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The John Batchelor Show

1/2: Best Things First: The 12 most efficient solutions for the world’s poorest and our global SDG promises Hardcover – May 8, 2023 by Bjorn Lomborg (Author), Bjørn Lomborg (Editor)

The John Batchelor Show

John Batchelor

Society & Culture, Arts, News, Books

4.52.8K Ratings

🗓️ 25 May 2023

⏱️ 15 minutes

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1/2: Best Things First: The 12 most efficient solutions for the world’s poorest and our global SDG promises Hardcover – May 8, 2023 by Bjorn Lomborg (Author), Bjørn Lomborg (Editor)

https://www.amazon.com/Best-Things-First-efficient-solutions/dp/1940003288/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

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.

Some things are difficult to fix, cost a lot, and help little. Other problems we know how to fix, at low cost, with remarkable outcomes. We should do the smart things first.

Governments and philanthropists should focus on these 12 smartest things. Fix tuberculosis, malaria, and chronic disease, tackle malnutrition, improve education, increase trade, implement e-procurement, and secure land tenure. This will improve the world amazingly. The cost is $35 billion a year. The benefits include saving 4.2 million lives each year and generating $1.1 trillion more for the world’s poor.

We can definitely afford it: The cost of $35 billion is equivalent to the increase in annual global spending on cosmetics over the last two years. This is likely the best thing the world can do this decade.


Transcript

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0:00.0

Elevate your summer nights

0:03.0

with all the indulgence of the new Magnum Double Star Chaser.

0:07.0

With cracking chocolate, popcorn flavor,

0:11.0

and rich caramel sauce for the night.

0:14.0

Pleasure is always on.

0:17.0

Magnum, true to pleasure.

0:25.0

This is CBS, I Am The World.

0:27.0

I'm John Bachelor.

0:28.0

A new book, Best Things First, highly recommended from Bjorn Lomburg.

0:33.0

He is the principal in the Copenhagen consensus.com website.

0:38.0

And that is a way to find this book easily,

0:41.0

to understand the 12 ambitions, best things first,

0:46.0

in the immediate future and over these next decades.

0:49.0

However, before we get to the list, which is inspiring,

0:53.0

we need to know how we got to hear.

0:55.0

Bjorn, a very good evening to you.

0:57.0

Thank you very much.

0:58.0

Congratulations to you and your colleagues for putting together

1:02.0

something that's imaginable, that's in proportion to human imagination.

1:07.0

At the same time, you build upon the Millennium Development Goals

1:13.0

of September of 2000, which are enormously successful by 2015.

1:19.0

And then you point to the UN having had a good idea,

...

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