Climate Alarmists Are Getting This All Wrong - Dr Bjorn Lomborg

Dr Bjorn Lomborg is an environmental economist, Copenhagen Consensus Center president, public speaker and an author. Over the past two decades, the media has made some alarming predictions about the imminent end of the world due to global warming. But is this the priority that global efforts should be focussed on fixing? Does it have real world benefits, or are there better ways to improve human lives? Expect to learn why Greta Thunberg had to delete a tweet from half a decade ago, the reason why climate change is a favourite fear tactic in the media, the most cost-effective ways to make the world a better place, why sending kids to school doesn't necessarily mean they are educated, why cold weather is much more deadly than heat, just how inefficient it is to save lives through carbon reduction, how dangerous NetZero is as a policy and much more... Sponsors: Get 10% discount on all Gymshark’s products at https://bit.ly/sharkwisdom (use code: MW10) Get 15% discount on Bon Charge’s red light therapy devices at https://boncharge.com/modernwisdom (use code: MW15) Get 10% discount on your first month from BetterHelp at https://betterhelp.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Extra Stuff: Buy False Alarm - https://amzn.to/43w6KKT Check out Bjorn's website - https://www.lomborg.com/ Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom #climatechange #charity #existentialrisk - 00:00 Intro 00:37 Greta Thunberg’s Deleted Predictions 06:14 Why Climate Change is NOT an Existential Risk 10:39 Bjorn’s Cost-Effective Ways to Improve the World 19:49 Is Bjorn’s Work Close to Effective Altruism? 24:36 The Longest Levers for a Better Future 30:00 Why Climate Change Policy is Counterproductive 37:36 Which is Worse: Cold or Heat? 43:14 The Financial Mess of the Green Movement 50:29 Are Climate Alarmists Really Helping the Polar Bears? 1:00:12 Bjorn’s Strategy to Engage Sceptics - Get access to every episode 10 hours before YouTube by subscribing for free on Spotify - https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn or Apple Podcasts - https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Get my free Reading List of 100 life-changing books here - https://chriswillx.com/books/ - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/

Bjorn LomborgguestChris Williamsonhost

Apr 20, 20231h 8mWatch on YouTube ↗

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

Rethinking Climate Panic: Smarter Ways To Improve Global Wellbeing Fast

Bjorn Lomborg argues that climate change is a serious but manageable problem, not an existential threat that will end humanity, and that current alarmism distorts public priorities.
He contends that we massively overinvest in high-cost, low-impact climate policies while neglecting cheap, high-impact interventions that save millions of lives and dramatically reduce poverty today.
Using cost–benefit analysis, Lomborg highlights a set of 12 top interventions—such as basic education reform, maternal and newborn care, tuberculosis control, and green energy R&D—that yield enormous social returns per dollar.
He calls for reframing global efforts away from symbolic gestures and politically attractive but inefficient goals like near‑term net zero, towards evidence-based spending that maximizes real human flourishing now and in the future.

IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING

5 ideas

Treat climate change as a serious problem, not the end of the world.

Mainstream scientific estimates suggest climate change will make us somewhat poorer and create real localized harms, but not cause permanent, unrecoverable collapse of civilization; framing it as an existential risk crowds out attention to other urgent issues.

Use cost–benefit analysis to prioritize global spending.

Lomborg argues that policy should be guided by how much social good each dollar buys—across health, education, environment—not by what generates the scariest headlines; many beloved climate policies return only cents on the dollar, while some health and education interventions return 40–80 times their cost.

Invest in basic education reform with targeted learning technology.

Providing structured, tablet-based, level‑appropriate instruction for about $30 per child per year can triple learning outcomes in developing countries, yielding an estimated $600 billion in lifetime benefits from a $10 billion annual cost.

Scale simple maternal and newborn care to save millions cheaply.

Low-cost measures—clean facilities, basic obstetric emergency care, neonatal resuscitation bags—could save roughly 1.4 million mothers and babies annually for under $5 billion per year, delivering an estimated $87 of social benefit per dollar spent.

Target neglected killers like tuberculosis for high-impact gains.

Improved diagnosis, medication adherence, and stigma reduction in low-income countries could avert hundreds of thousands of TB deaths annually, with benefit–cost ratios around 46:1, far outperforming typical climate mitigation investments.

WORDS WORTH SAVING

5 quotes

Climate change is a problem, not the end of the world.

— Bjorn Lomborg

Do you want to do a lot of good, or do you just want to feel good?

— Bjorn Lomborg

If you’re worried about polar bears, stop shooting polar bears.

— Bjorn Lomborg

We’ve quadrupled in size, and deaths from climate-related disasters have dropped 98%.

— Bjorn Lomborg

Net zero by 2050 is absolutely bonkers—an impossible and fantastically expensive policy.

— Bjorn Lomborg

Climate change risk: problem vs existential catastropheMedia incentives, fear narratives, and public misperceptions about climateCost–benefit analysis and economic framing of global policy choicesHigh-return interventions: education, maternal/newborn health, tuberculosisEffective altruism vs Lomborg’s more present-focused, human-centric approachEnergy, cold vs heat deaths, and the role of innovation (e.g., fracking, R&D)Critique of net-zero-by-2050 and current climate policy priorities

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