Now, this is a recording of a museum lecture, which means (for those of you who have never been to one) there’s about 10 minutes of introduction and thank you’s to supporting organizations, et cetera, ad nauseum. Just skip ahead. Also, it is a longish talk (Ed’s part is about 35 minutes long).
Björn Lomborg here talks about the ideas his organization brings to the world-wide debate of global warming, and our various other “boring” problems. The organization he represents is copenhagen consensus center, about the work of which he discusses in the first video below. In the first and the second video, he mentions what would be the abysmal failure of the kyoto protocol and hints at the reasons why. Those reasons are many and complex, but can be represented metaphorically in the following quote by William McDonough:
If you want to go to Mexico, and you’re driving toward Canada, even if you slow down you’re still going to Canada.
The kyoto protocol is probably the only thing I and certain politicians can ever agree about, in that I believe it to be greatly flawed, as does Lomborg. He suggests from this starting point that climate change should be worried about once people have food, heat, health and (relative) wealth.
I think he is wrong, but only because his starting point is too narrow. His estimation of the importance of global warming is based on a pragmatic outlook, which is good, but also based on currently proposed solutions, which I feel is too nearsighted. Further, he focuses on efficiency toward (relatively) narrow (though still huge) goals, rather than effectiveness toward all goals.
He is important among the celebrities of this movement, because he reminds us that there are other problems to address. I believe, however, that it’s equally important to remind people that multiple problems can have the same solution; that addressing a whole system can have effects beyond those of many separate bandages.
He talks about looking at solutions first, out of a rational optimism, but I argue for looking at the interconnectivity of a possible solution’s effects before deciding on solutions. Killing birds with fewer stones (I don’t condone killing birds, but exhausting our supplies of stones and energy in the process would be particularly shameful).
To continue McDonough’s metaphor of driving in the wrong direction, let’s slow down, then stop the car, and maybe take the train going the opposite way, so we can tell other people about why we’re doing what we’re doing.
a condensation of the national geographic documentary of the same name. right now we’re already at about .8 degrees of increase since 1900, and speeding up toward:
