I just came across this video of Bjørn Lomborg in 2005 talking about the results of his Copenhagen Consensus project prioritzing what to do about the world’s large problems.

Lomborg is always a breath of fresh air.

It’s tiresome to keep hearing people talking about problems and never about the costs and benefits of proposed solutions.

I found it interesting that acting along Kyoto Protocol lines to prevent climate change problems came out at the bottom of the list.

Even if we stipulate that global warming is a serious problem, and that it’s largely human caused (two stipulations that I’m still skeptical about), it doesn’t go anywhere towards answering the question about what we should do about it, if anything.

I do like the idea of fairly small prizes to help motivate clever people to discover successful solutions to big problems, though. So, I’ve got no problem with Richard Branson offering this prize.