Bjørn Lomborg, chef för Copenhagen Consensus Center, har länge studerat vilken nytta pengar som går till exempelvis bistånd och klimatåtgärder gör. En del är pengar i sjön, medan andra åtgärder är mycket effektiva. Andreas Ericson intervjuar honom om biståndet, klimatpolitiken och åsiktskorridoren.
1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:07,780 Det är torsdagen den 22 januari. Jag heter Andreas Eriksson och du lyssnar på Leda-redaktionen, en podd från Svenska Dagbladet.
2 00:00:17,720 --> 00:00:22,280 Varmt välkomna ska ni vara till oss igen. Idag ska vi ta oss an minst sagt stora frågor.
3 00:00:22,840 --> 00:00:32,940 Hur ska vi egentligen prioritera världens resurser för att lösa de mest omfattande problemen vi har när det gäller exempelvis svält, undernäring, sjukdomar, brist på utbildning och så vidare?
4 00:00:33,080 --> 00:00:37,140 För att inte tala om de miljöproblem som exempelvis den globala uppvärmningen skapar.
5 00:00:37,140 --> 00:00:43,340 Vilka åtgärder är det som är effektiva? Vilka är det som ger mest givet vilka resurser man satsar?
6 00:00:43,920 --> 00:00:48,280 Och tvärtom, vilka är det som inte gör någon nytta alls trots att de kanske är väldigt dyra?
7 00:00:49,560 --> 00:00:55,740 Det ska vi prata om idag och det ska vi göra med hjälp av en person som ni som har följt med Svenska Dagbladets ledare-redaktion känner väl till.
8 00:00:56,340 --> 00:01:02,920 Han har varit en återkommande gästskribent i många år och heter Björn Lomborg och kommer från Copenhagen Consensus Center.
9 00:01:03,560 --> 00:01:05,160 Welcome to ledare-redaktionen Björn.
10 00:01:05,160 --> 00:01:05,900 Många tack.
11 00:01:05,900 --> 00:01:08,600 Nice to have you on the podcast.
12 00:01:09,160 --> 00:01:12,980 First of all, I'd like to quote one of your famous countrymen, H.C. Andersson.
13 00:01:13,580 --> 00:01:17,860 In the preface to a Swedish translation of one of his books, he wrote, and I quote,
14 00:01:18,320 --> 00:01:24,300 Jag håller eke av att danske bör översättas på svensk, icke heller att svenska förs över i vårt språk.
15 00:01:24,740 --> 00:01:34,100 Vi naboer, kone och skole läser hinande i originelle, men det visar sig att detta ännu inte pågår, så översättelser är nödvändiga för många.
16 00:01:34,100 --> 00:01:35,100 And this is...
17 00:01:35,900 --> 00:01:37,300 Unfortunately, it's still the case.
18 00:01:37,420 --> 00:01:39,260 So we're going to have this conversation in English.
19 00:01:39,560 --> 00:01:40,320 That's fine with you?
20 00:01:40,560 --> 00:01:41,560 It's fine with me.
21 00:01:41,720 --> 00:01:43,300 And congrats on your day, me.
22 00:01:44,040 --> 00:01:44,780 Thank you.
23 00:01:45,720 --> 00:01:47,140 Thank you, H.C. Andersson.
24 00:01:48,020 --> 00:01:51,260 I'd like to start with your latest piece in Svenska Dagbladets.
25 00:01:51,460 --> 00:01:55,960 You wrote it in December about the UN Sustainability Development Goals.
26 00:01:56,800 --> 00:02:00,040 Their deadline is pretty close now, 2013.
27 00:02:00,760 --> 00:02:02,960 How are we doing with these goals?
28 00:02:02,960 --> 00:02:03,900 Not very well.
29 00:02:04,360 --> 00:02:04,620 Okay.
30 00:02:04,780 --> 00:02:05,880 And in some way...
31 00:02:05,880 --> 00:02:08,820 It really tells a very important story.
32 00:02:09,440 --> 00:02:13,420 So back in 2015, we did these goals.
33 00:02:13,660 --> 00:02:16,640 So Sweden signed up, Denmark signed up, every country in the world.
34 00:02:16,800 --> 00:02:25,180 I don't think North Korea did, but virtually every country in the world signed up to do everything for everyone, everywhere, all the time.
35 00:02:25,640 --> 00:02:27,980 And anything you can possibly imagine.
36 00:02:28,120 --> 00:02:32,920 So we promised to get rid of poverty, get rid of hunger, get rid of disease, pretty much.
37 00:02:33,820 --> 00:02:35,860 And get rid of air pollution.
38 00:02:35,860 --> 00:02:39,620 And climate change, and war, and all other good things in the world.
39 00:02:40,360 --> 00:02:46,880 And it's very well-intentioned, but we can't actually deliver on all these things.
40 00:02:47,080 --> 00:02:52,160 When you promise everything, you'll eventually end up making a lot of people feel really let down.
41 00:02:52,700 --> 00:02:56,320 So what we did was we promised way too much.
42 00:02:56,420 --> 00:03:04,020 And we didn't give a thought about what can we do at realistic costs, and what can we do first.
43 00:03:04,020 --> 00:03:05,020 If we can't do everything...
44 00:03:05,860 --> 00:03:09,320 We should have a conversation about where should we start, what should we do first.
45 00:03:09,740 --> 00:03:10,180 Okay.
46 00:03:11,140 --> 00:03:12,420 Just a piece of background.
47 00:03:12,680 --> 00:03:16,380 There were earlier UN goals, the Millennium Goals, and we did quite well, didn't we?
48 00:03:16,640 --> 00:03:17,040 We did.
49 00:03:17,120 --> 00:03:18,160 We did a lot better.
50 00:03:18,920 --> 00:03:20,960 And it's a cautionary tale.
51 00:03:21,140 --> 00:03:25,380 So in 2000, the UN did the Millennium Development Goals.
52 00:03:26,140 --> 00:03:29,480 And in reality, it was just really seven goals.
53 00:03:29,680 --> 00:03:31,260 And they were all very simple.
54 00:03:31,580 --> 00:03:32,920 Get people out of poverty.
55 00:03:32,920 --> 00:03:34,880 So it was more than half.
56 00:03:34,880 --> 00:03:37,500 The global population of poverty.
57 00:03:38,280 --> 00:03:41,240 Get moms and kids to not die.
58 00:03:41,640 --> 00:03:42,980 Get people out of starvation.
59 00:03:43,520 --> 00:03:47,060 Get more trees or less deforestation.
60 00:03:47,440 --> 00:03:48,420 And a few others.
61 00:03:48,780 --> 00:03:50,700 Oh, get all kids into schools.
62 00:03:51,100 --> 00:03:53,020 So these were very simple things.
63 00:03:53,440 --> 00:03:58,260 And surprisingly and quite encouragingly, we managed to do a lot of them.
64 00:03:58,320 --> 00:04:01,800 We didn't manage to do all of them, but we really got a far way.
65 00:04:01,800 --> 00:04:04,800 And the reason is we picked a few goals.
66 00:04:04,880 --> 00:04:13,120 And we picked really smart goals, meaning goals that are fairly cheap to do and that are obvious that we need to do first.
67 00:04:13,420 --> 00:04:19,860 So instead of promising everything to everyone, we promised a few very specific things and we actually managed to do a lot of it.
68 00:04:20,079 --> 00:04:22,240 That's what we should have done in 2015.
69 00:04:22,460 --> 00:04:25,740 And of course, that's why we're failing badly here in 2026.
70 00:04:25,980 --> 00:04:28,000 So simply put, we overreached.
71 00:04:28,280 --> 00:04:29,180 Yes, yes.
72 00:04:29,180 --> 00:04:33,740 And, you know, it's not surprising if you ask everyone, what do you want to do?
73 00:04:34,000 --> 00:04:34,760 And there's no.
74 00:04:34,880 --> 00:04:38,900 You obviously want to say, well, we should do all good things.
75 00:04:38,900 --> 00:04:40,660 And that was essentially what happened.
76 00:04:40,940 --> 00:04:47,600 So this was set by about 80 UN ambassadors in New York over a period of about a year.
77 00:04:48,180 --> 00:04:52,680 And I went to meet with a lot of them, about a third of them individually in New York.
78 00:04:52,980 --> 00:04:57,240 And I tried to tell them, please, please, please don't promise everything to everyone.
79 00:04:57,560 --> 00:05:01,360 But of course, their goal was just to put in as many nice words in the document.
80 00:05:01,480 --> 00:05:03,760 It's a really long and very boring document.
81 00:05:03,760 --> 00:05:08,100 But the reality is when you promise everything to everyone, you will fail.
82 00:05:08,580 --> 00:05:15,580 And right now we are on the schedule, on the timetable with about 20 percent of them, I think.
83 00:05:15,780 --> 00:05:16,060 Yes.
84 00:05:16,180 --> 00:05:21,100 And there are some who is stagnant and some are moving backwards, actually.
85 00:05:21,360 --> 00:05:21,460 Yes.
86 00:05:21,560 --> 00:05:21,700 Yes.
87 00:05:21,960 --> 00:05:26,680 So there is one measure of how well we're doing.
88 00:05:27,000 --> 00:05:30,020 And it's very, very hard to do because it's so many different targets.
89 00:05:30,020 --> 00:05:33,020 But it seems to indicate that right now we're going to be 50%.
90 00:05:33,760 --> 00:05:34,460 We're going to be 50 years late.
91 00:05:34,560 --> 00:05:38,660 We're going to be done in 2089 instead of 2030.
92 00:05:39,120 --> 00:05:40,720 So, yeah, we're a little behind.
93 00:05:41,740 --> 00:05:45,980 And one of your main argument is that we need to get our priorities right.
94 00:05:46,240 --> 00:05:53,240 We have to, given the limited resources, where can every penny do the most good?
95 00:05:54,140 --> 00:05:58,620 And what is the answer to that when it comes to a cost-benefit analysis?
96 00:05:59,000 --> 00:06:02,760 So I actually just gave you a book that gives you that answer.
97 00:06:02,760 --> 00:06:03,540 That answer.
98 00:06:03,760 --> 00:06:04,320 I have it in my hand.
99 00:06:04,440 --> 00:06:04,640 Yes.
100 00:06:04,780 --> 00:06:10,940 So we worked together with more than 100 economists, world's top economists and several Nobel laureates,
101 00:06:11,060 --> 00:06:17,120 to try to figure out, of all the things we promised, which ones can you spend a kronor,
102 00:06:17,400 --> 00:06:23,380 or more realistically, a couple hundred million kronor, and do the most good for every kronor spent?
103 00:06:23,640 --> 00:06:25,360 And this should be an obvious thing, right?
104 00:06:25,420 --> 00:06:28,820 I mean, we do this all the time in our private lives.
105 00:06:28,820 --> 00:06:33,600 I don't know your life, but I'm assuming that your kids want a new bike.
106 00:06:33,760 --> 00:06:35,440 And you also want to go on a vacation.
107 00:06:35,600 --> 00:06:36,760 And maybe the roof is leaking.
108 00:06:36,920 --> 00:06:38,120 And there's all kinds of things.
109 00:06:38,440 --> 00:06:42,400 And you always have to make hard choices with your limited resources.
110 00:06:42,760 --> 00:06:44,320 Again, I'm assuming you're not a billionaire.
111 00:06:45,260 --> 00:06:46,760 No, I'm not.
112 00:06:47,540 --> 00:06:50,980 So we have to make tough choices.
113 00:06:51,300 --> 00:06:53,140 And so we look at how much is the benefit?
114 00:06:53,300 --> 00:06:54,460 How much is this going to cost?
115 00:06:54,460 --> 00:07:00,240 And we make sort of a fairly simple equation of where can I get the most bang for my kronor?
116 00:07:00,440 --> 00:07:03,740 And this is also what we teach our kids.
117 00:07:03,760 --> 00:07:06,620 If you want a new bike, you want new Pokemon cards, whatever.
118 00:07:06,960 --> 00:07:09,500 Well, do an analysis.
119 00:07:09,620 --> 00:07:10,420 Cost benefit analysis.
120 00:07:12,900 --> 00:07:15,740 Landebo hjälper dig att ta kontroll över din framtid.
121 00:07:16,560 --> 00:07:20,380 Låt dina pengar växa i din takt på ett sätt som gör morgondagen ljusare.
122 00:07:21,220 --> 00:07:24,900 Landebos erfarna kapital- och relationsförvaltare står redo att guida dig.
123 00:07:25,220 --> 00:07:27,640 Men kom ihåg att investeringar innebär en risk.
124 00:07:29,000 --> 00:07:31,540 Upptäck hela vårt fondutbud på landebo.se.
125 00:07:34,280 --> 00:07:37,520 Vi på Danske Bank vet att företag har olag.
126 00:07:37,540 --> 00:07:43,360 I en värld som ständigt förändras hjälper vi ditt företag att navigera om världen.
127 00:07:43,700 --> 00:07:45,580 Från de minsta till de största.
128 00:07:46,020 --> 00:07:50,020 Vi ger företag finansiell rådgivning i Sverige och i resten av Norden.
129 00:07:50,300 --> 00:07:52,440 Vi är hela Nordens företagsbank.
130 00:07:52,980 --> 00:07:53,620 Danske Bank.
131 00:07:57,760 --> 00:07:59,560 And so that was what we did in this book.
132 00:07:59,660 --> 00:08:02,740 So we ended up finding...
133 00:08:02,740 --> 00:08:06,960 So we somewhat arbitrarily, but this is upset by our nobles at one point.
134 00:08:06,960 --> 00:08:09,960 We said, all right, let's look for all the things that deliberately...
135 00:08:10,840 --> 00:08:24,220 We identified 12 of these things.
136 00:08:24,220 --> 00:08:28,760 So just let me give you a few examples.
137 00:08:28,760 --> 00:08:31,740 Let's look at the social benefits, people not dying, for instance.
138 00:08:32,360 --> 00:08:35,539 But those are the very, very best things we could do.
139 00:08:35,620 --> 00:08:37,760 And we identified 12 of these things.
140 00:08:38,480 --> 00:08:40,820 So just let me give you a few examples.
141 00:08:40,840 --> 00:08:43,299 from the book and from the analysis
142 00:08:43,299 --> 00:08:45,340 it tells you for instance
143 00:08:45,340 --> 00:08:47,500 we could do an enormous amount
144 00:08:47,500 --> 00:08:49,200 of good for maternal
145 00:08:49,200 --> 00:08:51,340 and newborn health. So one of the things
146 00:08:51,340 --> 00:08:53,380 we don't think about here in the rich world
147 00:08:53,380 --> 00:08:55,040 is the most
148 00:08:55,040 --> 00:08:57,420 dangerous day in a woman's life
149 00:08:57,420 --> 00:08:59,340 in most of the world is the
150 00:08:59,340 --> 00:09:00,300 day she gives birth.
151 00:09:01,100 --> 00:09:02,400 That's just crazy. I mean
152 00:09:02,400 --> 00:09:05,180 it used to be like that here but it's
153 00:09:05,180 --> 00:09:07,280 no longer because we know how to deal with this.
154 00:09:07,620 --> 00:09:09,260 How do you fix it? Well we actually
155 00:09:09,260 --> 00:09:11,420 have a very cheap way of fixing most
156 00:09:11,420 --> 00:09:13,420 of it. You need to get the woman into
157 00:09:13,420 --> 00:09:14,660 a facility because
158 00:09:14,660 --> 00:09:17,280 most births go fine
159 00:09:17,280 --> 00:09:19,500 but if they go wrong they often
160 00:09:19,500 --> 00:09:21,040 go dramatically wrong.
161 00:09:21,320 --> 00:09:23,440 So you need to be in an institution so you can
162 00:09:23,440 --> 00:09:25,340 handle this and if you are there
163 00:09:25,340 --> 00:09:27,500 you also need to have very simple things
164 00:09:27,500 --> 00:09:29,840 like clean water, antiseptics
165 00:09:29,840 --> 00:09:31,160 you need to have a
166 00:09:31,160 --> 00:09:33,100 resuscitator if the child can't breathe.
167 00:09:33,260 --> 00:09:35,320 It actually turns out that even here in Europe
168 00:09:35,320 --> 00:09:37,320 about 5% of all kids
169 00:09:37,320 --> 00:09:39,080 don't breathe and they need
170 00:09:39,080 --> 00:09:41,240 positive air pressure, you know a little balloon
171 00:09:41,240 --> 00:09:43,160 essentially into their lungs.
172 00:09:43,280 --> 00:09:45,460 It's a very simple procedure but if you don't have
173 00:09:45,460 --> 00:09:46,740 it the kid will die.
