http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B8rn_Lomborg

so.... sitting in wait for the flood of dissent, to pick this poor boy's argument of ecomnomy, like a carcass, and enlighten us all as to the efficacy, of dealing with the monster...

unless they are ready for the marble to do what it will, as we will no doubt, shall continue to do, what ( ? )'s will.....

bjorn is an interesting fellow, with an interesting book. he appears on the surface to be the punk-rocker of modern scientists (anti-establishment, anti-convention) but his arguments are more along the lines of, 'lets step back for a minute and think where we are, what we're doing, and what we might regret not doing that we could be doing."

I respect this guy. His book The Sceptical Environmentalist states that there's not much to worry about concerning the environment and I don't fully agree with that. The book started a huge controversy, with many scientists saying it was flawed.
However he does bring up a very important point, especially in this video. And that is that we should get our priorities right.

I'm upvoting and favouriting this not because I absolutely agree with him -- I think there is room to disagree about how much we can do to effectively combat global warming -- but these are excellent questions he raises and this is a great magnet for discussion.

...

Interesting.. I'm not much of an economist or environmentalist, but certainly environmentalists and quite a few scientists would argue that the cost of combating global warming, while huge, are much, much less than it would cost to do nothing.. so if they are right...

I guess in a sense all of these causes are very profitable, its just that the people who would pay to fix them wouldnt actually profit from it. Like if we lifted our trade barriers, thats great for african countries, but its our loss. (we could probably deal with it tho, and we probably deserve it..)

Well, duh.

Global warming is a problem, and one gaining momentum, but it's obvious it's not as pressing as the life or death situations he gives examples of.

Have we got that dumb that we need a lecture on that?

This is silly. I have to say.

Yes these are very important issue more so the global warming. But show me a single person that could really think malnutrition is as large an issue as it is? Because it's not covered as much in the media as much as issues like AIDS or Global Warming.

"Have we got that dumb that we need a lecture on that? "

Yes we have, just see how relatively little money goes to preventing malnutrition and poverty in general. In the seventies most western countries pledged that they would donate 0.7% of their government money. So far only four countries have done this (Sweden, Norway, Denmark, The Netherlands)

*long

This video has been flagged as being at least 10 minutes in length - declared long by jonny.

*eco

Adding video to channels (Eco) - requested by fissionchips.