Cold calculations.

of benefits and costs.

If we're seriously about helping the poor, one man argues,

we need to insist on just such calculations.

Bjorn Lumborg on Uncommon Knowledge now. Welcome to Uncommon Knowledge. I'm Peter Robinson.

Bjorn Lomborg is president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, a think tank dedicated to applying economic analysis, including benefit cost

analysis to the issues of the day.

He's the author of many books, including the 2001 bestseller, The Skeptical Environmentalist.

Bjorn Lumborg's latest book,

Best Things First.

Bjorn, thanks for joining me again.

That's great to be here.

Best things first.

The promise you make.

For about 35 billion per year, we can save 4.2 million lives annually and we can make the poorer

half of the world more than a trillion dollars better off each and every year. We'll come to the substance of that

outlandish claim in a moment, but one question first, who's we? Yes. So we are all the people who want to make the world a better place.

So this would be development organizations, so USAID, the similar ones across the world that are giving away development aid.

It would be philanthropists like Bill Gates and many others who want to do good.

It would be you and me when we're spending our, you know know small envelopes at the end of the year and

and giving you know I don't know a couple hundred dollars or whatever it is on these things and of course it is

is also the individual nations it so we look at low and lower middle income countries, so the 4 billion

...