Global Crises, Global Solutions

Book Overview

A unique publication exploring the opportunities for addressing ten of the most serious challenges facing the world today: Climate Change, Communicable Diseases, Conflicts, Education, Financial... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0521606144
• ISBN13: 9780521606141
• Release Date: November 2004
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 648 Pages
• Weight: 2.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.9" x 9.7"

Customer Reviews

Bjorn Lomborg: GlobalCrises, Glbal Solutions

This book appears at the first look about economy. It is not. Its starting premise is the question: if you have limited resources and have to prioritize, what would you do in our global warming situation. It is a hard headed treatment of the subject matter by a multitude of subject experts. Their complete set of policy proposals then evaluated by eight of the world top economists. It is interesting, how fast the discussion veers off after discussing the economics into the very conditions enabling or blocking the desirable economic developments, such as conflicts, communicable diseases, sanitation and trade barriers just to mention a few. The book can be read on two different level.For casual reader and policy maker most the numbers are avoidable and still be a very readable and very thoughtful and interesting material. For those, who want hard numbers and hard details, that is provided too, but not necessary for understanding. This is the multicolored, multifaceted work of many dedicated individuals who - by the work they are dedicated to perform - are forced to set priorities in expending limited resources. I was surprised by their reasoning, and I trust, so will you be.

Global Crises, Global Solutions

I enjoyed Bjorn Lomborg's latest work as a thought provoking alternative to conventional wisdom on different aspects of globalisation. Unfortunately, much of the scientific and political community have become prisoners to theories which have dubious merit. They are followed more out of political correctness and the prevailing winds of public opinion, than research and testing. By including other experts who provide alternative opinions and challenge each other, Lomborg has followed the true spirit of scientific method - development of a theory and testing it through falsification. It is a shame that some purported scientists have tried to silence him in a similar way to Galileo. Poor science leads to inadequate policy. The book is a worthy successor to the Environmental Sceptic and reflects a growing concern in the scientific community about the need for more rigorous research and debate on key issues. It's content is well laid out. Clearly, the amount of material is not designed for reading in one session. However, it is a valuable resource book suited to those interested in entering into the debate on key global issues. You can pick an individual topic and obtain a good grounding in it. I look forward to Bjorn Lomborg's next offering.

Highly Recommended!

This report is an excellent, controversial and refreshing approach to global problems. Daily, the news media and politicians declare that another crisis is urgent. Often, loud, public resolutions accompany these pronouncements. Political blocs form to push through agendas based on those resolutions. The only thing missing from the process is a dispassionate analysis of whether the solutions make economic sense and, if so, which ones make the most economic sense. This book of compiled essays from the Copenhagen Consensus - as documented in The Economist - provides that missing element. The conference drew from United Nations documents to assemble a list of the most urgent problems facing the world and identified those that presented opportunities for solutions. Then it set the task of identifying solutions that would provide the biggest benefit for the cost, examining 38 proposals for spending $50 billion over four years. Surprisingly, some of the most economically rational projects never make headlines and never turn up in public exhortations. When was the last time you saw someone climbing onto a platform to demand mosquito nets to prevent malaria in Africa? That may not come up nearly as often as adherence to the Kyoto Protocol, which provides a far weaker cost vs. benefit scenario. According to the analysts from Copenhagen, the former seems to be a very sound use of the world's problem-solving resources, but the latter costs a lot and seems to deliver relatively few benefits. We highly recommend this intriguing, sweeping conversation.

Directly addressing problems facing the world today

Global Crises, Global Solutions is an anthology of scholarly essays by learned authors directly addressing problems facing the world today, such as climate change, financial instability, communicable diseases, conflicts, cooruption, malnutrition and hunger, trade barriers, water access and more. Each problem is discussed from the point of view of an expert skilled at analyzing the problem's scale as well as cost-and-benefit policy options for improving the situation. Shorter pieces from additional experts with alternative positions provide balance in this superb springboard for debate and understanding key issues. Especially recommended reading for government employees, non-governmental organizations, students of public policy and applied economics, and any individual with a direct personal or professional interest in global development issues.

No Minor Problems Here

This book talks about ten of the most serious challenges facing the world today: climate change communicable diseases conflicts and arms proliferation access to educationfinancial instability governance and corruption malnutrition and hunger migration sanitation and clean water subsidies and trade barriers. You certainly can't accuse them of taking on minor issues. Each issue is introduced by an expert in the field who defines the scale of the problem and describes the costs and benefits of a range of policy options to improve the situation. After that two additional sets of alternate perspectives age given for each proposal. The one complaint I have is that in the section on conflicts it talks only about civil war. While civil war is not minor (21 major conflicts in 2002 alone) the prospects for the future of conflict between the muslim world and the rest seem to be worthy of a category by itself, and may involve many more people than all 21 civil wars. Perhaps this is another book in its own right.