How to Spend $50 Billion to Make the World a Better Place
Global Warming Distracts from the World’s Truly Pressing Problems
Given tens of billions of dollars to protect the planet and improve the human condition, how would those dollars best be spent?
Some of the world’s leading social economists were recently asked to tackle this question, and former Greenpeace activist Bjorn Lomborg has reported on the results in his excellent book, How to Spend $50 Billion to Make the World a Better Place.“Green” is now a major world religion, and the belief in anthropogenic global warming is evidently the pathway to heaven. Actually, it looks more to me like a religious cult from an old Indiana Jones movie, but its greatest crime is the wasting of the world’s economic resources when they could so easily be used to solve many of the real problems of the developing world.
Tackling Human Misery
This book is written in readable economic language, concisely placed on only 208 pages, containing nine chapters dealing with communicable diseases, civil wars, the lack of education, poor governance, corruption, hunger and malnutrition, population migration, water, subsidies and trade barriers, and global warming. Each subject is covered by one or more authors and then critiqued by someone with slightly opposing views.
The second half of the twentieth century brought enormous improvements in health across the world. In fact, life expectancy in developing countries has increased faster than in industrialized countries, although this is easier done because of a lower initial baseline. Areas such as sub-Saharan Africa, however, have largely been left behind.
An early example of the excellent facts contained in Lomborg’s text tells us, “in 2002 there were 57 million deaths worldwide. Of these 20 percent were children under five, and 98 percent of these childhood deaths occurred in developing countries.” Communicable diseases account for seven of the top 10 causes, resulting in 60 percent of premature childhood deaths. Read more about Making the World a Better Place here....
Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution
By Paul Hawken, Amory B. Lovins & L. Hunter Lovins
Just as the foundation of all personal wealth is good health (you have no energy to make your mark if you are sick), so the foundation of global wealth is a healthy natural environment. Prosperity is inherently about wealth and wellbeing that are not won at the expense of other people or things. Real prosperity invokes the ‘circle of life’.
Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution popularised the idea of ‘natural capital’ – that clean air, water and other natural assets are valuable and must be recognised by the accounting discipline, and are not free things to be looted. Yet the book is not a rant against industry and how it is destroying the world. Through copious examples it shows that being ‘green’ can be financially smart as well as ethically right.
The Capital That Economists Forgot
The authors note that industrial capitalism has been incredibly successful in marshalling resources and delivering great wealth.
But this wealth has come at a great cost to the natural environment. They admit that the cost of raw materials continues to fall and that the actual amount of resources never becomes depleted, thanks to the development of easier ways of finding and extracting metals from the ground – and yet, these ‘easier’ ways also come at a cost.
Underlying the industrial mentality is that nature supplies goods that can be transformed into something more valuable. But more important than the materials that nature offers are the services that it provides. For instance, a forest not only gives us wood but is a form of water storage, cleans our air and is a buffer against weather extremes. Read more about Natural Capital here....
Global Warming Distracts from the World’s Truly Pressing Problems
Given tens of billions of dollars to protect the planet and improve the human condition, how would those dollars best be spent?
Some of the world’s leading social economists were recently asked to tackle this question, and former Greenpeace activist Bjorn Lomborg has reported on the results in his excellent book, How to Spend $50 Billion to Make the World a Better Place.
“Green” is now a major world religion, and the belief in anthropogenic global warming is evidently the pathway to heaven. Actually, it looks more to me like a religious cult from an old Indiana Jones movie, but its greatest crime is the wasting of the world’s economic resources when they could so easily be used to solve many of the real problems of the developing world.Tackling Human Misery
This book is written in readable economic language, concisely placed on only 208 pages, containing nine chapters dealing with communicable diseases, civil wars, the lack of education, poor governance, corruption, hunger and malnutrition, population migration, water, subsidies and trade barriers, and global warming. Each subject is covered by one or more authors and then critiqued by someone with slightly opposing views.
The second half of the twentieth century brought enormous improvements in health across the world. In fact, life expectancy in developing countries has increased faster than in industrialized countries, although this is easier done because of a lower initial baseline. Areas such as sub-Saharan Africa, however, have largely been left behind.
An early example of the excellent facts contained in Lomborg’s text tells us, “in 2002 there were 57 million deaths worldwide. Of these 20 percent were children under five, and 98 percent of these childhood deaths occurred in developing countries.” Communicable diseases account for seven of the top 10 causes, resulting in 60 percent of premature childhood deaths. Read more about Making the World a Better Place here....
Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution
By Paul Hawken, Amory B. Lovins & L. Hunter Lovins
Just as the foundation of all personal wealth is good health (you have no energy to make your mark if you are sick), so the foundation of global wealth is a healthy natural environment. Prosperity is inherently about wealth and wellbeing that are not won at the expense of other people or things. Real prosperity invokes the ‘circle of life’.
Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution
popularised the idea of ‘natural capital’ – that clean air, water and other natural assets are valuable and must be recognised by the accounting discipline, and are not free things to be looted. Yet the book is not a rant against industry and how it is destroying the world. Through copious examples it shows that being ‘green’ can be financially smart as well as ethically right.The Capital That Economists Forgot
The authors note that industrial capitalism has been incredibly successful in marshalling resources and delivering great wealth.
But this wealth has come at a great cost to the natural environment. They admit that the cost of raw materials continues to fall and that the actual amount of resources never becomes depleted, thanks to the development of easier ways of finding and extracting metals from the ground – and yet, these ‘easier’ ways also come at a cost.
Underlying the industrial mentality is that nature supplies goods that can be transformed into something more valuable. But more important than the materials that nature offers are the services that it provides. For instance, a forest not only gives us wood but is a form of water storage, cleans our air and is a buffer against weather extremes. Read more about Natural Capital here....
by Lao Tzu. I also find myself studying the application of philosophy to military tactics. I know Sun Tzu’s, 
