway. Together with more than a hundred of the world’s top economists, Bjorn Lomborg has worked for years to identify the world’s best solutions. Based on 12 new, peer-reviewed papers, forthcoming in Cambridge University Press’ Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis, this book highlights the world’s best policies.
Customer Reviews
Cost of living
4.5 stars
The author is a Danish political scientist, academic, and public intellectual, who rose to prominence following publication of his first book ‘The Skeptical Environmentalist’ in 2001. He is currently president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center where economists (including seven Nobel Laureates) set data-driven priorities for the world. (Their words, not mine)
Back in the 1990s, the UN published a set of Millennial Development Goals (MDG) aimed at improving the lot of the world’s poor by 2015. These were achieved partially, so they set a whole lot more (180 or more) for 2030, and called them Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). We’re more than halfway to 2030 now and well behind target. If we keep going at the current rate, Lomborg’s boffins calculate we might make it by 2078 at best.
As the name SDG suggests, combatting climate change featured heavily. Mr Lomborg’s skepticism about international efforts to combat climate change is a matter of public record. He’s not a climate change denier. His point has always been that it’s going to take a lot longer, and cost a whole lot more than the politicians or the climate industry is prepared to admit (see ‘False Alarm,’ 2020). Meanwhile, there are lots of things we could do for the world’s poor that would be more beneficial in the short to medium term, and more cost effective.
In this volume, he and his team describe the 12 they rate best from a benefit-to-cost point of view, e.g. $15 value for every dollar invested. There’s nothing radical about the list (reducing or eliminating TB, improving childhood education, taxing tobacco etc). Each is presented in the form of a summary chapter with the link to the relevant background research at the end.
The main criticism of the book that I have read is that it mainly cites by Copenhagen Consensus Center. Given that they published it, I’m not surprised. If more references are required, it is a simple matter to follow the links to the original paper on which each chapter is based. Those original papers have about a zillion references each, at least the three that I looked up did. I presume the same applies to the rest.
It is very difficult to argue with the conclusions of Mr L and his group. What’s missing are constructive suggestions about how to combat the myriad sectional interests staring in the way of the logical approach outlined. Call me a skeptic, but I doubt the “Field of Dreams” philosophy (write it down and they will come around) will be enough.