174 00:09:47,180 --> 00:09:49,400 What we find is this is a very
175 00:09:49,400 --> 00:09:51,340 simple thing, very cheap thing
176 00:09:51,340 --> 00:09:53,500 to do too that the World Health Organization
177 00:09:53,500 --> 00:09:54,940 estimate everyone should do.
178 00:09:54,940 --> 00:09:56,740 If we could go from about
179 00:09:56,740 --> 00:09:58,960 two thirds of all women going into institutions
180 00:09:58,960 --> 00:10:00,900 to 90% and
181 00:10:00,900 --> 00:10:02,880 these institutions were slightly
182 00:10:02,880 --> 00:10:04,820 better equipped. We're not talking about fancy
183 00:10:04,820 --> 00:10:06,940 hospitals, we're just
184 00:10:06,940 --> 00:10:08,040 talking about slightly better.
185 00:10:09,080 --> 00:10:11,180 We estimate for about 3 billion dollars a year.
186 00:10:11,180 --> 00:10:13,520 So not nothing, not something you or I have
187 00:10:13,520 --> 00:10:15,440 but you know, very small amount of money
188 00:10:15,440 --> 00:10:16,760 in the international setting.
189 00:10:17,020 --> 00:10:19,680 For 3 billion dollars a year we could save
190 00:10:19,680 --> 00:10:23,140 166,000 moms
191 00:10:23,140 --> 00:10:24,000 from dying each year.
192 00:10:24,080 --> 00:10:25,560 That's more than half of all the moms
193 00:10:25,560 --> 00:10:26,480 who die every year.
194 00:10:26,820 --> 00:10:30,020 And we could save 1.2 million kids.
195 00:10:30,360 --> 00:10:31,560 This is just one of the
196 00:10:31,560 --> 00:10:33,520 best things we could do. We estimate for every
197 00:10:33,520 --> 00:10:35,560 krona spent. You could do 87
198 00:10:35,560 --> 00:10:36,840 kronas worth of good.
199 00:10:37,180 --> 00:10:39,060 And this is just one of these 12
200 00:10:39,080 --> 00:10:40,960 things. So we look at
201 00:10:40,960 --> 00:10:42,980 education for instance, where you
202 00:10:42,980 --> 00:10:44,940 can do very simple and effective
203 00:10:44,940 --> 00:10:47,080 things that for fairly little money
204 00:10:47,080 --> 00:10:48,840 deliver much better
205 00:10:48,840 --> 00:10:51,120 educated kids. We can perhaps
206 00:10:51,120 --> 00:10:52,880 talk about that. We can talk about
207 00:10:52,880 --> 00:10:54,920 tuberculosis, malaria, obvious
208 00:10:54,920 --> 00:10:57,220 diseases to tackle, vaccinations.
209 00:10:57,900 --> 00:10:58,940 But it's also something
210 00:10:58,940 --> 00:11:00,720 about making sure that people have more
211 00:11:00,720 --> 00:11:02,640 opportunity in poor worlds like
212 00:11:02,640 --> 00:11:04,200 land tenure reform.
213 00:11:04,860 --> 00:11:07,020 So for most people they work in agriculture
214 00:11:07,020 --> 00:11:09,020 and many don't
215 00:11:09,020 --> 00:11:10,760 know if they actually own the land
216 00:11:10,760 --> 00:11:12,700 because there's not good land registration.
217 00:11:13,320 --> 00:11:15,060 About a billion people on the planet
218 00:11:15,060 --> 00:11:16,700 believe that in the next five years
219 00:11:16,700 --> 00:11:18,400 they're going to be evicted from their land.
220 00:11:18,780 --> 00:11:20,540 If you think that, you're not going to
221 00:11:20,540 --> 00:11:23,020 dig a well or make irrigation
222 00:11:23,020 --> 00:11:24,760 or plant orchards so that
223 00:11:24,760 --> 00:11:26,680 the trees will only bloom and give
224 00:11:26,680 --> 00:11:28,140 fruit in five or ten years.
225 00:11:28,480 --> 00:11:30,820 You will just do what you can for the next
226 00:11:30,820 --> 00:11:31,600 year. Right.
227 00:11:32,180 --> 00:11:33,700 In Swedish we would call this
228 00:11:33,700 --> 00:11:35,320 lågt hängande frukt.
229 00:11:35,320 --> 00:11:36,460 Yes, exactly.
230 00:11:37,540 --> 00:11:38,980 Why isn't it
231 00:11:39,020 --> 00:11:40,360 being done already then?
232 00:11:41,560 --> 00:11:42,960 The short answer is
233 00:11:42,960 --> 00:11:44,880 a little bit is being done
234 00:11:44,880 --> 00:11:47,400 but it's because we're back to this
235 00:11:47,400 --> 00:11:48,660 we want to do everything.
236 00:11:48,880 --> 00:11:50,600 When you talk to a lot of politicians
237 00:11:50,600 --> 00:11:53,120 they like to say, I want to do
238 00:11:53,120 --> 00:11:54,860 all good things, right, because that makes it
239 00:11:54,860 --> 00:11:56,880 sound like they're doing more. So they will
240 00:11:56,880 --> 00:11:58,800 say, oh, I want to do something
241 00:11:58,800 --> 00:12:00,680 that will help women.
242 00:12:01,140 --> 00:12:02,980 Oh, but I also want to help rural
243 00:12:02,980 --> 00:12:05,120 women. I also want to help those
244 00:12:05,120 --> 00:12:07,100 with children. And maybe
245 00:12:07,100 --> 00:12:08,540 we want to make sure that these are
246 00:12:09,020 --> 00:12:10,560 indigenous people. And maybe we want to make
247 00:12:10,560 --> 00:12:12,560 sure that they're illiterate. You put up
248 00:12:12,560 --> 00:12:14,460 all these boxes and you take all these
249 00:12:14,460 --> 00:12:16,420 different things and then you end up doing
250 00:12:16,420 --> 00:12:18,740 something that sounds good and that looks
251 00:12:18,740 --> 00:12:20,700 good in the press release, but it's not
252 00:12:20,700 --> 00:12:22,700 very effective. When you say, for instance,
253 00:12:22,820 --> 00:12:24,960 as I just mentioned, we need
254 00:12:24,960 --> 00:12:26,540 what the World Health Organization
255 00:12:26,540 --> 00:12:28,860 called BMOCs, or Basic Emergency Obstetric
256 00:12:28,860 --> 00:12:30,700 and Newborn Care, in
257 00:12:30,700 --> 00:12:32,820 hospitals and get women into institutions
258 00:12:32,820 --> 00:12:34,720 to give birth, that doesn't sound
259 00:12:34,720 --> 00:12:36,680 very sexy. And it's just one thing.
260 00:12:37,240 --> 00:12:38,860 So you want to take a
261 00:12:38,860 --> 00:12:40,600 lot of boxes. You want to get a lot of news
262 00:12:40,600 --> 00:12:42,800 releases out. And so you end up doing
263 00:12:42,800 --> 00:12:44,720 a little bit of everything, just like
264 00:12:44,720 --> 00:12:46,520 the Sustainable Development Goals did.
265 00:12:46,880 --> 00:12:48,780 Right. And on the other
266 00:12:48,780 --> 00:12:50,800 end of the spectrum, are there things being
267 00:12:50,800 --> 00:12:53,060 done today that are expensive, but
268 00:12:53,060 --> 00:12:55,020 not very good, really, when you
269 00:12:55,020 --> 00:12:56,480 examine them?
270 00:12:56,760 --> 00:12:58,800 Oh, we do a lot of things that
271 00:12:58,800 --> 00:13:00,240 are just somewhat good.
272 00:13:00,600 --> 00:13:02,700 I'm sure we also do things that are really,
273 00:13:02,840 --> 00:13:04,900 really bad, but we don't look
274 00:13:04,900 --> 00:13:06,920 at those. So we typically look at the stuff
275 00:13:06,920 --> 00:13:08,380 that is, you know,
276 00:13:08,860 --> 00:13:10,700 reasonably good. So we find there's
277 00:13:10,700 --> 00:13:12,780 a lot of things you can do that deliver
278 00:13:12,780 --> 00:13:14,580 say, two, three, four
279 00:13:14,580 --> 00:13:16,740 kronas back in the crown. Now, that's a nice
280 00:13:16,740 --> 00:13:18,840 thing. And I'm glad we're
281 00:13:18,840 --> 00:13:20,820 doing that. One obvious thing
282 00:13:20,820 --> 00:13:22,680 that we've had a lot of conversations also with
283 00:13:22,680 --> 00:13:24,740 the Indians about is water
284 00:13:24,740 --> 00:13:26,460 and sanitation. So
285 00:13:26,460 --> 00:13:28,720 a lot of people will say this is one of the most
286 00:13:28,720 --> 00:13:30,780 important things to do, because obviously, if you
287 00:13:30,780 --> 00:13:32,440 don't have water, you
288 00:13:32,440 --> 00:13:34,620 die. But this, of course, is also
289 00:13:34,620 --> 00:13:36,500 why everybody who's alive in the world
290 00:13:36,500 --> 00:13:38,600 actually do have water. So
291 00:13:38,600 --> 00:13:40,720 when you talk about getting more water, it's
292 00:13:40,720 --> 00:13:42,740 much more about getting more convenient
293 00:13:42,740 --> 00:13:44,640 water. So this is
294 00:13:44,640 --> 00:13:46,660 and I'm not belittling this.
295 00:13:46,780 --> 00:13:48,660 It's very important to be able to
296 00:13:48,660 --> 00:13:50,720 get water because it means that especially
297 00:13:50,720 --> 00:13:52,800 women, especially girls
298 00:13:52,800 --> 00:13:54,820 don't have to walk a long way
299 00:13:54,820 --> 00:13:56,620 to carry this water back home
300 00:13:56,620 --> 00:13:58,840 so that mom and dad can use
301 00:13:58,840 --> 00:14:00,740 it. But again, if we
302 00:14:00,740 --> 00:14:02,560 look at the cost, especially if you
303 00:14:02,560 --> 00:14:04,820 look at sanitation, which ends up being
304 00:14:04,820 --> 00:14:06,560 very expensive, you want to keep it.
305 00:14:07,180 --> 00:14:08,560 You end up with
306 00:14:08,600 --> 00:14:10,480 a benefit cost ratios of about three.
307 00:14:10,640 --> 00:14:12,520 So for every krona spent, you'll do
308 00:14:12,520 --> 00:14:14,260 three kronas of good.
309 00:14:14,600 --> 00:14:16,820 And a lot of these are not done well.
310 00:14:17,300 --> 00:14:18,760 So you'll just
311 00:14:18,760 --> 00:14:20,820 dig a pit latrine to tell
312 00:14:20,820 --> 00:14:22,860 the authorities and maybe tell the Swedish
313 00:14:22,860 --> 00:14:24,600 authorities as well. Well, we've done
314 00:14:24,600 --> 00:14:26,720 something for sanitation, so you've got a check
315 00:14:26,720 --> 00:14:28,840 mark, but then it's never used because
316 00:14:28,840 --> 00:14:30,780 it smells terrible. It's
317 00:14:30,780 --> 00:14:31,860 not being emptied well
318 00:14:31,860 --> 00:14:34,720 frequently enough and so on. So there's a
319 00:14:34,720 --> 00:14:36,680 lot of ways that things don't do
320 00:14:36,680 --> 00:14:38,580 all that much good. Again, I'm
321 00:14:38,600 --> 00:14:40,540 not saying, you know, I'm glad
322 00:14:40,540 --> 00:14:42,520 we live in a world where there's also people who are
323 00:14:42,520 --> 00:14:44,480 doing this, but I'm simply saying when we don't
324 00:14:44,480 --> 00:14:46,700 have enough resources to do all good things,
325 00:14:47,160 --> 00:14:48,660 perhaps we should focus on doing
326 00:14:48,660 --> 00:14:50,440 the credibly good things first.
327 00:14:51,420 --> 00:14:52,540 How familiar are you with
328 00:14:52,540 --> 00:14:54,640 this policies of foreign aid in
329 00:14:54,640 --> 00:14:56,680 Sweden? I was wondering, are we doing
330 00:14:56,680 --> 00:14:57,420 good right now?
331 00:14:58,120 --> 00:15:00,540 I actually live in Sweden. I live in
332 00:15:00,540 --> 00:15:02,920 southern Sweden right on the other side of
333 00:15:02,920 --> 00:15:03,980 Copenhagen.
334 00:15:04,500 --> 00:15:06,120 So I know some of it.
335 00:15:07,060 --> 00:15:08,560 If you had the minister for
336 00:15:08,560 --> 00:15:10,520 foreign aid, Benny Mendoza, here in the studio,
337 00:15:10,840 --> 00:15:12,140 what would you give him for advice?
338 00:15:12,520 --> 00:15:14,060 I actually had
339 00:15:14,060 --> 00:15:16,540 the pleasure of
340 00:15:16,540 --> 00:15:18,540 meeting him last year and I
341 00:15:18,540 --> 00:15:20,600 gave him the book and he really
342 00:15:20,600 --> 00:15:22,780 liked the idea. But remember,
343 00:15:23,020 --> 00:15:24,080 he's also a politician.
344 00:15:25,040 --> 00:15:26,440 So you gave him the short version.
345 00:15:26,700 --> 00:15:28,460 I gave him both the short and
346 00:15:28,460 --> 00:15:30,580 the long version, but I'm pretty sure that
347 00:15:30,580 --> 00:15:32,220 the short version was more popular.
348 00:15:32,960 --> 00:15:34,620 Björn gave me one book and one
349 00:15:34,620 --> 00:15:36,500 small leaflet so even the politicians
350 00:15:36,500 --> 00:15:38,180 can read it. Exactly.
351 00:15:38,560 --> 00:15:40,780 Or at least they're more likely to get a
352 00:15:40,780 --> 00:15:42,840 glance of it. And he really
353 00:15:42,840 --> 00:15:44,720 likes the idea of doing effective
354 00:15:44,720 --> 00:15:46,540 policies. He
355 00:15:46,540 --> 00:15:48,600 very clearly instructed CETA
356 00:15:48,600 --> 00:15:50,840 to spend their money more
357 00:15:50,840 --> 00:15:52,840 effectively. But of course, there's
358 00:15:52,840 --> 00:15:54,740 also all these other pushes and we get
359 00:15:54,740 --> 00:15:56,380 this across both Europe and
360 00:15:56,380 --> 00:15:58,620 Canada and Australia
361 00:15:58,620 --> 00:16:00,800 and New Zealand. So pretty much all rich
362 00:16:00,800 --> 00:16:02,940 countries, unless you're Trump
363 00:16:02,940 --> 00:16:04,420 where you just destroy everything, right?
364 00:16:04,760 --> 00:16:06,540 But even in
365 00:16:06,540 --> 00:16:08,540 other countries like Norway,
366 00:16:08,560 --> 00:16:10,580 we also spend a lot of money
367 00:16:10,580 --> 00:16:12,560 on Ukraine. We spend a lot of money on
368 00:16:12,560 --> 00:16:14,600 refugees. So the
369 00:16:14,600 --> 00:16:16,500 money that actually go to poor
370 00:16:16,500 --> 00:16:18,180 people is somewhat restricted.
371 00:16:18,700 --> 00:16:20,420 And then within that
372 00:16:20,420 --> 00:16:22,600 we end up doing a lot of different things.
373 00:16:22,720 --> 00:16:23,680 And so I think
374 00:16:23,680 --> 00:16:26,540 Benjamin Dusser has his
375 00:16:26,540 --> 00:16:28,620 heart at the right place, but I'm not sure he
376 00:16:28,620 --> 00:16:30,480 has quite managed to
377 00:16:30,480 --> 00:16:32,620 sort of get all of this back in order.
378 00:16:32,780 --> 00:16:34,620 And again, this is why we're, that's one
379 00:16:34,620 --> 00:16:36,220 of the reasons why we're having this conversation.
380 00:16:36,220 --> 00:16:38,140 We need to make it more politically
381 00:16:38,560 --> 00:16:40,480 relatable, to not say, I want to do
382 00:16:40,480 --> 00:16:42,580 everything, but to say, I just
383 00:16:42,580 --> 00:16:44,400 want to do a few things really,
384 00:16:44,640 --> 00:16:46,420 really well. This problem
385 00:16:46,420 --> 00:16:48,480 with bad priorities and overreach, has
386 00:16:48,480 --> 00:16:50,420 it been better
387 00:16:50,420 --> 00:16:52,060 or worse during the time?
388 00:16:53,160 --> 00:16:54,460 So I think we've always
389 00:16:54,460 --> 00:16:55,880 had this problem. I mean, look,
390 00:16:56,420 --> 00:16:58,480 politicians and politics is
391 00:16:58,480 --> 00:17:00,320 not predominantly about doing good.
