Lecture Topics
A selection of the author's speeches:
- The Truth About Global Warming
- Resource Allocation
- How to Make Your Efforts Count
- Feeling Good vs. Doing Good
Other Areas of Expertise
- Business/Economy
- Environment/Green Living
- Global Issues
- Health and Fitness
- Politics
- Science
More Information
Bjorn Lomborg
Professor, Statistician and Author of Cool It
Base: Copenhagen, Denmark
- Photo: Emil Jupin
Bjorn Lomborg, named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in April 2004, is an adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School, and author of The Skeptical Environmentalist and Cool It (Knopf). Cool It challenges our understanding of the environment and global warming and suggests that statements about the strong, ominous, and immediate consequences of global warming are often wildly exaggerated. Lomborg believes we need a stronger focus on smart solutions rather than excessive if well-intentioned efforts and thinks we must put global warming in perspective.
"Al Gore and the many people he has inspired have goodwill and great intentions," says Lomborg. "But the problem is we will end up choosing very bad policies to solve problems we agree need attention if we follow his recommendations."
Bjorn Lomborg has lectured around the world and is a frequent participant in the current climate debate, with commentaries in such publications as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Globe and Mail, The Guardian, The Daily and Sunday Telegraph, The Times (London), The Australian, and The Economist. He has also appeared on CNN, BBC, CNBC, ABC, and PBS.
In May 2004, Lomborg cofounded the "Copenhagen Consensus," bringing together some of the world's top economists in a forum to discuss challenges facing the world. "If we want to do good," Lomborg asserts, "we need to ask the question where should we start?'"
In 2006, Lomborg became the director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, and a forum for the center held that same year brought together United Nations Ambassadors who, together, represented about half of the world's population.
In his highly informative and well-researched presentations, Lomborg challenges widely held beliefs and addresses the most serious challenges facing the world today. He systematically examines today's most important global crisis issues and offers sustainable solutions. Lomborg presented his views before the United States Congress in the joint hearing "Perspective on Climate Change," of the House committees on Energy and Commerce and on Science and Technology. He testified second, after Al Gore.
Lomborg continues to be widely recognized for his integral contributions to society. In 2008, he was named one of the world's 75 most influential people of the 21st century by Esquire, one of the ''50 people who could save the planet'' by the UK Guardian, and one of the top 100 public intellectuals by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazine.
Works by this Speaker
Cool It
A startling book that reshapes the debate about global warming and offers a moderate approach to meeting its challenges.
Bjorn Lomborg argues that many of the elaborate and expensive actions now being considered—the Kyoto Protocol, for example—have a staggering potential cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, but, ultimately, will have little impact on the world's temperature. He suggests that rather than institutionalizing these programs to “cool” the earth's temperature 100 years from now, we should focus our resources on some of the world's most pressing immediate concerns, such as: fighting malaria and HIV/AIDS, and maintaining a safe, fresh water supply. And he considers why and how this debate has developed an atmosphere in which dissenters are immediately demonized.
Global Crises, Global Solutions
This volume provides a uniquely rich set of arguments and data for prioritizing our responses to some of the most serious problems facing the world today, such as climate change, communicable diseases, conflicts, education, financial instability, corruption, migration, malnutrition and hunger, trade barriers, and water access. Leading economists evaluate the evidence for costs and benefits of various programs to help gauge how we can achieve the most good with our money. Each problem is introduced by a world-renowned expert analyzing the scale of the problem and describing the costs and benefits of a range of policy options to improve the situation. Shorter pieces from experts offering alternative positions are also included; all ten challenges are evaluated by a panel of economists from North America, Europe, and China who rank the most promising policy options. Global Crises, Global Solutions provides a serious, yet accessible, springboard for debate and discussion and will be required reading for government employees, NGOs, scholars and students of public policy and applied economics, and anyone with a serious professional or personal interest in global development issues.
The Skeptical Environmentalist
Bjørn Lomborg, a former member of Greenpeace, challenges widely held beliefs that the world environmental situation is getting worse and worse in his book, The Skeptical Environmentalist. Using statistical information from internationally recognized research institutes, Lomborg systematically examines a range of major environmental issues that feature prominently in headline news around the world, including pollution, biodiversity, fear of chemicals, and the greenhouse effect, and documents that the world has actually improved. He supports his arguments with over 2500 footnotes, allowing readers to check his sources. Lomborg criticizes the way many environmental organizations make selective and misleading use of scientific evidence and argues that we are making decisions about the use of our limited resources based on inaccurate or incomplete information. Concluding that there are more reasons for optimism than pessimism, he stresses the need for clear-headed prioritization of resources to tackle real, not imagined, problems. The Skeptical Environmentalist offers readers a non-partisan evaluation that serves as a useful corrective to the more alarmist accounts favored by campaign groups and the media. Bjørn Lomborg is an associate professor of statistics in the Department of Political Science at the University of Aarhus. When he started to investigate the statistics behind the current gloomy view of the environment, he was genuinely surprised. He published four lengthy articles in the leading Danish newspaper, including statistics documenting an ever-improving world, and unleashed the biggest post-war debate with more than 400 articles in all the major papers. Since then, Lomborg has been a frequent participant in the European debate on environmentalism on television, radio, and in newspapers.