392 00:17:00,400 --> 00:17:02,340 It's about getting re-elected. And
393 00:17:02,340 --> 00:17:04,560 what gets you re-elected is not necessarily
394 00:17:04,560 --> 00:17:06,400 what works really well.
395 00:17:06,400 --> 00:17:08,339 That's true even in Sweden, but it's
396 00:17:08,560 --> 00:17:10,560 obviously much more true when we talk
397 00:17:10,560 --> 00:17:12,560 about development aid, because there's
398 00:17:12,560 --> 00:17:14,680 no obvious feedback. We don't know
399 00:17:14,680 --> 00:17:16,599 the people that Sida is helping
400 00:17:16,599 --> 00:17:18,000 because they're far, far away.
401 00:17:18,460 --> 00:17:20,740 So in a sense, we rely on stories
402 00:17:20,740 --> 00:17:22,440 from you and other journalists who
403 00:17:22,440 --> 00:17:24,700 tell us, oh, this was a really good thing
404 00:17:24,700 --> 00:17:26,500 because, you know, now this person
405 00:17:26,500 --> 00:17:28,500 or that person lives. Look, pretty
406 00:17:28,500 --> 00:17:30,540 much all the money that we spend will
407 00:17:30,540 --> 00:17:32,480 end up doing some good, which is
408 00:17:32,480 --> 00:17:34,580 great. I'm simply making the
409 00:17:34,580 --> 00:17:36,540 argument we should spend money where not
410 00:17:36,540 --> 00:17:38,380 only it'll do a little good, but it'll do an
411 00:17:38,380 --> 00:17:40,560 massive amount of good. And that
412 00:17:40,560 --> 00:17:42,520 is a much harder argument. So I
413 00:17:42,520 --> 00:17:44,480 think we've always been bad at doing this, and I think
414 00:17:44,480 --> 00:17:46,140 we constantly need someone like me
415 00:17:46,140 --> 00:17:48,540 to keep saying, let's do better.
416 00:17:49,080 --> 00:17:50,520 Can we always trust
417 00:17:50,520 --> 00:17:52,500 the cost-benefit analysis? I mean,
418 00:17:52,620 --> 00:17:54,640 the obvious objection would be
419 00:17:54,640 --> 00:17:56,060 that there are certain values
420 00:17:56,060 --> 00:17:58,620 that can't be measured in kronor
421 00:17:58,620 --> 00:18:00,440 or dollars, some
422 00:18:00,440 --> 00:18:02,640 humanitarian, as you know the argument.
423 00:18:03,200 --> 00:18:04,320 What do you think about that?
424 00:18:04,820 --> 00:18:06,520 So, first of all, this is an
425 00:18:06,520 --> 00:18:08,200 imprecise science, obviously.
426 00:18:08,380 --> 00:18:10,520 We don't know a lot of things. We don't
427 00:18:10,520 --> 00:18:12,460 know exactly what will
428 00:18:12,460 --> 00:18:14,380 be used and how it will be used.
429 00:18:14,700 --> 00:18:16,260 So, when I tell you that
430 00:18:16,260 --> 00:18:18,520 sanitation give you $3 back in
431 00:18:18,520 --> 00:18:20,420 the dollar or $3 kronors back in the kronor
432 00:18:20,420 --> 00:18:21,940 or, you know,
433 00:18:22,280 --> 00:18:24,400 maternal and newborn health gives
434 00:18:24,400 --> 00:18:26,460 us $87 kronors
435 00:18:26,460 --> 00:18:28,680 back in the kronor, it's a rough estimate.
436 00:18:29,100 --> 00:18:30,620 I would probably estimate
437 00:18:30,620 --> 00:18:32,100 it's right within a
438 00:18:32,100 --> 00:18:34,320 factor of two or something. But it's
439 00:18:34,320 --> 00:18:36,360 a pretty good estimate. But
440 00:18:36,360 --> 00:18:38,300 the other part of the question that you had
441 00:18:38,380 --> 00:18:40,260 was, are there things that are not in there? Absolutely.
442 00:18:40,600 --> 00:18:42,520 So, look, we take into account
443 00:18:42,520 --> 00:18:44,420 all the cost and all the
444 00:18:44,420 --> 00:18:46,280 benefits. So, this is not just a financial
445 00:18:46,280 --> 00:18:48,540 analysis. This is also about social
446 00:18:48,540 --> 00:18:50,320 and environmental costs. So,
447 00:18:50,460 --> 00:18:52,280 we try to take in all
448 00:18:52,280 --> 00:18:54,400 these costs. But remember, this is not
449 00:18:54,400 --> 00:18:56,360 the only thing that humanity wants.
450 00:18:56,460 --> 00:18:57,480 We also, for instance, want
451 00:18:57,480 --> 00:19:00,460 equality. Or we want, as
452 00:19:00,460 --> 00:19:02,400 you mentioned, human rights. These
453 00:19:02,400 --> 00:19:03,980 are things that are not in
454 00:19:03,980 --> 00:19:06,240 the cost-benefit
455 00:19:06,240 --> 00:19:08,300 analysis. So, in a sense, if you're
456 00:19:08,300 --> 00:19:10,320 well, we're the guys who give
457 00:19:10,320 --> 00:19:12,080 society a menu,
458 00:19:12,420 --> 00:19:13,900 but a menu with prices
459 00:19:13,900 --> 00:19:16,040 and sizes. We give you a sense of
460 00:19:16,040 --> 00:19:18,240 if you spend money here, you'll get this much
461 00:19:18,240 --> 00:19:20,080 good, and it'll cost you this much.
462 00:19:20,500 --> 00:19:22,300 But whether you want to do that
463 00:19:22,300 --> 00:19:24,200 is obviously a political question. This is
464 00:19:24,200 --> 00:19:26,260 not economists saying, that's
465 00:19:26,260 --> 00:19:28,020 how the world should be, but it's helping
466 00:19:28,020 --> 00:19:30,040 political politicians
467 00:19:30,040 --> 00:19:32,020 and voters to make
468 00:19:32,020 --> 00:19:34,100 better decisions. But again, you know,
469 00:19:34,120 --> 00:19:36,280 I would imagine that when we talk
470 00:19:36,280 --> 00:19:38,080 about equality, these
471 00:19:38,300 --> 00:19:40,020 policies that we're advocating are
472 00:19:40,020 --> 00:19:41,920 typically policies that help
473 00:19:41,920 --> 00:19:44,100 the very weakest, the very poorest.
474 00:19:44,580 --> 00:19:46,400 For instance, when we talk about tuberculosis,
475 00:19:46,900 --> 00:19:48,260 one of the reasons why
476 00:19:48,260 --> 00:19:49,820 tuberculosis has not been fixed
477 00:19:49,820 --> 00:19:52,180 is because it mostly hit very
478 00:19:52,180 --> 00:19:54,060 poor people. So, people in slum
479 00:19:54,060 --> 00:19:56,060 areas, people in prisons, people in
480 00:19:56,060 --> 00:19:58,220 migrant communities and mining, that
481 00:19:58,220 --> 00:20:00,080 kind of thing. People who are outside
482 00:20:00,080 --> 00:20:02,160 much of polite society.
483 00:20:02,660 --> 00:20:04,140 And so, they often don't vote
484 00:20:04,140 --> 00:20:05,780 and therefore, they don't get any
485 00:20:05,780 --> 00:20:08,180 healthcare. We can help
486 00:20:08,300 --> 00:20:10,080 deal with that. But that's exactly
487 00:20:10,080 --> 00:20:12,280 helping with equality as well.
488 00:20:12,380 --> 00:20:14,180 So, it's very likely that much of this
489 00:20:14,180 --> 00:20:15,840 overlaps, just like when we talk about
490 00:20:15,840 --> 00:20:18,340 maternal and newborn health. The moms
491 00:20:18,340 --> 00:20:20,300 who don't go to institutions, the
492 00:20:20,300 --> 00:20:22,260 moms whose kids die in
493 00:20:22,260 --> 00:20:24,200 their first 30 days, are very
494 00:20:24,200 --> 00:20:26,120 likely not the richest, but the
495 00:20:26,120 --> 00:20:28,160 poorest of the people. So again, I think
496 00:20:28,160 --> 00:20:30,000 a lot of these overlap, but
497 00:20:30,000 --> 00:20:32,240 it's not a precise overlap.
498 00:20:32,500 --> 00:20:33,880 So, yes, there are other things to
499 00:20:33,880 --> 00:20:35,820 look at. But again,
500 00:20:36,080 --> 00:20:38,280 when you're confronted with a policy,
501 00:20:38,300 --> 00:20:40,200 that does three kronors back
502 00:20:40,200 --> 00:20:42,260 and one that does 87
503 00:20:42,260 --> 00:20:44,320 kronors back, there's a lot
504 00:20:44,320 --> 00:20:45,920 to, you know, there's a lot of
505 00:20:45,920 --> 00:20:48,240 leeway
506 00:20:48,240 --> 00:20:50,300 to make sure that
507 00:20:50,300 --> 00:20:51,800 you do the very best.
508 00:20:52,920 --> 00:20:54,340 What are your hopes for the future?
509 00:20:54,480 --> 00:20:55,960 Are the politicians starting to
510 00:20:55,960 --> 00:20:58,220 get this? Are they more down your
511 00:20:58,220 --> 00:21:00,240 alley now than, say, 10 years ago?
512 00:21:00,960 --> 00:21:02,500 I think so. I mean, obviously
513 00:21:02,500 --> 00:21:04,100 10 years ago, or
514 00:21:04,100 --> 00:21:06,300 11 years ago, all the politicians
515 00:21:06,300 --> 00:21:08,120 decided, we're going to promise everything to
516 00:21:08,120 --> 00:21:10,160 everyone, which didn't work. And we knew
517 00:21:10,160 --> 00:21:12,140 already back then it wouldn't work. But I think
518 00:21:12,140 --> 00:21:14,160 a lot more people are realizing, oh
519 00:21:14,160 --> 00:21:16,320 wait, this doesn't work. You know, I
520 00:21:16,320 --> 00:21:18,300 think a lot of politicians were hoping, if
521 00:21:18,300 --> 00:21:19,980 we promise, you know, the stars,
522 00:21:20,480 --> 00:21:21,960 everyone will want to give more
523 00:21:21,960 --> 00:21:24,080 development aid. But of course, that's exactly
524 00:21:24,080 --> 00:21:26,160 the opposite of what happened. We've been
525 00:21:26,160 --> 00:21:28,060 very stingy for quite a while, and now
526 00:21:28,060 --> 00:21:30,020 with Trump, but also the
527 00:21:30,020 --> 00:21:31,800 UK, Germany, France,
528 00:21:32,200 --> 00:21:34,060 even Norway in some sense, and also
529 00:21:34,060 --> 00:21:35,640 Sweden, somewhat cutting.
530 00:21:36,260 --> 00:21:38,100 Often it's sort of below the surface,
531 00:21:38,120 --> 00:21:39,880 we're realizing
532 00:21:39,880 --> 00:21:42,120 we have to do better, because we have
533 00:21:42,120 --> 00:21:44,260 less and less resources. We really
534 00:21:44,260 --> 00:21:46,260 have to do the most good we can with every
535 00:21:46,260 --> 00:21:48,180 corona. So I think there's a lot more interest.
536 00:21:49,380 --> 00:21:49,820 Again,
537 00:21:50,140 --> 00:21:52,100 my hope is that we get better
538 00:21:52,100 --> 00:21:54,280 at doing this. I would love for us to just
539 00:21:54,280 --> 00:21:56,180 do the very most effective things.
540 00:21:56,380 --> 00:21:58,020 That'll never happen, because that's not how
541 00:21:58,020 --> 00:22:00,160 politics work. But if we can push people
542 00:22:00,160 --> 00:22:02,120 to spend smarter, that'd be great.
543 00:22:03,020 --> 00:22:04,340 Come 2030,
544 00:22:04,680 --> 00:22:06,160 and we get the result back and see
545 00:22:06,160 --> 00:22:07,900 that maybe just a fifth
546 00:22:08,120 --> 00:22:09,940 or a fourth of the goals has been met,
547 00:22:10,420 --> 00:22:12,440 what would be the effect of that,
548 00:22:12,520 --> 00:22:13,520 do you think? Would we be,
549 00:22:14,340 --> 00:22:15,080 what would you say?
550 00:22:15,800 --> 00:22:18,260 I forgot the word, but really sad about it?
551 00:22:18,620 --> 00:22:20,300 Okay, should we be happy or sad?
552 00:22:20,760 --> 00:22:22,300 So I think
553 00:22:22,300 --> 00:22:24,180 one of the things I've been
554 00:22:24,180 --> 00:22:26,420 constantly arguing, and I think there's a lot
555 00:22:26,420 --> 00:22:28,380 of good data for, is the world
556 00:22:28,380 --> 00:22:30,440 is mostly a place that
557 00:22:30,440 --> 00:22:32,340 gets better and better. We have a
558 00:22:32,340 --> 00:22:34,440 tendency, remember, when we read
559 00:22:34,440 --> 00:22:36,340 Svenska Dagbladet or any
560 00:22:36,340 --> 00:22:37,640 other news outlet in the world,
561 00:22:38,120 --> 00:22:40,440 you guys are put in the world
562 00:22:40,440 --> 00:22:42,420 to basically give us a collection of all
563 00:22:42,420 --> 00:22:44,520 the worst things that happened in the last 24 hours.
564 00:22:44,520 --> 00:22:45,800 That's my job. That's your job.
565 00:22:46,140 --> 00:22:48,500 And so we get a sense that everything
566 00:22:48,500 --> 00:22:50,380 is coming apart, but we often
567 00:22:50,380 --> 00:22:52,460 forget the long-term trends
568 00:22:52,460 --> 00:22:54,340 show us things are getting better
569 00:22:54,340 --> 00:22:56,480 and better. We have lifted way
570 00:22:56,480 --> 00:22:58,360 over a billion people out of poverty
571 00:22:58,360 --> 00:23:00,520 in the last 25 years.
572 00:23:00,920 --> 00:23:01,900 Actually, every
573 00:23:01,900 --> 00:23:04,540 day, every 24 hours,
574 00:23:05,020 --> 00:23:06,380 Svenska Dagbladet and every
575 00:23:06,380 --> 00:23:08,100 other newspaper in the world could have had it.
576 00:23:08,120 --> 00:23:10,580 That's their headline. 138,000
577 00:23:10,580 --> 00:23:12,460 people were lifted out of extreme
578 00:23:12,460 --> 00:23:14,120 poverty. Every day for 25 years.
579 00:23:14,420 --> 00:23:16,260 We don't hear this, but
580 00:23:16,260 --> 00:23:18,340 we need to remember. Overall,
581 00:23:18,980 --> 00:23:20,320 fewer people die,
582 00:23:20,460 --> 00:23:22,120 fewer kids die. We have
583 00:23:22,120 --> 00:23:24,440 much better education. We have
584 00:23:24,440 --> 00:23:26,240 much better opportunity in
585 00:23:26,240 --> 00:23:28,440 many different ways, and we've lifted, as I said,
586 00:23:28,580 --> 00:23:29,720 many people out of poverty.
587 00:23:30,520 --> 00:23:32,040 So, come 2030,
588 00:23:32,460 --> 00:23:34,080 mostly we'll be better off,
589 00:23:34,240 --> 00:23:36,300 but the real depressing outcome
590 00:23:36,300 --> 00:23:37,800 is we could have been
591 00:23:38,120 --> 00:23:39,940 even better off. We could have had even
592 00:23:39,940 --> 00:23:42,060 fewer kids dying. We could
593 00:23:42,060 --> 00:23:43,860 have even fewer people
594 00:23:43,860 --> 00:23:45,500 in extreme poverty and so on.
595 00:23:45,780 --> 00:23:48,000 The real losses, we could have
596 00:23:48,000 --> 00:23:49,960 done better. Of course, that means that
597 00:23:49,960 --> 00:23:51,880 by 2030, we should certainly
598 00:23:51,880 --> 00:23:53,940 make sure we don't make the same mistake
599 00:23:53,940 --> 00:23:55,880 and promise for 2045
600 00:23:55,880 --> 00:23:57,920 that we're going to do all these things again.
601 00:23:58,420 --> 00:23:59,380 But much more importantly,
602 00:24:00,440 --> 00:24:01,560 this is 2026.
603 00:24:02,000 --> 00:24:04,060 We should do an incredible amount of good
604 00:24:04,060 --> 00:24:05,980 this year and next year, not wait
605 00:24:05,980 --> 00:24:06,680 till 2030.
606 00:24:08,120 --> 00:24:10,220 Another question. Hasn't the progress slowed
607 00:24:10,220 --> 00:24:11,960 down a bit since about
608 00:24:11,960 --> 00:24:13,740 2020? Yes.
609 00:24:14,300 --> 00:24:15,080 And why is that?
610 00:24:15,400 --> 00:24:17,140 A lot of reasons.
611 00:24:18,660 --> 00:24:19,840 Much of the COVID
612 00:24:19,840 --> 00:24:22,080 problems
613 00:24:22,080 --> 00:24:23,700 hit the developing world a lot.
614 00:24:24,940 --> 00:24:26,100 We were very, very
615 00:24:26,100 --> 00:24:28,220 worried in the rich world, and we could afford
616 00:24:28,220 --> 00:24:29,660 to be that. So,
617 00:24:29,920 --> 00:24:32,120 a lot of countries, not Sweden, to its
618 00:24:32,120 --> 00:24:33,580 credit, but a lot of
619 00:24:33,580 --> 00:24:35,760 countries decided to shut down
620 00:24:35,760 --> 00:24:37,240 almost entirely
621 00:24:38,120 --> 00:24:39,640 in order to preserve and
622 00:24:39,640 --> 00:24:41,780 safeguard really old people,
623 00:24:42,100 --> 00:24:43,540 which is a conversation
624 00:24:43,540 --> 00:24:45,660 that has been ongoing without the right
625 00:24:45,660 --> 00:24:47,680 decision, but at least in a very rich
626 00:24:47,680 --> 00:24:49,340 country where you have lots of old people,
627 00:24:49,520 --> 00:24:51,960 that makes some sense. But unfortunately,
628 00:24:51,960 --> 00:24:54,080 most of the poor countries in the world
629 00:24:54,080 --> 00:24:55,940 have very few old people
630 00:24:55,940 --> 00:24:58,220 and don't and can't afford
631 00:24:58,220 --> 00:25:00,000 to shut down. Yet, they
632 00:25:00,000 --> 00:25:02,080 still shut down. They also shut down their
633 00:25:02,080 --> 00:25:04,020 schools. And that means
634 00:25:04,020 --> 00:25:06,200 that a lot of kids got behind.
635 00:25:06,520 --> 00:25:08,020 The World Bank actually estimates
636 00:25:08,020 --> 00:25:09,980 this will cost more than 1.2
637 00:25:09,980 --> 00:25:11,740 trillion dollars per year come
638 00:25:11,740 --> 00:25:13,880 2040 in the sense that school kids
639 00:25:13,880 --> 00:25:15,840 are going to be less well off. They're going
640 00:25:15,840 --> 00:25:17,880 to be less well educated. This is
641 00:25:17,880 --> 00:25:19,840 terrible, and we need to go back
642 00:25:19,840 --> 00:25:21,800 and try to redo that. And one of the
643 00:25:21,800 --> 00:25:23,720 things, of course, is, as we talk about,
644 00:25:24,120 --> 00:25:25,860 there are some very smart ways
645 00:25:25,860 --> 00:25:28,000 to dramatically increase the efficiency
646 00:25:28,000 --> 00:25:29,840 of school. We don't do that
647 00:25:29,840 --> 00:25:31,640 so much. It's about getting structured
648 00:25:31,640 --> 00:25:33,260 teacher plans, and it's about getting
649 00:25:33,260 --> 00:25:35,980 kids taught at their right level.
650 00:25:36,080 --> 00:25:37,780 So, each for individual level. You
651 00:25:37,780 --> 00:25:39,900 could do that, for instance, with a laptop with educational
652 00:25:39,900 --> 00:25:41,960 software. Sorry, a tablet with educational
653 00:25:41,960 --> 00:25:43,720 software. These are very
654 00:25:43,720 --> 00:25:45,760 simple things. We should go in and make
655 00:25:45,760 --> 00:25:47,680 sure we do much more of that. That's
656 00:25:47,680 --> 00:25:49,600 one way of getting the world
657 00:25:49,600 --> 00:25:51,560 out of the rut, so to speak.
658 00:25:51,740 --> 00:25:53,700 But look, we're not going to be able to manage all
659 00:25:53,700 --> 00:25:55,540 of it. Certainly, Sweden is not going to
660 00:25:55,540 --> 00:25:57,580 manage to do all of it. But if we
661 00:25:57,580 --> 00:25:59,680 start that conversation, so I'm
662 00:25:59,680 --> 00:26:01,500 actually here for the goalkeepers
663 00:26:01,500 --> 00:26:03,420 Bill Gates later today
664 00:26:03,420 --> 00:26:05,720 in Stockholm. And one of
665 00:26:05,720 --> 00:26:07,600 the things he's pushing for is exactly some of
666 00:26:07,600 --> 00:26:09,120 these incredibly effective things.
667 00:26:09,480 --> 00:26:11,280 And so, I would love us to
668 00:26:11,280 --> 00:26:13,440 do more on the really effective
669 00:26:13,440 --> 00:26:15,420 things. And I think Sweden could
670 00:26:15,420 --> 00:26:17,480 be a land
671 00:26:17,480 --> 00:26:19,520 country leading that
672 00:26:19,520 --> 00:26:21,520 charge in the world. We're not going to
673 00:26:21,520 --> 00:26:23,380 fix everything, but we are going to fix some of the
674 00:26:23,380 --> 00:26:25,520 most important things. And back
675 00:26:25,520 --> 00:26:27,120 to my original question. COVID
676 00:26:27,120 --> 00:26:28,800 was a major setback.
677 00:26:29,700 --> 00:26:33,180 You mentioned Bill Gates.
678 00:26:33,500 --> 00:26:35,480 In November last year, the world leaders met
679 00:26:35,480 --> 00:26:37,560 in Brazil for yet another climate
680 00:26:37,600 --> 00:26:38,800 summit.
681 00:26:39,480 --> 00:26:41,100 Prior to this summit, you wrote
682 00:26:41,100 --> 00:26:42,780 that world leaders
683 00:26:42,780 --> 00:26:45,500 ought to be listening more to Bill Gates.
684 00:26:46,060 --> 00:26:47,640 What was his message
685 00:26:47,640 --> 00:26:48,720 and why was he right?
686 00:26:50,280 --> 00:26:51,740 So, for a very long time
687 00:26:51,740 --> 00:26:53,440 we've been very worried about
688 00:26:53,440 --> 00:26:55,100 climate change. So, there's been this
689 00:26:55,100 --> 00:26:56,020 dominant
690 00:26:56,020 --> 00:26:59,340 sort of narrative that
691 00:26:59,340 --> 00:27:01,420 the world is ending unless we're going to
692 00:27:01,420 --> 00:27:03,340 do a lot against climate
693 00:27:03,340 --> 00:27:05,320 change. And that has never been
694 00:27:05,320 --> 00:27:07,220 true. Climate change is a real problem.
695 00:27:07,220 --> 00:27:09,100 It's a man-made problem. But it's not
696 00:27:09,100 --> 00:27:11,040 the end of the world. It's a problem
697 00:27:11,040 --> 00:27:13,440 along with many, many other problems
698 00:27:13,440 --> 00:27:15,340 we need to fix in the 21st century.
699 00:27:16,080 --> 00:27:17,340 And what Bill
700 00:27:17,340 --> 00:27:19,320 Gates said and what I thought was
701 00:27:19,320 --> 00:27:21,180 really incredibly clever way
702 00:27:21,180 --> 00:27:23,260 of putting it was, we should not
703 00:27:23,260 --> 00:27:24,960 be talking in Belem
704 00:27:24,960 --> 00:27:27,020 and Brazil or any other climate summit
705 00:27:27,020 --> 00:27:29,180 or really any other policy at all
706 00:27:29,180 --> 00:27:31,340 about targets. We shouldn't be talking
707 00:27:31,340 --> 00:27:32,880 about, oh, net zero by 2050
708 00:27:32,880 --> 00:27:35,240 or one and a half degrees or two
709 00:27:35,240 --> 00:27:36,880 degrees. We should be talking about
710 00:27:36,880 --> 00:27:39,240 what will be the impact
711 00:27:39,240 --> 00:27:41,140 on human welfare of
712 00:27:41,140 --> 00:27:43,200 all these policies. Because what that tells
713 00:27:43,200 --> 00:27:45,000 you is, what will be the
714 00:27:45,000 --> 00:27:47,140 actual outcome of all of these
715 00:27:47,140 --> 00:27:47,420 things.
716 00:27:50,710 --> 00:27:52,830 Danske Bank vet att företag
717 00:27:52,830 --> 00:27:54,750 har olika mål. I en värld som
718 00:27:54,750 --> 00:27:56,730 ständigt förändras hjälper vi
719 00:27:56,730 --> 00:27:58,950 ditt företag att navigera omvärlden
720 00:27:58,950 --> 00:28:00,730 från de minsta till de
721 00:28:00,730 --> 00:28:02,470 största. Vi ger företag
722 00:28:02,470 --> 00:28:04,730 finansiell rådgivning i Sverige och i
723 00:28:04,730 --> 00:28:06,450 resten av Norden. Vi är hela
724 00:28:06,450 --> 00:28:08,030 Nordens företagsbank.
725 00:28:08,570 --> 00:28:09,230 Danske Bank.
726 00:28:36,300 --> 00:28:38,060 Today it would have a tiny
727 00:28:38,060 --> 00:28:40,160 impact by 2050 and it would
728 00:28:40,160 --> 00:28:41,800 reduce temperatures probably if you run
729 00:28:41,840 --> 00:28:44,640 this in the UN climate model about 0.1
730 00:28:44,640 --> 00:28:46,160 degree by the end of the century.
731 00:28:46,300 --> 00:28:48,220 So you almost wouldn't be able
732 00:28:48,220 --> 00:28:50,000 to measure it. Spending
733 00:28:50,000 --> 00:28:52,000 that much money now in
734 00:28:52,000 --> 00:28:54,060 helping people very little in a hundred
735 00:28:54,060 --> 00:28:55,980 years is not a very good deal.
736 00:28:56,080 --> 00:28:58,040 We estimate the average payback
737 00:28:58,040 --> 00:28:59,960 on that is for every kronor you spend.
738 00:29:00,080 --> 00:29:01,820 You do about 17 euro
739 00:29:01,820 --> 00:29:04,040 of good, which is really a bad
740 00:29:04,040 --> 00:29:06,060 way. I mean, you could just have given the money away
741 00:29:06,060 --> 00:29:08,040 and you would have done, you know, seven times better.
742 00:29:08,400 --> 00:29:09,840 But the point here is
743 00:29:09,840 --> 00:29:11,820 that if you start saying, well,
744 00:29:11,840 --> 00:29:13,700 how can we help people better?
745 00:29:13,840 --> 00:29:15,400 How can we make human welfare better?
746 00:29:15,740 --> 00:29:17,520 If you think about a mom,
747 00:29:17,700 --> 00:29:19,360 a poor mom in a poor world
748 00:29:19,360 --> 00:29:21,360 who has her kids,
749 00:29:21,580 --> 00:29:23,760 they might die from easily curable infectious
750 00:29:23,760 --> 00:29:25,800 diseases tonight, from malaria for instance.
751 00:29:26,080 --> 00:29:27,700 They don't have enough food. They have
752 00:29:27,700 --> 00:29:29,800 terrible education. There are all these kinds of
753 00:29:29,800 --> 00:29:31,520 issues. Her primary
754 00:29:31,520 --> 00:29:33,680 priority is not for you and me
755 00:29:33,680 --> 00:29:36,020 to help reduce temperatures
756 00:29:36,020 --> 00:29:38,080 in a hundred years by 0.1
757 00:29:38,080 --> 00:29:39,880 degree. That's not her primary
758 00:29:39,880 --> 00:29:41,640 priority. It is obviously to fix
759 00:29:41,840 --> 00:29:43,960 malaria, fix tuberculosis, fix
760 00:29:43,960 --> 00:29:46,000 nutrition, fix education.
761 00:29:46,340 --> 00:29:47,700 These are the very simple things.
762 00:29:47,820 --> 00:29:49,780 And remember, if we do that,
763 00:29:50,240 --> 00:29:51,900 if we get people out
764 00:29:51,900 --> 00:29:53,420 of disease, out of hunger,
765 00:29:54,180 --> 00:29:55,860 into good education,
766 00:29:55,860 --> 00:29:58,040 out of poverty, not only
767 00:29:58,040 --> 00:29:59,900 will those be good things in and of
768 00:29:59,900 --> 00:30:01,600 themselves, it will also mean
769 00:30:01,600 --> 00:30:03,740 they will be much more resilient to
770 00:30:03,740 --> 00:30:05,520 anything climate will throw at them.
771 00:30:05,940 --> 00:30:07,880 So again, what Bill was really saying is
772 00:30:07,880 --> 00:30:09,940 if you stop doing,
773 00:30:10,600 --> 00:30:11,800 you know, thinking this is the end
774 00:30:11,800 --> 00:30:13,700 of the world, but start realizing, yeah,
775 00:30:13,760 --> 00:30:15,680 it's a problem, along with many other problems.
776 00:30:16,260 --> 00:30:18,100 What we're doing on climate
777 00:30:18,100 --> 00:30:19,680 will do comparatively
778 00:30:19,680 --> 00:30:21,840 little compared to all the
779 00:30:21,840 --> 00:30:23,940 other things we could do that would help much
780 00:30:23,940 --> 00:30:25,640 more now and of course
781 00:30:25,640 --> 00:30:27,800 also help much more in the future because if you
782 00:30:27,800 --> 00:30:29,520 take this mom's
783 00:30:29,520 --> 00:30:31,760 kids out of poverty and disease,
784 00:30:32,320 --> 00:30:33,900 they will grow up, get their
785 00:30:33,900 --> 00:30:35,860 own kids and be much better off
786 00:30:35,860 --> 00:30:37,820 and be much better able to make sure
787 00:30:37,820 --> 00:30:39,900 that their kids get even better off.
788 00:30:40,020 --> 00:30:41,320 So by 2100,
789 00:30:41,800 --> 00:30:43,700 they will live in a much better world.
790 00:30:44,040 --> 00:30:45,980 And that, I think, is one of the
791 00:30:45,980 --> 00:30:47,800 big teachings that we need to take away.
792 00:30:48,060 --> 00:30:49,900 We need to stop being so
793 00:30:49,900 --> 00:30:51,920 preoccupied with climate that
794 00:30:51,920 --> 00:30:53,780 we forget about all the other problems in the world.
795 00:30:53,780 --> 00:30:55,480 This does not mean, I mean, we're
796 00:30:55,480 --> 00:30:57,860 a smart civilization, we can walk and chew
797 00:30:57,860 --> 00:30:59,620 gum, we can do several things at once,
798 00:30:59,720 --> 00:31:01,800 but we should spend less
799 00:31:01,800 --> 00:31:03,600 money more smartly on climate
800 00:31:03,600 --> 00:31:05,840 and we should spend the money that we want
801 00:31:05,840 --> 00:31:08,000 to help the poor world much
802 00:31:08,000 --> 00:31:09,880 more smartly so we actually end up helping
803 00:31:09,880 --> 00:31:10,640 them a lot.
804 00:31:11,800 --> 00:31:13,800 And the same question again, the politicians
805 00:31:13,800 --> 00:31:15,920 that met in Brazil and will meet
806 00:31:15,920 --> 00:31:17,820 this year as well, have they
807 00:31:17,820 --> 00:31:20,060 started listening to Bill Gates
808 00:31:20,060 --> 00:31:20,620 and to you?
809 00:31:21,180 --> 00:31:22,760 Well, first of all, the people
810 00:31:22,760 --> 00:31:24,520 who are going to meet, who met
811 00:31:24,520 --> 00:31:26,580 in Belém and are going to meet in
812 00:31:26,580 --> 00:31:28,740 I think Turkey, or I can't quite figure out
813 00:31:28,740 --> 00:31:30,640 because there are two countries I wanted to run this,
814 00:31:31,180 --> 00:31:32,680 but yeah, they are going to meet in another
815 00:31:32,680 --> 00:31:34,780 nice place in a little year.
816 00:31:35,540 --> 00:31:36,580 They're all, obviously
817 00:31:36,580 --> 00:31:38,420 all climate people, so
818 00:31:38,420 --> 00:31:40,780 not surprising. Well, if you ask
819 00:31:40,780 --> 00:31:41,560 a climate person,
820 00:31:41,800 --> 00:31:43,360 what's the biggest problem? They'll obviously say
821 00:31:43,360 --> 00:31:45,460 climate. If you ask a health person, what's the biggest
822 00:31:45,460 --> 00:31:47,300 problem? They'll obviously say health.
823 00:31:47,820 --> 00:31:49,340 It's our job as
824 00:31:49,340 --> 00:31:51,420 voters and it's the politicians
825 00:31:51,420 --> 00:31:53,440 job as politicians to say
826 00:31:53,440 --> 00:31:55,600 okay, but I get that all of you want
827 00:31:55,600 --> 00:31:57,420 the money for yourself, but we
828 00:31:57,420 --> 00:31:59,500 have to make the hard calls of saying where do our
829 00:31:59,500 --> 00:32:01,240 money go to? So
830 00:32:01,240 --> 00:32:03,420 if you want to fix climate change,
831 00:32:03,780 --> 00:32:05,200 what you need to understand is
832 00:32:05,200 --> 00:32:07,660 this is not about virtue signaling
833 00:32:07,660 --> 00:32:08,920 in the rich world.
834 00:32:09,680 --> 00:32:11,480 Whatever the rich world does is
835 00:32:11,480 --> 00:32:13,280 a tiny bit in the
836 00:32:13,280 --> 00:32:15,220 21st century emissions. We're going to be about
837 00:32:15,220 --> 00:32:17,060 13%. Realistically,
838 00:32:17,320 --> 00:32:19,360 we can cut about 5
839 00:32:19,360 --> 00:32:21,360 of those percent by 2050.
840 00:32:22,040 --> 00:32:23,360 So we can do
841 00:32:23,360 --> 00:32:25,260 nothing. What really matters is
842 00:32:25,260 --> 00:32:27,120 can we get China, India,
843 00:32:27,460 --> 00:32:28,680 Africa, Brazil,
844 00:32:29,500 --> 00:32:31,340 Indonesia on board? And we
845 00:32:31,340 --> 00:32:33,420 can't unless we
846 00:32:33,420 --> 00:32:35,480 make green energy cheaper than fossil fuels.
847 00:32:35,780 --> 00:32:37,480 So what we really need to do
848 00:32:37,480 --> 00:32:39,240 is to focus on innovation
849 00:32:39,240 --> 00:32:40,700 in green energy.
850 00:32:41,480 --> 00:32:43,520 And just to give you one example, if we
851 00:32:43,520 --> 00:32:45,380 could make fourth generation nuclear or
852 00:32:45,380 --> 00:32:47,560 fusion, if we could
853 00:32:47,560 --> 00:32:48,360 make fusion work,
854 00:32:49,140 --> 00:32:51,160 if we could make it cheaper than fossil fuels,
855 00:32:51,580 --> 00:32:53,460 everyone would switch. You wouldn't
856 00:32:53,460 --> 00:32:55,500 have to have a conversation. You wouldn't have to
857 00:32:55,500 --> 00:32:57,520 meet at all these UN summits
858 00:32:57,520 --> 00:32:59,360 because the economics
859 00:32:59,360 --> 00:33:01,440 would have made it cheaper. That's
860 00:33:01,440 --> 00:33:03,620 the way you solve big problems, through innovation.
861 00:33:03,900 --> 00:33:05,420 And we have spent much, much
862 00:33:05,420 --> 00:33:07,600 less on innovation than what we promised.
863 00:33:07,880 --> 00:33:09,500 We've actually stayed pretty much at the
864 00:33:09,500 --> 00:33:11,440 same level for the last 20 years. We've
865 00:33:11,480 --> 00:33:13,380 gone down dramatically since the 1980s
866 00:33:13,380 --> 00:33:15,660 because we've been so focused
867 00:33:15,660 --> 00:33:17,460 on doing virtue signaling.
868 00:33:17,700 --> 00:33:19,620 So Swedish, Danish,
869 00:33:20,020 --> 00:33:21,320 pretty much all well-meaning
870 00:33:21,320 --> 00:33:23,560 rich world people will have put
871 00:33:23,560 --> 00:33:25,620 up lots of wind turbines and solar panels
872 00:33:25,620 --> 00:33:27,600 and say, see, rather
873 00:33:27,600 --> 00:33:29,700 than investing in green energy R&D,
874 00:33:29,860 --> 00:33:31,620 which is the way that you're actually going to
875 00:33:31,620 --> 00:33:32,360 get this solved.
876 00:33:33,160 --> 00:33:35,580 That's quite surprising because I thought
877 00:33:35,580 --> 00:33:37,360 that green innovation got
878 00:33:37,360 --> 00:33:39,520 all the funding it needed.
879 00:33:39,680 --> 00:33:41,320 But the numbers says
880 00:33:41,320 --> 00:33:41,640 otherwise.
881 00:33:41,900 --> 00:33:45,240 So what you have to remember is we spent a lot of money on stuff
882 00:33:45,240 --> 00:33:47,200 we know doesn't work. So the stuff
883 00:33:47,200 --> 00:33:49,300 that we actually have to have subsidies
884 00:33:49,300 --> 00:33:50,860 and have special regulations.
885 00:33:51,240 --> 00:33:53,140 So we spent a lot of money on existing
886 00:33:53,140 --> 00:33:55,140 wind turbines and existing solar
887 00:33:55,140 --> 00:33:57,160 panels. But the reality is we
888 00:33:57,160 --> 00:33:58,680 need to get much better
889 00:33:58,680 --> 00:34:01,320 that is much cheaper solar panels
890 00:34:01,320 --> 00:34:02,960 and wind turbines, but also
891 00:34:02,960 --> 00:34:04,880 lots and lots of batteries. We're not there
892 00:34:04,880 --> 00:34:07,200 anywhere close to there.
893 00:34:07,320 --> 00:34:09,040 We need to spend a lot more on
894 00:34:09,040 --> 00:34:11,020 fourth generation nuclear,
895 00:34:11,320 --> 00:34:13,280 fusion and all these other
896 00:34:13,280 --> 00:34:15,139 technologies that potentially could come
897 00:34:15,139 --> 00:34:16,739 through. But the point is
898 00:34:16,739 --> 00:34:18,980 research and development is
899 00:34:18,980 --> 00:34:21,179 incredibly cheap. And that's why we can
900 00:34:21,179 --> 00:34:23,300 spend it on pretty much all of these things.
901 00:34:23,300 --> 00:34:25,380 And we just have to have one or a few
902 00:34:25,380 --> 00:34:27,340 of these technologies come through. And those are
903 00:34:27,340 --> 00:34:29,179 the ones that will power the 21st century.
904 00:34:29,540 --> 00:34:31,420 So if you look at how much we've
905 00:34:31,420 --> 00:34:33,480 spent in percent of
906 00:34:33,480 --> 00:34:35,040 GDP, it's been
907 00:34:35,040 --> 00:34:36,120 it was about
908 00:34:36,120 --> 00:34:39,040 eight cents
909 00:34:39,040 --> 00:34:40,480 per $100.
910 00:34:41,320 --> 00:34:43,139 In the 1980s.
911 00:34:43,139 --> 00:34:44,920 And since then it's been about
912 00:34:44,920 --> 00:34:46,760 three to four cents. So it's
913 00:34:46,760 --> 00:34:48,760 halved, not increased.
914 00:34:49,000 --> 00:34:50,239 And in 2015
915 00:34:50,239 --> 00:34:52,699 at the Paris summit, there was another
916 00:34:52,699 --> 00:34:54,620 summit where Obama and
917 00:34:54,620 --> 00:34:55,760 Xi Jinping and
918 00:34:55,760 --> 00:34:58,720 the EU and many
919 00:34:58,720 --> 00:35:00,400 other people of goodwill
920 00:35:00,400 --> 00:35:02,460 actually said we had a tiny bit
921 00:35:02,460 --> 00:35:04,780 of influence in this.
922 00:35:05,080 --> 00:35:06,700 It was called the Breakthrough Initiative, where
923 00:35:06,700 --> 00:35:08,720 they actually promised to double spending
924 00:35:08,720 --> 00:35:10,880 in green energy R&D. And we didn't
925 00:35:10,880 --> 00:35:11,300 know such a thing.
926 00:35:11,320 --> 00:35:13,020 Again, because
927 00:35:13,020 --> 00:35:15,040 everybody focuses on building a new
928 00:35:15,040 --> 00:35:17,120 wind turbine farm rather than
929 00:35:17,120 --> 00:35:18,940 spending more on R&D. Because
930 00:35:18,940 --> 00:35:21,200 the first thing you can get on the news
931 00:35:21,200 --> 00:35:23,120 for and you can go and cut a
932 00:35:23,120 --> 00:35:25,200 ribbon and it looks like you're really doing something.
933 00:35:25,500 --> 00:35:26,920 Whereas the other one, that's just funding
934 00:35:26,920 --> 00:35:29,240 scientists to do their thing
935 00:35:29,240 --> 00:35:30,900 and maybe it won't work before
936 00:35:30,900 --> 00:35:33,080 in 20 years. But we
937 00:35:33,080 --> 00:35:34,880 know it's the only way they'll
938 00:35:34,880 --> 00:35:36,420 actually fix climate change.
939 00:35:37,060 --> 00:35:39,080 And the larger R&D investments
940 00:35:39,080 --> 00:35:40,980 in the 1980s, has they
941 00:35:40,980 --> 00:35:41,520 paid off?
942 00:35:42,520 --> 00:35:45,180 So, the reason why we did it in the 1980s
943 00:35:45,180 --> 00:35:47,060 was because of the second oil crisis.
944 00:35:47,340 --> 00:35:48,820 And everybody wanted to find
945 00:35:48,820 --> 00:35:50,160 something else than oil.
946 00:35:50,840 --> 00:35:52,920 One way you can say it paid
947 00:35:52,920 --> 00:35:54,500 off, but this is somewhat
948 00:35:54,500 --> 00:35:56,820 far down the line, was in the
949 00:35:56,820 --> 00:35:58,940 fracking revolution in the US in the early
950 00:35:58,940 --> 00:36:00,820 2000s. And remember
951 00:36:00,820 --> 00:36:03,020 what fracking did for the world was essentially
952 00:36:03,020 --> 00:36:04,600 a lot of people have very negative
953 00:36:04,600 --> 00:36:06,440 images of fracking.
954 00:36:06,700 --> 00:36:08,980 And there are real environmental problems
955 00:36:08,980 --> 00:36:10,600 with fracking, but fundamentally,
956 00:36:10,980 --> 00:36:12,900 fracking meant you can make gas
957 00:36:12,900 --> 00:36:14,860 much cheaper and that meant that the
958 00:36:14,860 --> 00:36:16,680 US switched massively
959 00:36:16,680 --> 00:36:18,260 from coal to gas.
960 00:36:18,460 --> 00:36:21,020 That by far has been the most important
961 00:36:21,020 --> 00:36:22,700 thing for reducing CO2
962 00:36:22,700 --> 00:36:24,860 because gas emits about half as much
963 00:36:24,860 --> 00:36:26,720 CO2 as does coal
964 00:36:26,720 --> 00:36:28,760 per unit of energy.
965 00:36:29,160 --> 00:36:31,040 So, it was really one of those
966 00:36:31,040 --> 00:36:32,540 things where you got cheaper
967 00:36:32,540 --> 00:36:35,060 and greener energy through innovation.
968 00:36:35,260 --> 00:36:36,780 It was not the intention back then.
969 00:36:36,860 --> 00:36:39,080 They wanted to find a different opportunity for oil
970 00:36:39,080 --> 00:36:40,840 and they wanted to get rid of
971 00:36:40,840 --> 00:36:42,740 the dependency on Saudi
972 00:36:42,740 --> 00:36:44,740 Arabia and the US clearly did
973 00:36:44,740 --> 00:36:46,760 that. Europe should have done the same
974 00:36:46,760 --> 00:36:48,800 thing. We should have made sure China did the same
975 00:36:48,800 --> 00:36:50,460 thing. That would have dramatically
976 00:36:50,460 --> 00:36:52,680 reduced emission. Now, this is not the
977 00:36:52,680 --> 00:36:53,880 full solution because obviously
978 00:36:53,880 --> 00:36:56,640 natural gas is still a fossil
979 00:36:56,640 --> 00:36:58,640 fuel and it still emits CO2, only much
980 00:36:58,640 --> 00:37:00,740 less. But it would have been a great
981 00:37:00,740 --> 00:37:02,980 bridge fuel to a greener
982 00:37:02,980 --> 00:37:04,860 future and most of the world, unfortunately,
983 00:37:05,060 --> 00:37:05,620 didn't do that.
984 00:37:06,640 --> 00:37:08,680 You mentioned earlier that climate change
985 00:37:08,680 --> 00:37:10,780 is one of the problems humanity is facing.
986 00:37:10,840 --> 00:37:12,820 Many would say that it's the
987 00:37:12,820 --> 00:37:13,920 problem, the greatest problem.
988 00:37:15,500 --> 00:37:16,360 What if
989 00:37:16,360 --> 00:37:18,660 the mean temperature would rise
990 00:37:18,660 --> 00:37:20,880 not two degrees, but maybe four or five degrees?
991 00:37:21,140 --> 00:37:23,080 Wouldn't that be a disaster
992 00:37:23,080 --> 00:37:23,580 for humanity?
993 00:37:24,600 --> 00:37:25,640 It would be a bigger
994 00:37:25,640 --> 00:37:28,320 challenge.
995 00:37:28,920 --> 00:37:30,360 Would it be manageable for us?
996 00:37:31,900 --> 00:37:32,860 I think
997 00:37:32,860 --> 00:37:34,440 so. Certainly, that's what the
998 00:37:34,440 --> 00:37:36,860 climate economics tell us, but it would
999 00:37:36,860 --> 00:37:38,040 definitely be a bigger problem.
1000 00:37:38,040 --> 00:37:40,120 Now, all studies show
1001 00:37:40,120 --> 00:37:42,140 that we're going to reach, by the end of the century,
1002 00:37:42,220 --> 00:37:43,900 about three degrees. And so I think
1003 00:37:43,900 --> 00:37:46,080 it's realistic to say, well, what is
1004 00:37:46,080 --> 00:37:47,180 the impact of three degrees?
1005 00:37:47,740 --> 00:37:49,960 Well, this is what climate economics
1006 00:37:49,960 --> 00:37:52,040 has been working on for a very
1007 00:37:52,040 --> 00:37:54,120 long time, for decades.
1008 00:37:54,860 --> 00:37:56,120 And what they find
1009 00:37:56,120 --> 00:37:57,940 is if you look at all the costs and
1010 00:37:57,940 --> 00:37:59,620 all the benefits, remember
1011 00:37:59,620 --> 00:38:02,000 when you have global warming, you get more heat
1012 00:38:02,000 --> 00:38:03,900 waves, but you also get fewer cold waves.
1013 00:38:04,060 --> 00:38:05,960 That means you get more people dying from heat,
1014 00:38:06,060 --> 00:38:08,000 but fewer people dying from cold. You need to include
1015 00:38:08,000 --> 00:38:09,980 all of these things. If you include
1016 00:38:09,980 --> 00:38:12,220 all of them, there's more disbenefits
1017 00:38:12,220 --> 00:38:14,020 and benefits. That's why it's
1018 00:38:14,020 --> 00:38:15,940 a problem. But what it turns
1019 00:38:15,940 --> 00:38:17,740 out is the net cost
1020 00:38:17,740 --> 00:38:19,900 is equivalent to losing somewhere
1021 00:38:19,900 --> 00:38:21,920 between two and three percent of GDP by
1022 00:38:21,920 --> 00:38:23,840 the end of the century. This is the
1023 00:38:23,840 --> 00:38:25,840 estimate of the only climate economist
1024 00:38:25,840 --> 00:38:27,680 to win the Nobel Prize, William Nordhaus,
1025 00:38:28,120 --> 00:38:29,900 and another one of the most quoted
1026 00:38:29,900 --> 00:38:31,520 climate economists in the world,
1027 00:38:31,900 --> 00:38:33,820 Richard Tull, two meta-studies
1028 00:38:33,820 --> 00:38:35,780 that try to take into account all
1029 00:38:35,780 --> 00:38:37,780 of the studies. Remember, you very often
1030 00:38:37,780 --> 00:38:39,800 hear the worst studies, because
1031 00:38:39,800 --> 00:38:41,680 it's a little bit like, you know, is egg
1032 00:38:41,680 --> 00:38:43,860 dangerous for you or not? Is coffee dangerous
1033 00:38:43,860 --> 00:38:45,860 for you? You don't hear the studies that don't say
1034 00:38:45,860 --> 00:38:47,680 they're dangerous. You hear the studies that say
1035 00:38:47,680 --> 00:38:49,760 they are dangerous. And so you hear the very
1036 00:38:49,760 --> 00:38:51,720 extreme scenarios. But if you
1037 00:38:51,720 --> 00:38:53,780 actually take the meta-study and take all
1038 00:38:53,780 --> 00:38:55,460 of the studies, and that's what they've done,
1039 00:38:55,740 --> 00:38:57,440 you come up with two to three percent.
1040 00:38:57,820 --> 00:38:59,180 Just to give you a sense of proportion,
1041 00:38:59,720 --> 00:39:01,780 the UN estimates that by the end of the century
1042 00:39:01,780 --> 00:39:03,640 the average person in the world will be
1043 00:39:03,640 --> 00:39:05,500 about 450 percent as rich
1044 00:39:05,500 --> 00:39:07,280 as he or she is today. So,
1045 00:39:07,500 --> 00:39:08,820 a much, much better world.
1046 00:39:09,800 --> 00:39:11,820 Because of climate change, it's going to
1047 00:39:11,820 --> 00:39:13,600 feel like he or she is
1048 00:39:13,600 --> 00:39:15,820 only 435
1049 00:39:15,820 --> 00:39:17,820 percent as rich. Now, that's a
1050 00:39:17,820 --> 00:39:19,840 problem. It's obviously a problem that
1051 00:39:19,840 --> 00:39:21,880 we didn't get to 450, but it's not
1052 00:39:21,880 --> 00:39:23,600 the end of the world. It's a slightly
1053 00:39:23,600 --> 00:39:25,880 less, much
1054 00:39:25,880 --> 00:39:28,000 better world. And that's why I'm saying
1055 00:39:28,000 --> 00:39:29,800 and that's why the science,
1056 00:39:29,920 --> 00:39:31,980 the climate science, sorry, climate economic science
1057 00:39:31,980 --> 00:39:33,840 shows very clearly, climate change
1058 00:39:33,840 --> 00:39:36,040 is a problem, but it's not by any
1059 00:39:36,040 --> 00:39:37,780 means the end of the world. And that's
1060 00:39:37,780 --> 00:39:39,680 incredibly important, because obviously if
1061 00:39:39,800 --> 00:39:42,120 climate was the only problem
1062 00:39:42,120 --> 00:39:43,560 in the world, then we should be spending,
1063 00:39:43,720 --> 00:39:45,920 sorry, was the main problem that's going to kill us all,
1064 00:39:45,920 --> 00:39:48,060 then obviously you should spend all of our
1065 00:39:48,060 --> 00:39:49,820 money on that, and you should just forget about
1066 00:39:49,820 --> 00:39:51,900 poverty and all the other things. But that's
1067 00:39:51,900 --> 00:39:53,760 just not what the numbers tell us.
1068 00:39:54,400 --> 00:39:55,940 But can't you make the argument, and I know
1069 00:39:55,940 --> 00:39:57,140 some people do, that
1070 00:39:57,140 --> 00:40:00,140 the uncertainty of climate change
1071 00:40:00,140 --> 00:40:01,900 are so big, and the risk
1072 00:40:01,900 --> 00:40:03,980 are so big, so it may cost a lot of
1073 00:40:03,980 --> 00:40:05,960 money, but it's a cheap insurance
1074 00:40:05,960 --> 00:40:07,700 for future generation.
1075 00:40:07,940 --> 00:40:09,500 What do you think about that? Well, I mean,
1076 00:40:09,800 --> 00:40:12,020 there are certainly a lot of people who make that argument.
1077 00:40:12,160 --> 00:40:13,820 There's several things wrong with that argument.
1078 00:40:13,940 --> 00:40:16,160 First of all, if you want
1079 00:40:16,160 --> 00:40:17,240 to buy real insurance
1080 00:40:17,240 --> 00:40:19,980 for the vast majority of
1081 00:40:19,980 --> 00:40:22,000 humanity, it's about getting them out
1082 00:40:22,000 --> 00:40:23,940 of poverty. Not only is that
1083 00:40:23,940 --> 00:40:25,940 great for all the other things that we
1084 00:40:25,940 --> 00:40:28,020 worry about, like disease and hunger and all these
1085 00:40:28,020 --> 00:40:29,980 things, but it also means that they're
1086 00:40:29,980 --> 00:40:31,460 much, much less
1087 00:40:31,460 --> 00:40:33,840 vulnerable to climate
1088 00:40:33,840 --> 00:40:36,000 disasters. If a hurricane
1089 00:40:36,000 --> 00:40:38,040 hits Florida, a few people die, and that's
1090 00:40:38,040 --> 00:40:39,640 it. If the same hurricane
1091 00:40:39,800 --> 00:40:41,880 hits Guatemala, it devastates
1092 00:40:41,880 --> 00:40:43,780 their economy, and thousands or even
1093 00:40:43,780 --> 00:40:45,240 tens of thousands of people die.
1094 00:40:45,820 --> 00:40:47,740 So the answer here is not
1095 00:40:47,740 --> 00:40:49,720 to try to make hurricanes
1096 00:40:49,720 --> 00:40:51,640 slightly less worse
1097 00:40:51,640 --> 00:40:53,760 by the end of the century. The answer, of course, is to
1098 00:40:53,760 --> 00:40:55,640 get Guatemalans out of poverty
1099 00:40:55,640 --> 00:40:58,160 first. Now, again, I sympathize
1100 00:40:58,160 --> 00:40:59,760 with the idea of saying, but we
1101 00:40:59,760 --> 00:41:01,760 should also make sure we do something good
1102 00:41:01,760 --> 00:41:03,700 for climate. So there's
1103 00:41:03,700 --> 00:41:05,560 two problems with this. First of all,
1104 00:41:05,640 --> 00:41:07,760 so far, for the last 30 years,
1105 00:41:08,020 --> 00:41:09,740 pretty much all that we've gotten from
1106 00:41:09,800 --> 00:41:11,940 climate policy is rich countries
1107 00:41:11,940 --> 00:41:13,840 virtue cycling a little bit.
1108 00:41:13,940 --> 00:41:15,880 We haven't cut very much. I mean, we've still
1109 00:41:15,880 --> 00:41:17,520 seen the biggest
1110 00:41:17,520 --> 00:41:20,060 amount of
1111 00:41:20,060 --> 00:41:22,020 emissions from fossil
1112 00:41:22,020 --> 00:41:23,980 fuels in the world was last year.
1113 00:41:24,220 --> 00:41:25,360 It keeps going up.
1114 00:41:25,880 --> 00:41:27,840 And the reality is that even
1115 00:41:27,840 --> 00:41:29,780 though we talk a lot about it, most
1116 00:41:29,780 --> 00:41:31,880 people, not surprisingly, because we would
1117 00:41:31,880 --> 00:41:33,700 do exactly the same thing as we were poor,
1118 00:41:34,080 --> 00:41:35,880 decide they'd rather not be poor
1119 00:41:35,880 --> 00:41:37,960 than cutting their carbon emissions.
1120 00:41:38,420 --> 00:41:39,440 So we have been
1121 00:41:39,800 --> 00:41:41,660 focusing on the wrong ways to fix
1122 00:41:41,660 --> 00:41:43,740 climate change. And I think it's very likely
1123 00:41:43,740 --> 00:41:45,520 that if we keep on doing these
1124 00:41:45,520 --> 00:41:47,720 poor policies, we're going
1125 00:41:47,720 --> 00:41:49,500 to see more people voting for
1126 00:41:49,500 --> 00:41:51,280 the likes of Donald Trump.
1127 00:41:51,680 --> 00:41:53,660 I don't agree with a lot
1128 00:41:53,660 --> 00:41:55,600 of the things that Donald Trump has done, but
1129 00:41:55,600 --> 00:41:57,540 I think we're seeing that also in a lot of
1130 00:41:57,540 --> 00:41:59,440 Europe, right-wing
1131 00:41:59,440 --> 00:42:01,700 populist parties that are essentially saying
1132 00:42:01,700 --> 00:42:03,340 enough. We don't want to pay for this.
1133 00:42:03,720 --> 00:42:05,660 And remember, these current climate
1134 00:42:05,660 --> 00:42:07,680 policies have to be endured for
1135 00:42:07,680 --> 00:42:09,720 decades on end. And most
1136 00:42:09,800 --> 00:42:11,920 likely, most of them will be
1137 00:42:11,920 --> 00:42:13,880 scrapped at one point or another.
1138 00:42:14,300 --> 00:42:15,780 So, instead, we
1139 00:42:15,780 --> 00:42:17,740 need to spend less, but spend
1140 00:42:17,740 --> 00:42:19,740 much smarter and dramatically increase
1141 00:42:19,740 --> 00:42:21,720 research and green energy
1142 00:42:21,720 --> 00:42:23,860 R&D, which would be much cheaper,
1143 00:42:24,000 --> 00:42:25,760 much more effective, and also leave
1144 00:42:25,760 --> 00:42:27,660 money for all the other problems we
1145 00:42:27,660 --> 00:42:29,400 should be fixing. Right.
1146 00:42:30,100 --> 00:42:31,760 Emissions is going up, that is true,
1147 00:42:31,900 --> 00:42:33,560 but it's in money countries,
1148 00:42:33,680 --> 00:42:35,480 they are going down, or they are not going up.
1149 00:42:35,640 --> 00:42:37,720 And still, we are getting more people, and we are getting
1150 00:42:37,720 --> 00:42:39,660 richer. So, per capita,
1151 00:42:39,800 --> 00:42:41,780 emissions are falling in some countries.
1152 00:42:42,040 --> 00:42:43,180 Isn't that a little bit good?
1153 00:42:43,840 --> 00:42:45,720 Absolutely. I mean, I'd rather live in a world
1154 00:42:45,720 --> 00:42:47,600 where we cut emissions than where we don't.
1155 00:42:48,160 --> 00:42:49,700 But there are real trade-offs, and that's
1156 00:42:49,700 --> 00:42:51,520 what we've spent the last, I don't know,
1157 00:42:51,620 --> 00:42:53,580 half hour, three quarters of an hour talking about.
1158 00:42:53,880 --> 00:42:55,300 Because we can't do it all.
1159 00:42:55,600 --> 00:42:57,420 So, we can decide we're going to spend
1160 00:42:57,420 --> 00:42:59,600 a significant part of our wealth on
1161 00:42:59,600 --> 00:43:01,760 cutting emissions. Now, in a rich
1162 00:43:01,760 --> 00:43:03,720 country like Sweden, you can decide to do
1163 00:43:03,720 --> 00:43:05,340 that, and you can get away with it, and you can
1164 00:43:05,340 --> 00:43:07,480 do this for a fairly long time.
1165 00:43:07,940 --> 00:43:09,780 But there are also powers that eventually
1166 00:43:09,800 --> 00:43:11,240 turn up and say,
1167 00:43:11,640 --> 00:43:13,900 especially when this hurts a lot of poor people,
1168 00:43:13,900 --> 00:43:15,860 because it will. Poor people in rich
1169 00:43:15,860 --> 00:43:18,160 countries, so poor people in Sweden, who feel
1170 00:43:18,160 --> 00:43:20,080 the struggle from having to pay
1171 00:43:20,080 --> 00:43:21,880 an expensive energy bill, who
1172 00:43:21,880 --> 00:43:24,120 can't fill their gas tank, so on.
1173 00:43:24,320 --> 00:43:25,880 Those are real issues, and
1174 00:43:25,880 --> 00:43:27,040 eventually that will turn up
1175 00:43:27,040 --> 00:43:29,780 at the ballot box.
1176 00:43:30,400 --> 00:43:32,040 But this is much, much
1177 00:43:32,040 --> 00:43:34,120 more important to realize. You can't
1178 00:43:34,120 --> 00:43:35,460 make India,
1179 00:43:36,060 --> 00:43:37,680 or Africa, or Indonesia
1180 00:43:37,680 --> 00:43:39,600 decide to say this. I mean,
1181 00:43:39,800 --> 00:43:42,100 it was somewhat underreported,
1182 00:43:42,140 --> 00:43:43,160 but I don't know if you noticed,
1183 00:43:43,560 --> 00:43:45,680 during the Brazil
1184 00:43:45,680 --> 00:43:48,000 leadership of the latest
1185 00:43:48,000 --> 00:43:49,020 climate conference,
1186 00:43:50,000 --> 00:43:52,060 Lula also announced that they were going to
1187 00:43:52,060 --> 00:43:54,140 drill a lot more off the coast
1188 00:43:54,140 --> 00:43:55,380 of the Amazon forest.
1189 00:43:55,980 --> 00:43:58,020 And, you know, they were sort of challenging him and saying,
1190 00:43:58,380 --> 00:43:59,640 but, Mr. President,
1191 00:43:59,860 --> 00:44:01,180 you're head of
1192 00:44:01,180 --> 00:44:04,260 the climate conference,
1193 00:44:04,420 --> 00:44:06,000 and you want everyone to cut. And he was like,
1194 00:44:06,360 --> 00:44:08,140 yeah, but we're a poor country, and we
1195 00:44:08,140 --> 00:44:09,720 also want to have more opportunity.
1196 00:44:09,800 --> 00:44:11,660 We want to get a lot more people out of poverty,
1197 00:44:11,940 --> 00:44:13,920 and that's just how it has to be. And that's,
1198 00:44:14,040 --> 00:44:15,860 of course, obvious. I mean, we've
1199 00:44:15,860 --> 00:44:17,880 recognized this, because if you and I live there,
1200 00:44:18,400 --> 00:44:19,720 especially if we were poor,
1201 00:44:20,080 --> 00:44:22,060 we would want our president
1202 00:44:22,060 --> 00:44:23,040 to do the same thing.
1203 00:44:24,260 --> 00:44:26,020 Most of climate politics are
1204 00:44:26,020 --> 00:44:28,080 ineffective and bad. Are there examples
1205 00:44:28,080 --> 00:44:29,960 of good policies that we
1206 00:44:29,960 --> 00:44:30,720 should do more of?
1207 00:44:31,840 --> 00:44:33,940 So, unfortunately, there has not
1208 00:44:33,940 --> 00:44:35,740 been very many. I mean, there was a big study
1209 00:44:35,740 --> 00:44:37,760 a couple years ago that looked at
1210 00:44:37,760 --> 00:44:39,780 4,000 climate policies,
1211 00:44:39,800 --> 00:44:41,800 and only 0.67%.
1212 00:44:43,140 --> 00:44:44,280 So, less than 1%
1213 00:44:44,280 --> 00:44:45,660 of them had measurable
1214 00:44:45,660 --> 00:44:47,920 impact. So, what that
1215 00:44:47,920 --> 00:44:49,820 tells you is, no, most of them
1216 00:44:49,820 --> 00:44:51,880 have just been really, really bad.
1217 00:44:52,920 --> 00:44:54,080 This doesn't mean
1218 00:44:54,080 --> 00:44:55,620 that...
1219 00:44:55,620 --> 00:44:57,520 I think
1220 00:44:57,520 --> 00:44:59,320 some of these things that we do
1221 00:44:59,320 --> 00:45:01,900 for other reasons, so for air pollution
1222 00:45:01,900 --> 00:45:03,980 reasons, for instance, getting rid of coal
1223 00:45:03,980 --> 00:45:05,740 is a great idea in much of the rich world,
1224 00:45:05,840 --> 00:45:07,800 not mainly because of climate change, but
1225 00:45:07,800 --> 00:45:09,740 because they pollute a lot, and because
1226 00:45:09,740 --> 00:45:11,900 we're rich, that is actually a really bad
1227 00:45:11,900 --> 00:45:13,400 idea, because they kill people
1228 00:45:13,400 --> 00:45:15,720 from air pollution. There's
1229 00:45:15,720 --> 00:45:17,340 also the argument of getting
1230 00:45:17,340 --> 00:45:20,080 more energy efficiency.
1231 00:45:20,340 --> 00:45:21,760 It's been good for many countries
1232 00:45:21,760 --> 00:45:23,860 who didn't go on the fracking
1233 00:45:23,860 --> 00:45:25,660 revolution, so are dependent
1234 00:45:25,660 --> 00:45:27,840 on having to import a lot of fossil fuels.
1235 00:45:28,080 --> 00:45:29,760 It's good, all things equal,
1236 00:45:30,080 --> 00:45:31,760 that you don't have to import as much
1237 00:45:31,760 --> 00:45:33,660 fossil fuels, so that you save
1238 00:45:33,660 --> 00:45:35,320 on energy. But
1239 00:45:35,320 --> 00:45:37,680 unfortunately, no, many of these policies
1240 00:45:37,680 --> 00:45:38,980 have just been, you know,
1241 00:45:38,980 --> 00:45:41,480 just breaking even, or worse
1242 00:45:41,480 --> 00:45:41,900 than that.
1243 00:45:42,460 --> 00:45:45,140 The plans for emission trading system
1244 00:45:45,140 --> 00:45:46,960 in the EU, is that a good idea?
1245 00:45:47,220 --> 00:45:49,100 So, it's certainly a better idea
1246 00:45:49,100 --> 00:45:50,600 than most of these other
1247 00:45:50,600 --> 00:45:52,520 tendencies that we want to
1248 00:45:52,520 --> 00:45:55,060 give subsidies, or that we
1249 00:45:55,060 --> 00:45:57,000 want to just determine how
1250 00:45:57,000 --> 00:45:58,560 to do this, because if you do it through
1251 00:45:58,560 --> 00:46:01,080 a trading system or a carbon tax,
1252 00:46:01,160 --> 00:46:02,660 which is essentially the
1253 00:46:02,660 --> 00:46:04,900 equivalent, you get a more efficient
1254 00:46:04,900 --> 00:46:06,980 allocation. So, any economist would say this
1255 00:46:06,980 --> 00:46:08,900 is an improvement, but
1256 00:46:08,980 --> 00:46:10,740 again, when you're going to say
1257 00:46:10,740 --> 00:46:12,620 by 2040, we want to cut
1258 00:46:12,620 --> 00:46:14,460 90% of our emissions,
1259 00:46:15,100 --> 00:46:16,920 that's just ludicrous. It's not
1260 00:46:16,920 --> 00:46:19,060 going to happen at current
1261 00:46:19,060 --> 00:46:21,080 technology. I mean, it may be that we find
1262 00:46:21,080 --> 00:46:22,900 technologies that are so efficient that we can
1263 00:46:22,900 --> 00:46:24,920 achieve this, but otherwise you're just
1264 00:46:24,920 --> 00:46:27,080 going to get wholesale voter
1265 00:46:27,080 --> 00:46:28,760 outrage, and you're going to get these
1266 00:46:28,760 --> 00:46:30,880 policies thrown out. That's part of the
1267 00:46:30,880 --> 00:46:33,000 reason why I'm saying, you know, we can promise
1268 00:46:33,000 --> 00:46:34,800 all these nice things, but once it starts
1269 00:46:34,800 --> 00:46:36,720 getting really, really expensive, voters
1270 00:46:36,720 --> 00:46:38,740 won't have it. And so, again, we
1271 00:46:38,740 --> 00:46:40,700 need to find a policy that actually
1272 00:46:40,700 --> 00:46:42,700 works in real life, and not just
1273 00:46:42,700 --> 00:46:44,680 one that makes especially green
1274 00:46:44,680 --> 00:46:46,160 voters feel good right now.
1275 00:46:47,180 --> 00:46:48,820 And these great promises that
1276 00:46:48,820 --> 00:46:50,600 are never going to be met
1277 00:46:50,600 --> 00:46:52,520 when it comes to
1278 00:46:52,520 --> 00:46:54,540 democracy and
1279 00:46:54,540 --> 00:46:56,780 what do you think about this political
1280 00:46:56,780 --> 00:46:58,780 system and so on, are there risks
1281 00:46:58,780 --> 00:47:00,300 and dangers that people are going
1282 00:47:00,300 --> 00:47:01,460 nah,
1283 00:47:02,320 --> 00:47:04,820 the promises are never met, so they are
1284 00:47:04,820 --> 00:47:06,920 losing faith in politics.
1285 00:47:07,060 --> 00:47:08,120 Oh, of course, I mean,
1286 00:47:08,740 --> 00:47:10,540 it's a bad idea to have
1287 00:47:10,540 --> 00:47:12,680 politicians promise stuff
1288 00:47:12,680 --> 00:47:14,260 that they're not actually going to achieve.
1289 00:47:14,720 --> 00:47:16,640 That was true when we talked about the sustainable
1290 00:47:16,640 --> 00:47:18,440 development goals, that's true about the climate
1291 00:47:18,440 --> 00:47:20,220 policies, but I think
1292 00:47:20,220 --> 00:47:22,300 whereas most
1293 00:47:22,300 --> 00:47:24,640 politicians probably knew that they
1294 00:47:24,640 --> 00:47:26,680 were just bragging with
1295 00:47:26,680 --> 00:47:28,700 the sustainable development goals
1296 00:47:28,700 --> 00:47:30,940 because they kind of knew, of course, we're not going to eradicate
1297 00:47:30,940 --> 00:47:33,100 poverty and eradicate hunger and eradicate
1298 00:47:33,100 --> 00:47:34,500 infectious disease,
1299 00:47:34,740 --> 00:47:36,760 that's just silly to make
1300 00:47:36,760 --> 00:47:38,300 these promises. What we should have promised,
1301 00:47:38,740 --> 00:47:40,580 like we did in the Millennium Development Goals,
1302 00:47:40,800 --> 00:47:42,880 to cut them by two-thirds or cut them by
1303 00:47:42,880 --> 00:47:44,820 half or something realistic, that
1304 00:47:44,820 --> 00:47:46,860 would have been sensible. The other thing
1305 00:47:46,860 --> 00:47:48,440 is just propaganda.
1306 00:47:49,160 --> 00:47:50,600 But I think on climate,
1307 00:47:51,020 --> 00:47:52,880 a lot of people have bought in, a lot of
1308 00:47:52,880 --> 00:47:54,820 politicians have bought in, this is the end of
1309 00:47:54,820 --> 00:47:56,720 the world, so we just have to do everything.
1310 00:47:57,120 --> 00:47:58,940 But of course, when it comes down to
1311 00:47:58,940 --> 00:48:00,500 it, for most people,
1312 00:48:00,900 --> 00:48:02,180 it is a problem,
1313 00:48:02,780 --> 00:48:04,660 but it's also a problem if I can't afford
1314 00:48:04,660 --> 00:48:05,260 to
1315 00:48:05,260 --> 00:48:08,720 fill up my gas tank,
1316 00:48:08,740 --> 00:48:10,120 and the car, or
1317 00:48:10,120 --> 00:48:12,720 afford to keep the whole house
1318 00:48:12,720 --> 00:48:14,700 heated. We know, for instance, in many countries,
1319 00:48:14,860 --> 00:48:16,440 probably not so much here in Sweden,
1320 00:48:16,860 --> 00:48:18,620 because we have a fairly equal
1321 00:48:18,620 --> 00:48:20,840 society, but in Britain, for instance,
1322 00:48:20,940 --> 00:48:22,980 about a third of all retirees,
1323 00:48:23,440 --> 00:48:24,200 they keep
1324 00:48:24,200 --> 00:48:26,880 parts of their house uncooled,
1325 00:48:27,080 --> 00:48:28,800 sorry, unheated in the
1326 00:48:28,800 --> 00:48:30,900 winter, because they just can't afford to.
1327 00:48:31,100 --> 00:48:32,640 And many of them stay in bed
1328 00:48:32,640 --> 00:48:34,720 longer in order to stay warm.
1329 00:48:34,980 --> 00:48:36,680 Those kinds of things are just, no,
1330 00:48:36,680 --> 00:48:38,540 that's not how a civilized,
1331 00:48:38,740 --> 00:48:40,860 developed country should be, and we need
1332 00:48:40,860 --> 00:48:43,260 to come to terms with saying, we shouldn't
1333 00:48:43,260 --> 00:48:44,900 offer everything on the altar
1334 00:48:44,900 --> 00:48:46,820 of climate change in order to do
1335 00:48:46,820 --> 00:48:48,980 ineffective policies. We should be focusing
1336 00:48:48,980 --> 00:48:51,040 on spending less money, much more effectively,
1337 00:48:51,240 --> 00:48:53,000 so we both fix climate and
1338 00:48:53,000 --> 00:48:54,160 fix all the other problems.
1339 00:48:56,520 --> 00:48:58,580 Vi på Danske Bank vet
1340 00:48:58,580 --> 00:49:00,320 att företag har olika mål.
1341 00:49:00,640 --> 00:49:02,620 I en värld som ständigt förändras
1342 00:49:02,620 --> 00:49:04,360 hjälper vi ditt företag att
1343 00:49:04,360 --> 00:49:06,320 navigera om världen, från de
1344 00:49:06,320 --> 00:49:07,780 minsta till de största.
1345 00:49:08,220 --> 00:49:10,280 Vi ger företag finansiell rådgivning,
1346 00:49:10,300 --> 00:49:12,220 i Sverige och i resten av Norden.
1347 00:49:12,500 --> 00:49:14,640 Vi är hela Nordens företagsbank.
1348 00:49:15,180 --> 00:49:15,820 Danske Bank.
1349 00:49:19,970 --> 00:49:21,710 A bit on that topic, you
1350 00:49:21,710 --> 00:49:23,670 argue in another of your pieces from
1351 00:49:23,670 --> 00:49:25,870 last year, that voters has grown tired
1352 00:49:25,870 --> 00:49:27,710 of politicians who compete
1353 00:49:27,710 --> 00:49:29,470 to scream the most and loudest about
1354 00:49:29,470 --> 00:49:31,850 imminent danger. And that's
1355 00:49:31,850 --> 00:49:33,110 a good thing, I reckon. Yes.
1356 00:49:33,610 --> 00:49:35,590 Yes, I mean, look, we gotta
1357 00:49:35,590 --> 00:49:37,870 stop scaring our kids witless.
1358 00:49:38,030 --> 00:49:39,430 As I mentioned, you know,
1359 00:49:39,650 --> 00:49:41,810 the fact that by the end of the century, the average
1360 00:49:41,810 --> 00:49:43,610 person will only be 430.
1361 00:49:43,630 --> 00:49:45,310 5% is rich rather than
1362 00:49:45,310 --> 00:49:47,650 450% should
1363 00:49:47,650 --> 00:49:49,650 mostly be celebrated. I mean, yes, it's
1364 00:49:49,650 --> 00:49:51,710 still a problem that we could have done even
1365 00:49:51,710 --> 00:49:53,550 better. And yes, there's a lot of things in
1366 00:49:53,550 --> 00:49:55,730 there. But this is not the end of
1367 00:49:55,730 --> 00:49:57,810 the world. Us scaring kids
1368 00:49:57,810 --> 00:49:59,650 witless has been a terrible
1369 00:49:59,650 --> 00:50:01,690 thing. It's led to a lot of
1370 00:50:01,690 --> 00:50:03,250 psychological problems. And
1371 00:50:03,250 --> 00:50:05,350 quite frankly, I understand a lot of kids
1372 00:50:05,350 --> 00:50:07,650 who've decided, no, I don't
1373 00:50:07,650 --> 00:50:09,390 want to go to school. I don't want to
1374 00:50:09,390 --> 00:50:11,670 get a kid. Those are
1375 00:50:11,670 --> 00:50:13,510 terrible outcomes if they're untrue. And
1376 00:50:13,510 --> 00:50:15,270 I think it's very, very obvious
1377 00:50:15,270 --> 00:50:17,230 that the data tells you these are
1378 00:50:17,230 --> 00:50:19,270 untrue. So when we get politicians
1379 00:50:19,270 --> 00:50:21,430 who scream a little less and
1380 00:50:21,430 --> 00:50:23,490 who start having a more sensible conversation,
1381 00:50:23,950 --> 00:50:25,270 yes, climate change is one
1382 00:50:25,270 --> 00:50:27,310 challenge that we need to fix. Let's fix
1383 00:50:27,310 --> 00:50:29,210 it smartly so we can also afford
1384 00:50:29,210 --> 00:50:31,290 all the other things. Remember, for most
1385 00:50:31,290 --> 00:50:33,130 Europeans, we've started
1386 00:50:33,130 --> 00:50:35,270 realizing, oh, we gotta pay a lot more for
1387 00:50:35,270 --> 00:50:37,190 our defense because there's actually real
1388 00:50:37,190 --> 00:50:39,310 problems in the world that could come and bite us
1389 00:50:39,310 --> 00:50:41,390 in the behind
1390 00:50:41,390 --> 00:50:43,090 in just a couple of years.
1391 00:50:43,510 --> 00:50:45,550 And there are lots of other problems
1392 00:50:45,550 --> 00:50:46,550 across the European
1393 00:50:46,550 --> 00:50:49,330 continent. We're not competitive enough.
1394 00:50:49,450 --> 00:50:51,370 We have very, very high energy prices, which is
1395 00:50:51,370 --> 00:50:53,390 one of the outcomes of climate policy.
1396 00:50:53,770 --> 00:50:55,410 And we have unfunded, not
1397 00:50:55,410 --> 00:50:57,030 here in Sweden, in the Nordics,
1398 00:50:57,370 --> 00:50:59,250 but in general, unfunded
1399 00:50:59,250 --> 00:51:01,110 pension systems that are going to erupt
1400 00:51:01,110 --> 00:51:03,250 really badly in just a couple of
1401 00:51:03,250 --> 00:51:05,290 decades. We have lots of other
1402 00:51:05,290 --> 00:51:07,130 problems. Let's not make ourselves
1403 00:51:07,130 --> 00:51:09,250 so weak for one thing that doesn't work,
1404 00:51:09,530 --> 00:51:11,330 namely the current climate policies,
1405 00:51:11,670 --> 00:51:13,310 that we can't actually fix all
1406 00:51:13,310 --> 00:51:15,170 these other things. So we can also, I don't know,
1407 00:51:15,230 --> 00:51:16,090 stand up to Trump.
1408 00:51:17,490 --> 00:51:19,310 Another question, maybe a bit of a side
1409 00:51:19,310 --> 00:51:21,390 note, but in Sweden, for a few years
1410 00:51:21,390 --> 00:51:22,730 ago, it was a very common message
1411 00:51:22,730 --> 00:51:24,530 from politicians
1412 00:51:24,530 --> 00:51:27,430 that you didn't
1413 00:51:27,430 --> 00:51:29,310 have to choose between economic growth and
1414 00:51:29,310 --> 00:51:31,310 climate transition because
1415 00:51:31,310 --> 00:51:33,030 they were walking hand in hand.
1416 00:51:33,490 --> 00:51:35,310 Actually, there was, green transition
1417 00:51:35,310 --> 00:51:37,250 was in itself a path to growth.
1418 00:51:37,810 --> 00:51:39,290 Was this never true, or
1419 00:51:39,290 --> 00:51:41,410 was it true? I don't think it was ever
1420 00:51:41,410 --> 00:51:43,290 true, but it's very obvious now that,
1421 00:51:43,310 --> 00:51:45,310 we can see, it's not true.
1422 00:51:45,770 --> 00:51:47,190 Obviously, if...
1423 00:51:47,190 --> 00:51:49,430 You recognize this? Yes. Oh, of
1424 00:51:49,430 --> 00:51:51,250 course. And the simple
1425 00:51:51,250 --> 00:51:53,410 point is, look, if green
1426 00:51:53,410 --> 00:51:54,630 was really cheaper,
1427 00:51:55,270 --> 00:51:56,870 everyone would just be doing it.
1428 00:51:57,050 --> 00:51:59,270 This is not a hard thing to
1429 00:51:59,270 --> 00:52:00,590 think about.
1430 00:52:01,070 --> 00:52:03,370 If getting on the green
1431 00:52:03,370 --> 00:52:05,350 wave was just something everyone wanted to do,
1432 00:52:05,610 --> 00:52:07,510 we didn't need to have any
1433 00:52:07,510 --> 00:52:09,410 climate summits. Everyone would
1434 00:52:09,410 --> 00:52:11,170 just be doing it. The reason
1435 00:52:11,170 --> 00:52:13,230 why we have to
1436 00:52:13,230 --> 00:52:15,370 twist each other's arms and our own arms
1437 00:52:15,370 --> 00:52:17,150 is, of course, that we're actually asking
1438 00:52:17,150 --> 00:52:19,250 people to do, I'm sorry, would you mind
1439 00:52:19,250 --> 00:52:21,350 having more expensive electricity, but at least
1440 00:52:21,350 --> 00:52:23,470 it'll not be, you can't
1441 00:52:23,470 --> 00:52:25,410 be confident that it'll be there when you need it.
1442 00:52:25,770 --> 00:52:27,170 That's just a terrible
1443 00:52:27,170 --> 00:52:29,070 argument. And, of course, you can
1444 00:52:29,070 --> 00:52:31,350 do this. Economists will always tell you
1445 00:52:31,350 --> 00:52:33,310 with enough money, you can do whatever
1446 00:52:33,310 --> 00:52:35,090 you want, but you just can't do everything.
1447 00:52:35,590 --> 00:52:37,030 And so, this costs real
1448 00:52:37,030 --> 00:52:39,190 resources, and that's, of course, why we're seeing
1449 00:52:39,190 --> 00:52:40,970 across the European continent
1450 00:52:40,970 --> 00:52:43,210 a lot of people saying, no, I don't want
1451 00:52:43,210 --> 00:52:45,030 to do this anymore. I think it's a
1452 00:52:45,030 --> 00:52:46,770 tragic outcome of
1453 00:52:46,770 --> 00:52:49,150 well-intentioned policy. So, I think
1454 00:52:49,150 --> 00:52:51,150 all of the green people who are arguing
1455 00:52:51,150 --> 00:52:52,970 we should do something about climate change, they're
1456 00:52:52,970 --> 00:52:54,970 well-intentioned. I mean, just like the people who are saying
1457 00:52:54,970 --> 00:52:56,970 we should do something about education in the developing
1458 00:52:56,970 --> 00:52:59,010 world, or the people who are saying we should get rid of
1459 00:52:59,010 --> 00:53:00,570 malaria, they're all
1460 00:53:00,570 --> 00:53:03,210 well-intentioned people. It just so happens
1461 00:53:03,210 --> 00:53:04,870 that the well-intentioned people
1462 00:53:04,870 --> 00:53:06,970 on climate change have been pushing a
1463 00:53:06,970 --> 00:53:08,350 policy that we knew
1464 00:53:08,350 --> 00:53:10,770 30 years ago wouldn't work, that we knew
1465 00:53:10,770 --> 00:53:12,810 20 or 10 years or 5 years ago
1466 00:53:13,210 --> 00:53:15,170 wouldn't work, and now most people can see
1467 00:53:15,170 --> 00:53:17,190 oh, well, yeah, it was really expensive
1468 00:53:17,190 --> 00:53:19,150 and didn't work very well, and
1469 00:53:19,150 --> 00:53:20,910 most people are going to say no to this.
1470 00:53:21,150 --> 00:53:23,110 So, let's find a smarter
1471 00:53:23,110 --> 00:53:25,210 and cheaper and more effective way
1472 00:53:25,210 --> 00:53:27,130 to deal with climate change, so we can do the
1473 00:53:27,130 --> 00:53:29,170 exact same thing that we talked about in the beginning of the
1474 00:53:29,170 --> 00:53:31,030 program, namely being smart and effective
1475 00:53:31,030 --> 00:53:33,170 on all the different things that we need to
1476 00:53:33,170 --> 00:53:35,230 worry about. Our time
1477 00:53:35,230 --> 00:53:36,930 is almost up, but
1478 00:53:36,930 --> 00:53:39,250 just a few questions more. Are you familiar
1479 00:53:39,250 --> 00:53:41,190 with the Swedish term åsiktskorridoren?
1480 00:53:41,430 --> 00:53:43,090 Oh, yes. I love
1481 00:53:43,090 --> 00:53:45,050 that term. I don't know how to translate
1482 00:53:45,050 --> 00:53:47,110 it, but it's a great term. I love
1483 00:53:47,110 --> 00:53:49,110 to sort of translate it when
1484 00:53:49,110 --> 00:53:50,970 I tell other people about Sweden. Has it been a real thing
1485 00:53:50,970 --> 00:53:52,650 when it comes to climate politics?
1486 00:53:53,230 --> 00:53:55,350 Well, certainly where I've
1487 00:53:55,350 --> 00:53:57,010 experienced it, I haven't been all that much
1488 00:53:57,010 --> 00:53:59,110 involved in Swedish politics, but this is all
1489 00:53:59,110 --> 00:54:00,990 over the place. Everybody has been for
1490 00:54:00,990 --> 00:54:02,950 a very long time saying, no, no, you
1491 00:54:02,950 --> 00:54:04,370 can't say anything, but
1492 00:54:04,370 --> 00:54:06,910 climate is the end of the world, and we need
1493 00:54:06,910 --> 00:54:09,010 to do everything about it. So, even though I've
1494 00:54:09,010 --> 00:54:10,990 never denied climate change,
1495 00:54:11,670 --> 00:54:12,930 I've always said, yes, it's a real
1496 00:54:12,930 --> 00:54:14,890 problem, it's a man-made problem, it's something that
1497 00:54:14,890 --> 00:54:16,970 we need to fix, but it's not the
1498 00:54:16,970 --> 00:54:18,770 only problem. Oh, wait, you're a terrible
1499 00:54:18,770 --> 00:54:20,710 person, right? I mean, this was literally
1500 00:54:20,710 --> 00:54:22,830 the reaction for a very long time.
1501 00:54:23,190 --> 00:54:24,730 It is no longer, and I think
1502 00:54:24,730 --> 00:54:26,590 part of this is because
1503 00:54:26,590 --> 00:54:28,570 we started realizing, oh, he's right,
1504 00:54:28,910 --> 00:54:30,890 but also because it has become much
1505 00:54:30,890 --> 00:54:32,790 more common, like Bill Gates and many
1506 00:54:32,790 --> 00:54:34,770 others, to say, wait a minute,
1507 00:54:35,250 --> 00:54:36,930 we actually also have other problems.
1508 00:54:36,930 --> 00:54:38,850 And I think the invasion of
1509 00:54:38,850 --> 00:54:40,890 Ukraine, COVID, have
1510 00:54:40,890 --> 00:54:42,410 also made it clear to people,
1511 00:54:42,930 --> 00:54:44,910 oh, wait, we were not, you know,
1512 00:54:45,090 --> 00:54:46,910 we had this idea back in
1513 00:54:46,910 --> 00:54:47,890 when the
1514 00:54:47,890 --> 00:54:51,070 wall fell, and
1515 00:54:51,070 --> 00:54:52,970 the whole world seemed to have all
1516 00:54:52,970 --> 00:54:54,910 come around, and had a sort of western
1517 00:54:54,910 --> 00:54:56,870 liberal democracy kind of thing.
1518 00:54:57,390 --> 00:54:59,050 We thought history had ended,
1519 00:54:59,350 --> 00:55:01,030 and, you know, we really just had this one
1520 00:55:01,030 --> 00:55:02,910 problem, we need to fix climate change. Sure,
1521 00:55:03,070 --> 00:55:05,030 it's going to be expensive, but we can afford
1522 00:55:05,030 --> 00:55:06,730 it, and it's really the only thing we need to fix.
1523 00:55:07,310 --> 00:55:08,930 Now, everyone realizes, oh, wait,
1524 00:55:09,010 --> 00:55:11,050 there's a lot of other issues, you know,
1525 00:55:11,510 --> 00:55:12,290 pension reforms,
1526 00:55:12,930 --> 00:55:15,230 defense, the fact that we
1527 00:55:15,230 --> 00:55:17,110 have so many other
1528 00:55:17,110 --> 00:55:19,070 problems in the world that we need to
1529 00:55:19,070 --> 00:55:21,150 tackle, make it much clearer to
1530 00:55:21,150 --> 00:55:23,090 most people, we have to be really
1531 00:55:23,090 --> 00:55:24,350 careful how we spend our money.
1532 00:55:25,010 --> 00:55:26,870 So you and people who
1533 00:55:26,870 --> 00:55:28,870 think like you, you're the winners,
1534 00:55:29,070 --> 00:55:30,330 you're starting to win now?
1535 00:55:31,550 --> 00:55:32,850 Can you put it like that?
1536 00:55:32,970 --> 00:55:34,830 No, I don't think that's the right way to think
1537 00:55:34,830 --> 00:55:37,050 about it. It's much more that I think
1538 00:55:37,050 --> 00:55:39,210 most people were
1539 00:55:39,210 --> 00:55:40,050 in a
1540 00:55:40,050 --> 00:55:42,750 sort of idealistic
1541 00:55:42,930 --> 00:55:45,110 scenario for some decades
1542 00:55:45,110 --> 00:55:47,210 and believing, oh, we can do all good things.
1543 00:55:47,510 --> 00:55:49,430 And we're all coming back to reality.
1544 00:55:49,570 --> 00:55:51,130 I'm glad that we're all doing
1545 00:55:51,130 --> 00:55:53,130 that. So I think it's more sort of welcome
1546 00:55:53,130 --> 00:55:55,250 back to reality. Now let's try to think
1547 00:55:55,250 --> 00:55:57,350 about this smartly instead of just
1548 00:55:57,350 --> 00:55:59,350 ideologically. Let's do this
1549 00:55:59,350 --> 00:56:01,050 in a cost-effective
1550 00:56:01,050 --> 00:56:03,290 way rather than just wasting lots
1551 00:56:03,290 --> 00:56:05,190 of resources on doing almost no good.
1552 00:56:05,970 --> 00:56:06,910 Looking back
1553 00:56:06,910 --> 00:56:08,910 at the history of the
1554 00:56:08,910 --> 00:56:11,110 debate on climate, are there any topics
1555 00:56:11,110 --> 00:56:12,910 where you personally have changed your
1556 00:56:12,930 --> 00:56:13,410 position?
1557 00:56:15,670 --> 00:56:17,050 Not on climate.
1558 00:56:17,250 --> 00:56:18,090 No, I mean, so
1559 00:56:18,090 --> 00:56:20,890 I've always tried to look at the
1560 00:56:20,890 --> 00:56:22,930 latest evidence. So one
1561 00:56:22,930 --> 00:56:23,610 of the things that
1562 00:56:23,610 --> 00:56:26,870 no, I'm going to give you an
1563 00:56:26,870 --> 00:56:28,850 example that just shows you I was more right.
1564 00:56:28,910 --> 00:56:30,470 So that's not a very good answer.
1565 00:56:31,510 --> 00:56:33,030 So I think the fundamental
1566 00:56:33,030 --> 00:56:34,750 point has always been that
1567 00:56:34,750 --> 00:56:36,850 yes, there is a climate problem, but
1568 00:56:36,850 --> 00:56:38,630 no, it's not going to be the end of the world.
1569 00:56:38,730 --> 00:56:40,550 And that's been my sort of basic argument.
1570 00:56:40,990 --> 00:56:42,870 And most of the climate policies that
1571 00:56:42,870 --> 00:56:44,650 we can act will have fairly
1572 00:56:44,650 --> 00:56:46,690 high cost, but deliver very little
1573 00:56:46,690 --> 00:56:48,730 only in 100 years. Those are simple
1574 00:56:48,730 --> 00:56:50,670 basic outcomes of the way
1575 00:56:50,670 --> 00:56:52,730 the climate works. And I think that's also
1576 00:56:52,730 --> 00:56:54,790 why this has not
1577 00:56:54,790 --> 00:56:56,630 been challenged in 20 or 30
1578 00:56:56,630 --> 00:56:58,670 years, because this was what the climate
1579 00:56:58,670 --> 00:57:00,490 economists, I mean, William Nordhaus, who
1580 00:57:00,490 --> 00:57:02,810 got
1581 00:57:02,810 --> 00:57:04,290 the Nobel Prize in climate economics,
1582 00:57:04,630 --> 00:57:06,910 he built the first models back in the
1583 00:57:06,910 --> 00:57:08,470 early 80s,
1584 00:57:08,510 --> 00:57:10,810 1980s. And this was what the model
1585 00:57:10,810 --> 00:57:12,370 showed back then. And we knew this.
1586 00:57:12,370 --> 00:57:14,250 So I think much more know we were
1587 00:57:14,250 --> 00:57:16,290 just in slightly la-la land
1588 00:57:16,290 --> 00:57:18,190 for 30 years, and now we've come back
1589 00:57:18,190 --> 00:57:20,270 to reality. Welcome back
1590 00:57:20,270 --> 00:57:22,370 from la-la land. We covered
1591 00:57:22,370 --> 00:57:24,130 quite a few topics, obviously
1592 00:57:24,130 --> 00:57:26,090 not all of them. Are there anything
1593 00:57:26,090 --> 00:57:27,430 specific you would like to add
1594 00:57:27,430 --> 00:57:29,990 to the list as to
1595 00:57:29,990 --> 00:57:31,890 summarize or anything extra?
1596 00:57:32,490 --> 00:57:34,030 So I think we
1597 00:57:34,030 --> 00:57:36,170 end up, and I love the
1598 00:57:36,170 --> 00:57:38,030 fact that we talk so much about the
1599 00:57:38,030 --> 00:57:40,130 poor part of the world in
1600 00:57:40,130 --> 00:57:42,190 this podcast, but we always end up, because
1601 00:57:42,190 --> 00:57:44,170 we live in the rich world, we end up talking
1602 00:57:44,170 --> 00:57:45,750 about climate change, because that's what
1603 00:57:45,750 --> 00:57:48,090 takes up a lot more space
1604 00:57:48,090 --> 00:57:50,210 in a rich
1605 00:57:50,210 --> 00:57:52,270 world setting. But I think it is important
1606 00:57:52,270 --> 00:57:53,810 to recognize that
1607 00:57:53,810 --> 00:57:56,210 about half this world's population, so
1608 00:57:56,210 --> 00:57:58,330 about 4 billion people, live
1609 00:57:58,330 --> 00:57:59,970 in low and low and middle income countries
1610 00:57:59,970 --> 00:58:02,010 where the world is just
1611 00:58:02,010 --> 00:58:04,290 unrecognizable to the
1612 00:58:04,290 --> 00:58:06,170 immense luxury we live in.
1613 00:58:06,990 --> 00:58:08,350 And so it is
1614 00:58:08,350 --> 00:58:10,410 worth sometimes taking a step
1615 00:58:10,410 --> 00:58:12,170 back and realizing, oh my
1616 00:58:12,190 --> 00:58:13,450 God, we have it well.
1617 00:58:14,170 --> 00:58:16,090 Our lives are good. And
1618 00:58:16,090 --> 00:58:18,250 while it's great that we are all so worried
1619 00:58:18,250 --> 00:58:19,930 about climate change and all these other things,
1620 00:58:20,270 --> 00:58:21,990 let's just remember that there are
1621 00:58:21,990 --> 00:58:24,090 really, really big and very
1622 00:58:24,090 --> 00:58:26,250 basic problems for the majority
1623 00:58:26,250 --> 00:58:28,310 of humanity. And these are problems
1624 00:58:28,310 --> 00:58:30,390 that we can solve at very, very low cost.
1625 00:58:30,650 --> 00:58:32,230 So I encourage you to
1626 00:58:32,230 --> 00:58:33,610 go to our website,
1627 00:58:33,750 --> 00:58:36,090 CopenhagenConsensus.com. You can actually download
1628 00:58:36,090 --> 00:58:37,850 that one pager so
1629 00:58:37,850 --> 00:58:40,110 you can see what the 12 solutions are.
1630 00:58:40,450 --> 00:58:41,950 And it's incredibly
1631 00:58:41,950 --> 00:58:43,990 cheap. And what I would hope is
1632 00:58:43,990 --> 00:58:45,450 that we can push our politicians
1633 00:58:45,450 --> 00:58:47,610 to do a little more
1634 00:58:47,610 --> 00:58:49,890 to make this world a much,
1635 00:58:49,990 --> 00:58:51,950 much better place, especially for the people who
1636 00:58:51,950 --> 00:58:54,090 are not at all where we are.
1637 00:58:54,570 --> 00:58:55,970 Thank you for that summary
1638 00:58:55,970 --> 00:58:57,950 and thank you so much for joining me today,
1639 00:58:58,050 --> 00:58:58,470 Björn Lomborg.
1640 00:58:59,490 --> 00:59:01,810 Stort tack också förstås till er som har
1641 00:59:01,810 --> 00:59:04,050 lyssnat. Och stort tack för att ni stod ut
1642 00:59:04,050 --> 00:59:05,230 med min engelska också.
1643 00:59:06,110 --> 00:59:08,070 Det ni har lyssnat på, det är Leda-redaktionen,
1644 00:59:08,370 --> 00:59:09,890 en podd från Svenska Dagbladet.
1645 00:59:10,470 --> 00:59:11,930 Som vanligt är ni varmt välkomna att höra av er.
1646 00:59:11,950 --> 00:59:13,750 Vi har varit hos oss på redaktionen med tankar
1647 00:59:13,750 --> 00:59:15,670 och synpunkter på det vi har precis diskuterat.
1648 00:59:16,250 --> 00:59:17,250 Antalet finns en hel del
1649 00:59:17,250 --> 00:59:19,790 tankar efter Björns utläggningar.
1650 00:59:20,410 --> 00:59:21,810 Men också om ni har idéer och förslag på
1651 00:59:21,810 --> 00:59:23,310 ämnen vi ska ta upp i framtiden.
1652 00:59:23,750 --> 00:59:25,290 Maila då till ledarsidan
1653 00:59:25,290 --> 00:59:27,310 snabla.svd.se.
1654 00:59:27,630 --> 00:59:29,710 Dagens producent, han heter Jesper Sandström,
1655 00:59:29,890 --> 00:59:32,010 ansvarig utgivare är Lisa Erenius.
1656 00:59:32,310 --> 00:59:33,490 Själv heter jag Andreas Eriksson
1657 00:59:33,490 --> 00:59:35,150 och jag hoppas att vi hörs snart igen.
Källinformation
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Skapad: 14 april 2026