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 --> 00:08:16,860 ...that have the least 15 kronors of wealth or of social good back on every krona.
136 00:08:16,940 --> 00:08:19,300 That's a fantastic payback.
137 00:08:19,420 --> 00:08:21,520 Remember, this is not something you can get rich of.
138 00:08:21,620 --> 00:08:23,880 This is not mostly financial benefits.
139 00:08:24,060 --> 00:08:30,540 So we both look at the financial benefits, but we also look at the environmental benefits and the social benefits.
140 00:08:30,660 --> 00:08:31,740 People not dying, for instance.
141 00:08:32,380 --> 00:08:35,539 But those are the very, very best things we could do.
142 00:08:35,580 --> 00:08:38,340 And we identified 12 of these things.
143 00:08:38,340 --> 00:08:40,820 So just let me give you a few examples.
144 00:08:40,840 --> 00:08:43,340 From the book and from the analysis.
145 00:08:43,820 --> 00:08:50,120 It tells you, for instance, we could do an enormous amount of good for maternal and newborn health.
146 00:08:50,480 --> 00:08:53,840 So one of the things we don't think about here in the rich world is...
147 00:08:54,540 --> 00:09:00,300 ...the most dangerous day in a woman's life in most of the world is the day she gives birth.
148 00:09:00,940 --> 00:09:02,140 That's just crazy.
149 00:09:02,260 --> 00:09:07,280 I mean, it used to be like that here, but it's no longer because we know how to deal with this.
150 00:09:07,540 --> 00:09:08,280 How do you fix it?
151 00:09:08,280 --> 00:09:10,580 Well, we actually have a very cheap way.
152 00:09:10,580 --> 00:09:21,040 You need to get the woman into a facility because, you know, if most births go fine, but if they go wrong, they often go dramatically wrong.
153 00:09:21,320 --> 00:09:24,080 And so you need to be in an institution so you can handle this.
154 00:09:24,600 --> 00:09:29,840 And if you are there, you also need to have very simple things like clean water, antiseptics.
155 00:09:30,220 --> 00:09:33,100 You need to have a resuscitator if the child can't breathe.
156 00:09:33,100 --> 00:09:40,200 It actually turns out that even here in Europe, about 5% of all kids don't breathe and they need positive air pressure.
157 00:09:40,200 --> 00:09:43,160 You know, a little balloon, essentially, into their lungs.
158 00:09:43,280 --> 00:09:46,740 It's a very simple procedure, but if you don't have it, the kid will die.
159 00:09:47,180 --> 00:09:54,920 What we find is, this is a very simple thing, a very cheap thing to do, too, that the World Health Organization estimates everyone should do.
160 00:09:55,200 --> 00:10:03,440 If we could go from about two-thirds of all women going into institutions to 90%, and these institutions were slightly better equipped.
161 00:10:03,500 --> 00:10:08,040 We're not talking about fancy hospitals, we're just talking about slightly better.
162 00:10:08,380 --> 00:10:10,040 We estimate for about 3%.
163 00:10:10,200 --> 00:10:16,760 So, not nothing, not something you or I have, but, you know, a very small amount of money in the international setting.
164 00:10:17,260 --> 00:10:24,000 For $3 billion a year, we could save 166,000 moms from dying each year.
165 00:10:24,080 --> 00:10:26,480 That's more than half of all the moms who die every year.
166 00:10:26,860 --> 00:10:30,020 And we could save 1.2 million kids.
167 00:10:30,480 --> 00:10:32,460 This is just one of the best things we could do.
168 00:10:32,620 --> 00:10:34,080 We estimate for every krona spent.
169 00:10:34,480 --> 00:10:36,840 You could do 87 kronas worth of good.
170 00:10:37,000 --> 00:10:39,480 And this is just one of these 12 things.
171 00:10:39,880 --> 00:10:40,180 You know, so...
172 00:10:40,200 --> 00:10:49,840 We look at education, for instance, where you can do very simple and effective things that, for fairly little money, deliver much better educated kids.
173 00:10:50,320 --> 00:10:51,840 We can perhaps talk about that.
174 00:10:51,840 --> 00:10:57,220 We can talk about tuberculosis, malaria, obvious diseases to tackle, vaccinations.
175 00:10:57,900 --> 00:11:04,200 But it's also something about making sure that people have more opportunity in poor worlds, like land tenure reform.
176 00:11:04,860 --> 00:11:09,840 So, for most people, they work in agriculture, and many don't know if they're actually...
177 00:11:10,200 --> 00:11:12,700 They don't own the land, because there's not good land registration.
178 00:11:13,300 --> 00:11:18,400 About a billion people on the planet believe that in the next five years, they're going to be evicted from their land.
179 00:11:18,780 --> 00:11:28,120 If you think that, you're not going to dig a well or make irrigation or plant orchards so that the trees will only bloom and give fruit in five or ten years.
180 00:11:28,480 --> 00:11:31,060 You will just do what you can for the next year.
181 00:11:31,440 --> 00:11:31,600 Right.
182 00:11:32,200 --> 00:11:35,320 In Swedish, we would call this lågt hängande frukt.
183 00:11:35,660 --> 00:11:36,440 Yes, exactly.
184 00:11:36,640 --> 00:11:37,480 Låg hängande frukt, ja.
185 00:11:37,480 --> 00:11:40,080 Why isn't it being done already?
186 00:11:40,200 --> 00:11:48,680 The short answer is, a little bit is being done, but it's because we're back to this, we want to do everything.
187 00:11:48,880 --> 00:11:53,900 So, when you talk to a lot of politicians, they like to say, I want to do all good things, right?
188 00:11:53,940 --> 00:11:56,100 Because that makes it sound like they're doing more.
189 00:11:56,200 --> 00:12:00,680 So, they will say, oh, I want to do something that will help women.
190 00:12:01,140 --> 00:12:03,500 Oh, but I also want to help rural women.
191 00:12:03,660 --> 00:12:06,260 I also want to help those with children.
192 00:12:06,260 --> 00:12:09,640 And maybe we want to make sure that these are indigenous people.
193 00:12:10,200 --> 00:12:11,440 We want to make sure that they're illiterate.
194 00:12:11,760 --> 00:12:15,080 You put up all these boxes and you tick all these different things.
195 00:12:15,260 --> 00:12:21,300 And then you end up doing something that sounds good and that looks good in the press release, but it's not very effective.
196 00:12:21,500 --> 00:12:27,420 When you say, for instance, as I just mentioned, we need what the World Health Organization called BMOCs,
197 00:12:27,480 --> 00:12:33,520 or Basic Emergency Obstetric and Newborn Care, in hospitals and get women into institutions to give birth.
198 00:12:33,960 --> 00:12:35,260 That doesn't sound very sexy.
199 00:12:35,260 --> 00:12:36,680 And it's just one thing.
200 00:12:37,180 --> 00:12:39,360 So, you want to tick a lot of boxes.
201 00:12:40,200 --> 00:12:41,480 A lot of news releases out.
202 00:12:41,760 --> 00:12:46,500 And so, you end up doing a little bit of everything, just like the Sustainable Development Goals did.
203 00:12:46,860 --> 00:12:47,140 Right.
204 00:12:47,880 --> 00:12:56,480 And on the other hand of the spectrum, are there things being done today that are expensive, but not very good, really, when you examine them?
205 00:12:56,720 --> 00:13:00,240 Oh, we do a lot of things that are just somewhat good.
206 00:13:00,580 --> 00:13:03,360 I'm sure we also do things that are really, really bad.
207 00:13:03,360 --> 00:13:05,260 But we don't look at those.
208 00:13:05,380 --> 00:13:09,560 So, we typically look at the stuff that is reasonably good.
209 00:13:09,880 --> 00:13:10,180 So, we find that.
210 00:13:10,200 --> 00:13:15,660 We find there's a lot of things you can do that deliver, say, two, three, four kronas back in the crown.
211 00:13:15,860 --> 00:13:17,060 Now, that's a nice thing.
212 00:13:17,440 --> 00:13:19,360 And I'm glad we're doing that.
213 00:13:19,680 --> 00:13:25,960 One obvious thing that we've had a lot of conversations also with the Indians about is water and sanitation.
214 00:13:26,340 --> 00:13:33,040 So, a lot of people will say this is one of the most important things to do because, obviously, if you don't have water, you die.
215 00:13:33,480 --> 00:13:37,660 But this, of course, is also why everybody who's alive in the world actually do have water.
216 00:13:38,140 --> 00:13:40,160 So, when you talk about getting more water.
217 00:13:40,200 --> 00:13:43,540 It's much more about getting more convenient water.
218 00:13:43,980 --> 00:13:46,640 So, I'm not belittling this.
219 00:13:46,860 --> 00:13:59,020 It's very important to be able to get water because it means that especially women, especially girls, don't have to walk a long way to carry this water back home so that mom and dad can use it.
220 00:13:59,380 --> 00:14:06,560 But, again, if we look at the cost, especially, for instance, if you look at sanitation, which ends up being very expensive, you want to keep it.
221 00:14:07,200 --> 00:14:10,160 You end up with benefit-cost ratios of about 30%.
222 00:14:10,200 --> 00:14:14,260 So, for every krona spent, you'll do three kronas of good.
223 00:14:14,600 --> 00:14:16,820 And a lot of these are not done well.
224 00:14:17,620 --> 00:14:23,720 So, you'll just dig a pit latrine to tell the authorities and maybe tell the Swedish authorities as well.
225 00:14:23,720 --> 00:14:26,980 Well, we've done something for sanitation, so you've got a checkmark.
226 00:14:27,260 --> 00:14:30,360 But then it's never used because it smells terrible.
227 00:14:30,600 --> 00:14:33,860 It's not being emptied frequently enough and so on.
228 00:14:34,060 --> 00:14:37,600 So, there's a lot of ways that things don't do all that much good.
229 00:14:38,060 --> 00:14:39,780 Again, I'm not saying...
230 00:14:39,780 --> 00:14:42,940 I'm glad we live in a world where there's also people who are doing this.
231 00:14:43,060 --> 00:14:50,400 But I'm simply saying, when we don't have enough resources to do all good things, perhaps we should focus on doing the incredibly good things first.
232 00:14:50,900 --> 00:14:55,000 How familiar are you with the policies of foreign aid in Sweden?
233 00:14:55,220 --> 00:14:57,440 I was wondering, are we doing good right now?
234 00:14:58,080 --> 00:15:00,080 So, I actually live in Sweden.
235 00:15:00,200 --> 00:15:03,400 I live in southern Sweden right on the other side of Copenhagen.
236 00:15:04,460 --> 00:15:06,140 So, I know some of it.
237 00:15:07,060 --> 00:15:09,620 If you had the minister for foreign aid, Benjamin Dosa.
238 00:15:09,780 --> 00:15:10,520 Here in the studio.
239 00:15:10,860 --> 00:15:12,140 What would you give him for advice?
240 00:15:12,140 --> 00:15:17,420 Well, I actually had the pleasure of meeting him last year.
241 00:15:17,920 --> 00:15:19,560 And I gave him the book.
242 00:15:19,800 --> 00:15:21,620 And he really liked the idea.
243 00:15:22,200 --> 00:15:24,080 But remember, he's also a politician.
244 00:15:25,040 --> 00:15:26,440 So, you gave him the short version.
245 00:15:26,700 --> 00:15:29,320 I gave him both the short and the long version.
246 00:15:29,540 --> 00:15:32,220 But I'm pretty sure that the short version was more popular.
247 00:15:32,940 --> 00:15:35,420 Björn gave me one book and one small leaflet.
248 00:15:35,580 --> 00:15:37,720 So, even the politicians can read it.
249 00:15:37,800 --> 00:15:38,160 Exactly.
250 00:15:38,380 --> 00:15:39,760 Or at least they're more likely to.
251 00:15:39,780 --> 00:15:41,400 To get a glance of it.
252 00:15:41,800 --> 00:15:45,960 And he really likes the idea of doing effective policies.
253 00:15:46,360 --> 00:15:51,440 He very clearly instructed Sida to spend their money more effectively.
254 00:15:51,860 --> 00:15:54,140 But, of course, there's also all these other pushes.
255 00:15:54,320 --> 00:15:59,440 And we get this across both Europe and Canada and Australia and New Zealand.
256 00:15:59,620 --> 00:16:01,160 So, pretty much all rich countries.
257 00:16:01,540 --> 00:16:04,400 Unless you're Trump where you just destroy everything, right?
258 00:16:04,400 --> 00:16:08,680 But even in other countries like Norway.
259 00:16:09,780 --> 00:16:11,400 We also spend a lot of money on Ukraine.
260 00:16:11,560 --> 00:16:13,140 We spend a lot of money on refugees.
261 00:16:13,860 --> 00:16:18,160 So, the money that actually go to poor people is somewhat restricted.
262 00:16:18,940 --> 00:16:22,580 And then, within that, we end up doing a lot of different things.
263 00:16:22,740 --> 00:16:27,560 And so, I think Benjamin Dusser has his heart at the right place.
264 00:16:27,720 --> 00:16:32,620 But I'm not sure he has quite managed to sort of get all of this back in order.
265 00:16:32,780 --> 00:16:36,220 And again, that's one of the reasons why we're having this conversation.
266 00:16:36,220 --> 00:16:38,220 We need to make it more politically palatable.
267 00:16:38,900 --> 00:16:39,760 To not say,
268 00:16:39,920 --> 00:16:41,040 I want to do everything.
269 00:16:41,560 --> 00:16:42,180 But to say,
270 00:16:42,280 --> 00:16:45,180 I just want to do a few things really, really well.
271 00:16:45,620 --> 00:16:48,120 This problem with bad priorities and overreach.
272 00:16:48,400 --> 00:16:52,080 Has it been better or worse during the time?
273 00:16:53,180 --> 00:16:55,200 So, I think we've always had this problem.
274 00:16:55,420 --> 00:16:55,880 I mean, look.
275 00:16:56,580 --> 00:17:00,320 Politicians and politics is not predominantly about doing good.
276 00:17:00,400 --> 00:17:01,680 It's about getting re-elected.
277 00:17:02,080 --> 00:17:06,400 And what gets you re-elected is not necessarily what works really well.
278 00:17:06,400 --> 00:17:07,640 That's true even in Sweden.
279 00:17:07,839 --> 00:17:09,700 But it's obviously much more.
280 00:17:09,859 --> 00:17:11,900 True when we talk about development aid.
281 00:17:12,099 --> 00:17:13,780 Because there's no obvious feedback.
282 00:17:13,980 --> 00:17:18,140 We don't know the people that CETA is helping because they're far, far away.
283 00:17:18,339 --> 00:17:22,980 So, in a sense, we rely on stories from you and other journalists who tell us,
284 00:17:23,180 --> 00:17:25,380 oh, this was a really good thing because, you know,
285 00:17:25,579 --> 00:17:27,740 that now this person or that person lives.
286 00:17:27,940 --> 00:17:33,260 Look, pretty much all the money that we spend will end up doing some good, which is great.
287 00:17:33,460 --> 00:17:37,820 I'm simply making the argument we should spend money where not only it'll do a little good,
288 00:17:38,020 --> 00:17:39,220 but it'll do a massive amount of good.
289 00:17:39,220 --> 00:17:42,060 And that is a much harder argument.
290 00:17:42,260 --> 00:17:44,140 So I think we've always been bad at doing this.
291 00:17:44,340 --> 00:17:49,140 And I think we constantly need someone like me to keep saying, let's do better.
292 00:17:49,340 --> 00:17:52,140 Can we always trust the cost benefit analysis?
293 00:17:52,340 --> 00:17:57,100 I mean, the obvious objection would be that there are certain values that can't
294 00:17:57,300 --> 00:18:03,060 be measured in kronor or dollars, some humanitarian, as you know the argument.
295 00:18:03,260 --> 00:18:04,540 What do you think about that?
296 00:18:04,740 --> 00:18:08,380 So, first of all, this is an imprecise science, obviously.
297 00:18:08,380 --> 00:18:10,060 We don't know a lot of things.
298 00:18:10,260 --> 00:18:14,420 We don't know exactly what will be used and how it will be used.
299 00:18:14,620 --> 00:18:19,100 So when I tell you that sanitation give you three dollars back in the dollar or
300 00:18:19,300 --> 00:18:24,660 three kronors back in the kronor or maternal and newborn health gives us
301 00:18:24,860 --> 00:18:28,900 87 kronors back in the kronor, it's a rough estimate.
302 00:18:29,100 --> 00:18:33,780 I would probably estimate it's right within a factor of two or something.
303 00:18:33,980 --> 00:18:35,900 But it's a pretty good estimate.
304 00:18:36,100 --> 00:18:38,340 But the other part of the question that you had
305 00:18:38,540 --> 00:18:40,500 is, are there things that are not in there? Absolutely.
306 00:18:40,700 --> 00:18:44,820 So we take into account all the cost and all the benefits.
307 00:18:45,020 --> 00:18:47,060 So this is not just a financial analysis.
308 00:18:47,260 --> 00:18:50,140 This is also about social and environmental costs.
309 00:18:50,340 --> 00:18:52,980 So we we try to take in all these costs.
310 00:18:53,180 --> 00:18:56,420 But remember, this is not the only thing that humanity wants.
311 00:18:56,620 --> 00:19:01,900 We also, for instance, want equality or we want, as you mentioned, human rights.
312 00:19:02,100 --> 00:19:06,740 These are things that are not in the the cost benefit analysis.
313 00:19:06,940 --> 00:19:07,940 So in a sense,
314 00:19:08,100 --> 00:19:15,020 if you will, we're the guys who give society a menu, but a menu with prices and sizes.
315 00:19:15,220 --> 00:19:17,100 We give you a sense of if you spend money
316 00:19:17,300 --> 00:19:20,460 here, you'll get this much good and it'll cost you this much.
317 00:19:20,660 --> 00:19:23,940 But whether you want to do that is obviously a political question.
318 00:19:24,140 --> 00:19:27,260 This is not economists saying that's how the world should be.
319 00:19:27,460 --> 00:19:33,300 But it's helping political politicians and voters to make better decisions.
320 00:19:33,500 --> 00:19:37,060 But again, I would imagine that when we talk about equality,
321 00:19:37,940 --> 00:19:44,500 these policies that we're advocating are typically policies that help the very weakest, the very poorest.
322 00:19:44,700 --> 00:19:47,020 For instance, when we talk about tuberculosis,
323 00:19:47,220 --> 00:19:52,860 one of the reasons why tuberculosis has not been fixed is because it mostly hit very poor people.
324 00:19:53,060 --> 00:19:55,580 So people in slum areas, people in prisons,
325 00:19:55,780 --> 00:19:58,700 people in migrant communities and mining, that kind of thing.
326 00:19:58,900 --> 00:20:02,300 People who are outside a much of polite society.
327 00:20:02,500 --> 00:20:07,100 And so they often don't vote and therefore they don't get any health care.
328 00:20:07,100 --> 00:20:12,340 We can help deal with that, but that's exactly helping with equality as well.
329 00:20:12,540 --> 00:20:14,740 So it's very likely that much of this overlaps,
330 00:20:14,940 --> 00:20:18,980 just like when we talk about maternal and newborn health, the moms who don't go
331 00:20:19,180 --> 00:20:24,700 to institutions, the moms whose kids die in their first 30 days are very likely
332 00:20:24,900 --> 00:20:27,180 not the richest, but the poorest of the people.
333 00:20:27,380 --> 00:20:32,420 So, again, I think a lot of these overlap, but it's not a precise overlap.
334 00:20:32,620 --> 00:20:35,180 So, yes, there are other things to to to look at.
335 00:20:35,380 --> 00:20:36,660 But again, when you're
336 00:20:37,100 --> 00:20:42,860 confronted with a policy that does three kronors back and one that does 87 kronors
337 00:20:43,060 --> 00:20:47,540 back, there's a lot to you know, there's a lot of of
338 00:20:47,740 --> 00:20:52,740 leeway to to to make sure that you do the very best.
339 00:20:52,940 --> 00:20:54,460 What are your hopes for the future?
340 00:20:54,660 --> 00:20:57,100 Are the politicians starting to get this?
341 00:20:57,300 --> 00:21:00,780 Are they more down your alley now than, say, 10 years ago?
342 00:21:00,980 --> 00:21:01,700 I think so.
343 00:21:01,900 --> 00:21:06,980 I mean, obviously, 10 years ago or 11 years ago, all the politicians decided
344 00:21:07,140 --> 00:21:09,700 they were going to promise everything to everyone, which didn't work.
345 00:21:09,700 --> 00:21:11,580 And we knew already back then it wouldn't work.
346 00:21:11,780 --> 00:21:15,540 But I think a lot more people are realizing, oh, wait, this doesn't work.
347 00:21:15,740 --> 00:21:20,260 You know, I think a lot of politicians were hoping if we promise the stars,
348 00:21:20,460 --> 00:21:22,940 everyone will want to give more development aid.
349 00:21:22,940 --> 00:21:25,420 But of course, that's exactly the opposite of what happened.
350 00:21:25,620 --> 00:21:27,500 We've been very stingy for quite a while.
351 00:21:27,700 --> 00:21:33,660 And now with Trump, but also the UK, Germany, France, even Norway in some sense,
352 00:21:33,860 --> 00:21:36,900 and also Sweden, somewhat cutting off.
353 00:21:37,100 --> 00:21:38,780 Sort of below the surface.
354 00:21:38,980 --> 00:21:43,340 We are realizing we have to do better because we have less and less resources.
355 00:21:43,540 --> 00:21:46,540 We really have to do the most good we can with every corner.
356 00:21:46,740 --> 00:21:49,220 So I think there's a lot more interest.
357 00:21:49,420 --> 00:21:52,580 Again, my my hope is that we get better at doing this.
358 00:21:52,780 --> 00:21:56,860 I would love for us to just do the very most effective things that will never
359 00:21:56,860 --> 00:21:58,660 happen because that's not how politics work.
360 00:21:58,860 --> 00:22:02,980 But if we can push people to spend smarter, that'd be great.
361 00:22:03,180 --> 00:22:06,540 Come to 2030 and we get the result back and see that
362 00:22:06,540 --> 00:22:10,140 maybe just the fifth or fourth of the goals has been met.
363 00:22:10,340 --> 00:22:12,940 What would be the effect of that, do you think?
364 00:22:13,140 --> 00:22:15,860 Would we be, what would you say?
365 00:22:16,060 --> 00:22:18,620 I forgot the word, but really sad about it.
366 00:22:18,820 --> 00:22:20,340 OK, should we be happy or sad?
367 00:22:20,540 --> 00:22:23,940 Yeah, so I think one of the things I've
368 00:22:24,140 --> 00:22:28,060 been constantly arguing and I think there's a lot of good data for is the
369 00:22:28,260 --> 00:22:31,740 world is mostly a place that gets better and better.
370 00:22:31,940 --> 00:22:36,380 We have a tendency, remember, when we read Svenska Dagbladet or any
371 00:22:36,580 --> 00:22:41,260 other news outlet in the world, you guys are put in the world to basically
372 00:22:41,260 --> 00:22:44,260 give us a collection of all the worst things that happened in the last 24 hours.
373 00:22:44,460 --> 00:22:45,860 That's my job. That's your job.
374 00:22:46,060 --> 00:22:49,540 And so we get a sense that everything is coming apart.
375 00:22:49,740 --> 00:22:51,820 But we often forget the long term
376 00:22:52,020 --> 00:22:54,820 trends show us things are getting better and better.
377 00:22:55,020 --> 00:23:00,820 We have lifted way over a billion people out of poverty in the last 25 years.
378 00:23:01,020 --> 00:23:06,420 Actually, every day, every 24 hours, Svenska Dagbladet and every
379 00:23:06,620 --> 00:23:08,820 newspaper in the world could have had its headline.
380 00:23:09,020 --> 00:23:12,860 One hundred and thirty eight thousand people were lifted out of extreme poverty
381 00:23:13,060 --> 00:23:17,620 every day for 25 years. We don't hear this, but we need to remember.
382 00:23:17,820 --> 00:23:21,500 Overall, fewer people die, fewer kids die.
383 00:23:21,700 --> 00:23:24,100 We have much better education.
384 00:23:24,300 --> 00:23:27,260 We have much better opportunity in many different ways.
385 00:23:27,460 --> 00:23:30,060 And we've lifted, as I said, many people out of poverty.
386 00:23:30,260 --> 00:23:34,140 But so come 2030, mostly we'll be better off.
387 00:23:34,340 --> 00:23:36,420 But the real depressing outcome
388 00:23:36,660 --> 00:23:38,900 is we could have been even better off.
389 00:23:39,100 --> 00:23:41,780 We could have had even fewer kids dying.
390 00:23:41,980 --> 00:23:45,540 We could have even fewer people in extreme poverty and so on.
391 00:23:45,740 --> 00:23:48,580 And so the real losses we could have done better.
392 00:23:48,780 --> 00:23:53,020 And of course, that means that by 2030 we should certainly make sure we don't
393 00:23:53,220 --> 00:23:58,100 make the same mistake and promise for 2045 that we're going to do all these things again.
394 00:23:58,300 --> 00:24:00,260 But much more importantly.
395 00:24:00,460 --> 00:24:01,940 This is 2026.
396 00:24:02,140 --> 00:24:06,220 We should do an incredible amount of good this year and next year, not wait till
397 00:24:06,540 --> 00:24:07,660 2030.
398 00:24:07,860 --> 00:24:13,220 Another question. Hasn't the progress slowed down a bit since about 2020?
399 00:24:13,420 --> 00:24:15,140 Yes. And why is that?
400 00:24:15,340 --> 00:24:17,660 Well, a lot of reasons.
401 00:24:17,860 --> 00:24:21,420 So much of the Covid
402 00:24:21,620 --> 00:24:25,060 problems hit the developing world a lot.
403 00:24:25,260 --> 00:24:29,260 We were very, very worried in the rich world and we could afford to be that.
404 00:24:29,460 --> 00:24:35,860 So a lot of countries, not Sweden to its credit, but a lot of countries decided to shut down
405 00:24:35,860 --> 00:24:41,900 almost entirely in order to preserve and safeguard really old people,
406 00:24:42,100 --> 00:24:46,140 which is a conversation that has been ongoing without the right decision.
407 00:24:46,340 --> 00:24:51,020 But at least in a very rich country where you have lots of old people, that makes some sense.
408 00:24:51,220 --> 00:24:55,580 But unfortunately, most of the poor countries in the world have very few old
409 00:24:55,780 --> 00:24:59,300 people and don't and can't afford to shut down.
410 00:24:59,500 --> 00:25:00,860 Yet they still shut down.
411 00:25:01,060 --> 00:25:02,900 They also shut down their schools.
412 00:25:03,100 --> 00:25:05,780 And that means that a lot of kids got
413 00:25:05,980 --> 00:25:10,020 behind the World Bank actually estimate this will cost more than one point two
414 00:25:10,220 --> 00:25:14,340 trillion dollars per year come 2040 in the sense that school kids are going to be
415 00:25:14,540 --> 00:25:17,380 less well off, they're going to be less well educated.
416 00:25:17,580 --> 00:25:18,380 This is terrible.
417 00:25:18,580 --> 00:25:21,380 And we need to go back and try to redo that.
418 00:25:21,580 --> 00:25:25,540 And one of the things, of course, is as we talk about, there are some very smart
419 00:25:25,740 --> 00:25:28,620 ways to dramatically increase the efficiency of school.
420 00:25:28,820 --> 00:25:30,420 We don't do that so much.
421 00:25:30,620 --> 00:25:33,900 It's about getting structured teacher plans and it's about getting
422 00:25:34,100 --> 00:25:35,820 the kids taught at their right level.
423 00:25:36,020 --> 00:25:37,660 So each for individual level.
424 00:25:37,660 --> 00:25:40,340 You could do that, for instance, with a laptop, with educational software,
425 00:25:40,540 --> 00:25:42,820 sorry, a tablet with educational software.
426 00:25:43,020 --> 00:25:44,460 These are very simple things.
427 00:25:44,660 --> 00:25:47,220 We should go in and make sure we do much more of that.
428 00:25:47,420 --> 00:25:51,620 That's one way of getting the world out of the rut, so to speak.
429 00:25:51,700 --> 00:25:53,860 But look, we're not going to be able to manage all of it.
430 00:25:53,860 --> 00:25:56,660 And certainly Sweden is not going to manage to do all of it.
431 00:25:56,860 --> 00:25:58,900 But if we start that conversation.
432 00:25:59,100 --> 00:26:04,980 So I'm actually here for the goalkeepers Bill Gates later today in Stockholm.
433 00:26:05,180 --> 00:26:05,820 And one of the things
434 00:26:06,020 --> 00:26:09,220 he's pushing for is exactly some of these incredibly effective things.
435 00:26:09,420 --> 00:26:14,020 And so I would love us to do more on the really effective things.
436 00:26:14,220 --> 00:26:16,900 And I think Sweden could be
437 00:26:17,100 --> 00:26:20,820 land country leading that charge in the world.
438 00:26:21,020 --> 00:26:22,220 We're not going to fix everything,
439 00:26:22,220 --> 00:26:25,020 but we are going to fix some of the most important things.
440 00:26:25,220 --> 00:26:28,900 And back to my original question, Covid was a major setback.
441 00:26:29,100 --> 00:26:30,980 Yeah, OK.
442 00:26:31,980 --> 00:26:35,540 You mentioned Bill Gates in November last year, the world leaders met
443 00:26:35,540 --> 00:26:39,500 in Brazil for yet another climate summit.
444 00:26:39,700 --> 00:26:43,300 Prior to this summit, you wrote in Svenska Dagbladet that world leaders
445 00:26:43,500 --> 00:26:46,100 ought to be listening more to Bill Gates.
446 00:26:46,300 --> 00:26:50,300 What was his message and why was he right?
447 00:26:50,500 --> 00:26:54,140 So for a very long time, we've been very worried about climate change.
448 00:26:54,340 --> 00:26:57,260 So there's been this dominant
449 00:26:57,460 --> 00:27:02,500 sort of narrative that the world is ending unless we're going to do a lot
450 00:27:02,700 --> 00:27:05,500 against climate change. And that has never been true.
451 00:27:05,700 --> 00:27:07,300 Climate change is a real problem.
452 00:27:07,300 --> 00:27:10,060 It's a manmade problem, but it's not the end of the world.
453 00:27:10,260 --> 00:27:15,700 It's a problem along with many, many other problems we need to fix in the 21st century.
454 00:27:15,900 --> 00:27:21,220 And what Bill Gates said and what I thought was really incredibly clever way
455 00:27:21,420 --> 00:27:26,540 of putting it was we should not be talking in Belém and Brazil or any other
456 00:27:26,740 --> 00:27:30,700 climate summit or really any other policy at all about targets.
457 00:27:30,900 --> 00:27:35,300 We shouldn't be talking about, oh, net zero by 2050 or one and a half degrees or two
458 00:27:35,580 --> 00:27:41,340 degrees. We should be talking about what will be the impact on human welfare of all
459 00:27:41,540 --> 00:27:50,230 these policies, because what that tells you is what will be the actual outcome of all of these things.
460 00:27:50,430 --> 00:27:53,830 Vi på Danske Bank vet att företag har olika mål.
461 00:27:54,030 --> 00:27:59,070 I en värld som ständigt förändras hjälper vi ditt företag att navigera omvärlden
462 00:27:59,270 --> 00:28:01,390 från de minsta till de största.
463 00:28:01,590 --> 00:28:05,190 Vi ger företag finansiell rådgivning i Sverige och i resten av Norden.
464 00:28:05,390 --> 00:28:07,190 Vi är hela Nordens företag.
465 00:28:07,390 --> 00:28:13,140 Företagsbank, Danske Bank.
466 00:28:13,340 --> 00:28:17,700 And one of the things that have dogged the climate policy for a very long time is
467 00:28:17,900 --> 00:28:20,420 we end up making very expensive promises.
468 00:28:20,620 --> 00:28:24,340 Remember, if all the rich countries went net zero by 2050,
469 00:28:24,540 --> 00:28:29,700 which is what almost all rich countries except the US wants to do,
470 00:28:29,900 --> 00:28:34,660 this would cost literally hundreds of trillions of dollars over the century.
471 00:28:34,860 --> 00:28:36,820 But it would have no impact today.
472 00:28:37,020 --> 00:28:39,460 It would have a tiny impact by 2050.
473 00:28:39,660 --> 00:28:40,220 And it would
474 00:28:40,660 --> 00:28:43,020 reduce temperatures, probably if you run this in the UN climate model,
475 00:28:43,220 --> 00:28:46,260 about 0.1 degree by the end of the century.
476 00:28:46,460 --> 00:28:49,420 So you almost wouldn't be able to measure it.
477 00:28:49,620 --> 00:28:54,620 Spending that much money now in helping people very little in 100 years
478 00:28:54,820 --> 00:28:56,060 is not a very good deal.
479 00:28:56,260 --> 00:29:00,020 We estimate the average payback on that is for every kronor you spend.
480 00:29:00,220 --> 00:29:04,260 You do about 17 euro of good, which is really a bad way.
481 00:29:04,460 --> 00:29:08,340 I mean, you just have given the money away and you would have done seven times better.
482 00:29:08,540 --> 00:29:10,340 But the point here is
483 00:29:10,540 --> 00:29:13,780 that if you start saying, well, how can we help people better?
484 00:29:13,780 --> 00:29:15,540 How can we make human welfare better?
485 00:29:15,740 --> 00:29:19,820 If you think about a mom, a poor mom and poor world,
486 00:29:20,020 --> 00:29:24,380 who has her kids there, they might die from easily curable infectious diseases
487 00:29:24,580 --> 00:29:27,380 tonight from malaria, for instance, they don't have enough food.
488 00:29:27,380 --> 00:29:28,660 They have terrible education.
489 00:29:28,860 --> 00:29:30,300 There are all these kinds of issues.
490 00:29:30,500 --> 00:29:34,060 Her primary priority is not for you and me
491 00:29:34,260 --> 00:29:38,420 to help reduce temperatures in 100 years by 0.1 degree.
492 00:29:38,620 --> 00:29:40,380 That's not her primary priority.
493 00:29:40,540 --> 00:29:43,340 Her primary priority is obviously to fix malaria, fix tuberculosis,
494 00:29:43,540 --> 00:29:46,140 fix nutrition, fix education.
495 00:29:46,340 --> 00:29:47,740 These are the very simple things.
496 00:29:47,940 --> 00:29:52,660 And remember, if we do that, if we get people out of disease,
497 00:29:52,860 --> 00:29:57,100 out of hunger, into good education, out of poverty,
498 00:29:57,300 --> 00:30:00,460 not only will those be good things in and of themselves,
499 00:30:00,660 --> 00:30:05,700 it will also mean they will be much more resilient to anything climate will throw at them.
500 00:30:05,900 --> 00:30:10,420 So, again, what Bill was really saying is if you stop doing
501 00:30:10,620 --> 00:30:13,740 thinking this is the end of the world, but start realizing, yeah,
502 00:30:13,940 --> 00:30:18,780 it's a problem, along with many other problems, what we're doing on climate will
503 00:30:18,980 --> 00:30:23,140 do comparatively little compared to all the other things we could do that would
504 00:30:23,340 --> 00:30:27,180 help much more now and also help much more in the future.
505 00:30:27,380 --> 00:30:32,140 Because if you take this mom's kids out of poverty and disease,
506 00:30:32,340 --> 00:30:37,220 they will grow up, get their own kids and be much better off and be much better able
507 00:30:37,420 --> 00:30:39,900 to make sure that their kids get even better off.
508 00:30:40,020 --> 00:30:43,780 So by 2100, they will live in a much better world.
509 00:30:43,980 --> 00:30:47,860 And that, I think, is one of the big teachings that we need to take away.
510 00:30:48,060 --> 00:30:50,780 We need to stop being so preoccupied
511 00:30:50,780 --> 00:30:53,900 with climate that we forget about all the other problems in the world.
512 00:30:54,100 --> 00:30:56,820 This does not mean I mean, we're we're a smart civilization.
513 00:30:56,820 --> 00:30:58,180 We can walk and chew gum.
514 00:30:58,180 --> 00:30:59,780 We can do several things at once,
515 00:30:59,980 --> 00:31:04,940 but we should spend less money more smartly on climate and we should spend
516 00:31:04,940 --> 00:31:09,500 the money that we want to help the poor world much more smartly so we actually end
517 00:31:09,500 --> 00:31:09,860 up helping.
518 00:31:10,020 --> 00:31:11,460 Them a lot.
519 00:31:11,660 --> 00:31:13,140 And the same question again,
520 00:31:13,340 --> 00:31:17,260 the politicians that met in Brazil and will meet this year as well.
521 00:31:17,460 --> 00:31:21,220 Have they started listening to Bill Gates and to you?
522 00:31:21,420 --> 00:31:23,980 Well, first of all, the people who are going to meet,
523 00:31:24,180 --> 00:31:27,660 who met in Belém and are going to meet in, I think, Turkey.
524 00:31:27,660 --> 00:31:30,940 Or I can't quite figure out because there are two countries that wanted to run this.
525 00:31:31,140 --> 00:31:33,300 But they are going to meet in another nice place.
526 00:31:33,500 --> 00:31:37,900 And in a little year, they're all obviously all climate people.
527 00:31:38,100 --> 00:31:39,500 So, you know, not surprising.
528 00:31:39,500 --> 00:31:42,500 Well, if you ask a climate person, what's the biggest problem?
529 00:31:42,500 --> 00:31:43,780 They'll obviously say climate.
530 00:31:43,780 --> 00:31:45,860 If you ask a health person, what's the biggest problem?
531 00:31:46,060 --> 00:31:47,700 They'll obviously say health.
532 00:31:47,900 --> 00:31:53,540 It's our job as voters and it's the politicians job as politicians to say,
533 00:31:53,740 --> 00:31:56,740 OK, but I get that all of you want the money for yourself.
534 00:31:56,940 --> 00:32:00,820 But we have to make the hard calls of saying, where do our money go go to?
535 00:32:01,020 --> 00:32:03,540 So if you want to fix climate change,
536 00:32:03,740 --> 00:32:09,020 what you need to understand is this is not about virtue signaling in the rich world.
537 00:32:09,500 --> 00:32:14,340 Whatever the rich world does is a tiny bit in the 21st century emissions.
538 00:32:14,540 --> 00:32:16,220 We're going to be about 13 percent.
539 00:32:16,420 --> 00:32:22,020 Realistically, we can cut about five of those percent by 2050.
540 00:32:22,220 --> 00:32:23,740 So we can do nothing.
541 00:32:23,940 --> 00:32:30,740 What really matters is can we get China, India, Africa, Brazil, Indonesia on board?
542 00:32:30,940 --> 00:32:35,540 And we can't unless we make green energy cheaper than fossil fuels.
543 00:32:35,740 --> 00:32:38,300 So what we really need to do is to focus
544 00:32:38,500 --> 00:32:39,420 on innovation.
545 00:32:39,620 --> 00:32:44,300 In green energy, if and just to give you one example, if we could make fourth
546 00:32:44,500 --> 00:32:49,180 generation nuclear or fusion, if we could make fusion work,
547 00:32:49,380 --> 00:32:52,980 if we could make it cheaper than fossil fuels, everyone would switch.
548 00:32:53,100 --> 00:32:54,820 You wouldn't have to have a conversation.
549 00:32:55,020 --> 00:32:56,700 You wouldn't have to meet at all these
550 00:32:56,900 --> 00:33:00,660 UN summits because the economics would have made it cheaper.
551 00:33:00,860 --> 00:33:03,780 That's the way you solve big problems through innovation.
552 00:33:03,980 --> 00:33:07,700 And we have spent much, much less on innovation than what we promised.
553 00:33:07,900 --> 00:33:09,460 We've actually stayed pretty much to the
554 00:33:09,660 --> 00:33:11,220 same level for the last 20 years.
555 00:33:11,420 --> 00:33:13,660 We've gone down dramatically to the 1980s
556 00:33:13,860 --> 00:33:17,580 because we've been so focused on doing virtue signaling.
557 00:33:17,780 --> 00:33:21,620 So Swedish, Danish, pretty much all well-meaning,
558 00:33:21,820 --> 00:33:26,180 rich world people will put up lots of wind turbines and solar panels and say,
559 00:33:26,380 --> 00:33:29,780 see, rather than investing in green energy R&D,
560 00:33:29,980 --> 00:33:33,100 which is the way that you're actually going to get this solved.
561 00:33:33,300 --> 00:33:38,620 That's quite surprising because I thought that green innovation got all the funding
562 00:33:38,780 --> 00:33:41,860 it needed, but the numbers says otherwise.
563 00:33:42,060 --> 00:33:46,380 So what you have to remember is we spend a lot of money on stuff we know doesn't work.
564 00:33:46,580 --> 00:33:51,060 So the stuff that we actually have to have subsidies and have special regulations.
565 00:33:51,260 --> 00:33:55,700 So we spend a lot of money on existing wind turbines and existing solar panels.
566 00:33:55,900 --> 00:33:59,020 But the reality is we need to get much better,
567 00:33:59,220 --> 00:34:04,300 that is much cheaper solar panels and wind turbines, but also lots and lots of batteries.
568 00:34:04,500 --> 00:34:07,220 We're not there anywhere close to there.
569 00:34:07,420 --> 00:34:08,540 We need to spend a lot more
570 00:34:08,739 --> 00:34:13,900 on fourth generation nuclear, on fusion and all these other technologies
571 00:34:14,100 --> 00:34:15,500 that potentially could come through.
572 00:34:15,699 --> 00:34:20,179 But the point is, research and development is incredibly cheap.
573 00:34:20,380 --> 00:34:23,340 And that's why we can spend it on pretty much all of these things.
574 00:34:23,540 --> 00:34:26,739 And we just have to have one or a few of these technologies come through.
575 00:34:26,739 --> 00:34:29,260 And those are the ones that will power the 21st century.
576 00:34:29,460 --> 00:34:37,380 So if you look at how much we've spent in percent of GDP, it's been, it was about
577 00:34:38,739 --> 00:34:42,860 cents per $100 in the 1980s.
578 00:34:43,060 --> 00:34:46,300 And since then, it's been about three to four cents.
579 00:34:46,500 --> 00:34:48,900 So it's halved, not increased.
580 00:34:49,100 --> 00:34:54,380 And in 2015 at the Paris summit, there was another summit where Obama
581 00:34:54,580 --> 00:35:01,340 and Xi Jinping and the EU and many other people of goodwill actually said,
582 00:35:01,540 --> 00:35:04,860 we had a tiny bit of influence in this.
583 00:35:05,060 --> 00:35:07,740 It was called the Breakthrough Initiative, where they actually promised
584 00:35:07,740 --> 00:35:10,180 to double spending in green energy R&D.
585 00:35:10,380 --> 00:35:12,460 And we didn't know such a thing, again,
586 00:35:12,660 --> 00:35:17,460 because everybody focuses on building a new wind turbine farm rather than spending
587 00:35:17,660 --> 00:35:21,420 more on R&D, because the one, the first thing you can get on the news for
588 00:35:21,620 --> 00:35:25,220 and you can go and cut a ribbon looks like you're really doing something.
589 00:35:25,420 --> 00:35:27,020 Whereas the other one that's just funding
590 00:35:27,220 --> 00:35:32,180 scientists to do their thing and maybe it won't work before in 20 years.
591 00:35:32,380 --> 00:35:37,660 But we know it's the only way they'll actually fix climate change.
592 00:35:37,900 --> 00:35:42,540 Larger R&D investments in the 1980s, has they paid off?
593 00:35:42,740 --> 00:35:47,340 So the reason why we did it in 1980s was because of the second oil crisis
594 00:35:47,540 --> 00:35:50,780 and everybody wanted to find something else than oil.
595 00:35:50,980 --> 00:35:55,980 One way you can say it paid off, but this is somewhat far down the line,
596 00:35:56,180 --> 00:36:00,100 was in the fracking revolution in the US in the early 2000s.
597 00:36:00,300 --> 00:36:03,700 And remember what fracking did for the world was essentially a lot of people
598 00:36:03,900 --> 00:36:07,380 have very negative images of fracking and there
599 00:36:07,860 --> 00:36:09,620 were real environmental problems with fracking.
600 00:36:09,820 --> 00:36:13,700 But fundamentally, fracking meant you can make gas much cheaper.
601 00:36:13,900 --> 00:36:18,420 And that meant that the US switched massively from coal to gas.
602 00:36:18,620 --> 00:36:23,980 That by far has been the most important thing for reducing CO2, because gas emits
603 00:36:24,180 --> 00:36:28,940 about half as much CO2 as does coal per unit of energy.
604 00:36:29,140 --> 00:36:31,540 So it was really one of those things where
605 00:36:31,740 --> 00:36:35,220 you got cheaper and greener energy through innovation.
606 00:36:35,260 --> 00:36:36,820 It was not the intention back then.
607 00:36:37,020 --> 00:36:37,700 They wanted to find
608 00:36:37,900 --> 00:36:42,140 a different opportunity for oil and they wanted to get rid of the dependency
609 00:36:42,340 --> 00:36:45,500 on Saudi Arabia and the US clearly did that.
610 00:36:45,700 --> 00:36:47,020 Europe should have done the same thing.
611 00:36:47,020 --> 00:36:49,100 We should have made sure China did the same thing.
612 00:36:49,300 --> 00:36:51,900 That would have dramatically reduced emissions.
613 00:36:52,100 --> 00:36:54,820 This is not the full solution because obviously
614 00:36:55,020 --> 00:36:59,060 natural gas is still a fossil fuel and it still emits CO2, only much less.
615 00:36:59,260 --> 00:37:03,380 But it would have been a great bridge fuel to a greener future.
616 00:37:03,580 --> 00:37:06,300 And most of the world, unfortunately, didn't do that.
617 00:37:06,500 --> 00:37:07,420 You mentioned
618 00:37:07,420 --> 00:37:11,060 earlier that climate change is one of the problem humanity is facing.
619 00:37:11,260 --> 00:37:15,620 Many would say that it's the problem, the greatest problem.
620 00:37:15,820 --> 00:37:18,700 What if the mean temperature would rise,
621 00:37:18,900 --> 00:37:21,060 not two degrees, but maybe four or five degrees?
622 00:37:21,260 --> 00:37:24,300 Wouldn't that be a disaster for humanity?
623 00:37:24,500 --> 00:37:27,020 It would be a bigger
624 00:37:27,220 --> 00:37:28,700 challenge.
625 00:37:28,900 --> 00:37:32,100 Would it be manageable for us?
626 00:37:32,300 --> 00:37:36,860 I think so. Certainly that's what the climate economics tell us, but it would
627 00:37:37,420 --> 00:37:38,740 be a bigger problem.
628 00:37:38,940 --> 00:37:43,300 All studies show that we're going to reach by the end of the century about three degrees.
629 00:37:43,500 --> 00:37:47,700 And so I think it's realistic to say, well, what is the impact of three degrees?
630 00:37:47,900 --> 00:37:50,300 Well, this is what climate economics has
631 00:37:50,500 --> 00:37:54,500 been working on for a very long time, for decades.
632 00:37:54,700 --> 00:37:59,100 And what they find is if you look at all the costs and all the benefits,
633 00:37:59,300 --> 00:38:02,300 remember, when you have global warming, you get more heat waves,
634 00:38:02,300 --> 00:38:03,940 but you also get fewer cold waves.
635 00:38:04,140 --> 00:38:07,300 That means you get more people dying from heat, but fewer people dying from cold.
636 00:38:07,460 --> 00:38:09,140 So you need to include all of these things.
637 00:38:09,340 --> 00:38:13,540 If you include all of them, there's more disbenefits and benefits.
638 00:38:13,740 --> 00:38:14,980 That's why it's a problem.
639 00:38:15,180 --> 00:38:18,140 But what it turns out is the net cost is
640 00:38:18,340 --> 00:38:23,020 equivalent to losing somewhere between two and three percent of GDP by the end of the century.
641 00:38:23,220 --> 00:38:25,460 This is the estimate of the only climate
642 00:38:25,460 --> 00:38:29,580 economist to win the Nobel Prize, William Nordhaus, and another one of the most
643 00:38:29,780 --> 00:38:32,700 quoted climate economists in the world, Richard Tull.
644 00:38:32,900 --> 00:38:36,340 Two meta studies that try to take into account all of the studies.
645 00:38:36,540 --> 00:38:37,100 Remember,
646 00:38:37,420 --> 00:38:40,980 you very often hear the worst studies because it's a little bit like,
647 00:38:41,180 --> 00:38:44,140 is egg dangerous for you or not, is coffee dangerous for you?
648 00:38:44,340 --> 00:38:46,660 You don't hear the studies that don't say they're dangerous.
649 00:38:46,660 --> 00:38:48,540 You hear the studies that say they are dangerous.
650 00:38:48,740 --> 00:38:51,220 And so you hear the very extreme scenarios.
651 00:38:51,420 --> 00:38:54,900 But if you actually take the meta study and take all of the studies and that's
652 00:38:55,100 --> 00:38:57,660 what they've done, you come up with two to three percent.
653 00:38:57,860 --> 00:39:01,420 Just to give you a sense of proportion, the UN estimate that by the end of the
654 00:39:01,620 --> 00:39:07,180 century, the average person in the world will be about 450 percent as rich as he or she is today.
655 00:39:07,420 --> 00:39:09,340 A much, much better world.
656 00:39:09,540 --> 00:39:17,020 Because of climate change, it's going to feel like he or she is only 435 percent as rich.
657 00:39:17,220 --> 00:39:18,380 Now, that's a problem.
658 00:39:18,580 --> 00:39:22,620 It's obviously a problem that we didn't get to 450, but it's not the end of the world.
659 00:39:22,820 --> 00:39:26,620 It's a slightly less, much better world.
660 00:39:26,820 --> 00:39:30,580 And that's why I'm saying and that's why the science, the climate science,
661 00:39:30,780 --> 00:39:34,780 sorry, climate economic science shows very clearly climate change is a problem.
662 00:39:34,980 --> 00:39:36,980 But it's not by any means the end of the world.
663 00:39:36,980 --> 00:39:39,140 And that's incredibly important, because obviously,
664 00:39:39,340 --> 00:39:43,500 if climate was the only problem in the world, then we should be spending.
665 00:39:43,700 --> 00:39:45,860 Oh, sorry, was the main problem that's going to kill us all.
666 00:39:46,060 --> 00:39:48,580 Then obviously you should spend all of our money on that.
667 00:39:48,780 --> 00:39:50,980 And you should just forget about poverty and all the other things.
668 00:39:51,180 --> 00:39:53,660 But that's just not what the numbers tell us.
669 00:39:53,860 --> 00:39:55,340 But can't you make the argument?
670 00:39:55,540 --> 00:40:01,180 And I know some people do that the uncertainty of climate change are so big
671 00:40:01,380 --> 00:40:05,940 and the risk are so big, so it may cost a lot of money, but it's a cheap insurance
672 00:40:06,140 --> 00:40:06,940 for
673 00:40:07,140 --> 00:40:08,820 the future generation. What do you think about?
674 00:40:09,020 --> 00:40:12,180 Well, I mean, there are certainly a lot of people who make that argument.
675 00:40:12,180 --> 00:40:13,940 There's several things wrong with that argument.
676 00:40:14,140 --> 00:40:15,420 First of all,
677 00:40:15,620 --> 00:40:20,700 if you want to buy real insurance for the vast majority of humanity,
678 00:40:20,900 --> 00:40:22,820 it's about getting them out of poverty.
679 00:40:23,020 --> 00:40:25,260 Not only is that great for all the other
680 00:40:25,260 --> 00:40:28,340 things that we worry about, like disease and hunger and all these things,
681 00:40:28,540 --> 00:40:35,100 but it also means that they are much, much less vulnerable to climate disasters.
682 00:40:35,300 --> 00:40:36,900 If a hurricane hits Florida,
683 00:40:37,020 --> 00:40:40,700 a few people die and that's it, if the same hurricane hits Guatemala,
684 00:40:40,900 --> 00:40:45,700 it devastates their economy and thousands or even tens of thousands of people die.
685 00:40:45,900 --> 00:40:49,140 So the answer here is not to try to make
686 00:40:49,340 --> 00:40:52,740 hurricanes slightly less worse by the end of the century.
687 00:40:52,940 --> 00:40:56,340 The answer, of course, is to get Guatemalans out of poverty first.
688 00:40:56,540 --> 00:40:58,860 Now, again, I sympathize with the idea
689 00:40:59,060 --> 00:41:02,980 of saying, but we should also make sure we do something good for climate.
690 00:41:03,180 --> 00:41:04,700 So there's two problems with this.
691 00:41:04,900 --> 00:41:05,940 First of all,
692 00:41:06,100 --> 00:41:09,740 so far for the last 30 years, pretty much all that we've gotten from
693 00:41:09,940 --> 00:41:13,860 climate policy is rich countries virtue cycling a little bit.
694 00:41:14,060 --> 00:41:15,180 We haven't cut very much.
695 00:41:15,380 --> 00:41:18,580 I mean, we've still seen the biggest
696 00:41:18,780 --> 00:41:24,020 amount of emissions from fossil fuels in the world was last year.
697 00:41:24,220 --> 00:41:25,540 It keeps going up.
698 00:41:25,740 --> 00:41:30,260 And the reality is that even though we talk a lot about it, most people,
699 00:41:30,260 --> 00:41:33,780 not surprisingly, because we would do exactly the same thing as we were poor,
700 00:41:33,980 --> 00:41:35,900 decide they'd rather not be poor.
701 00:41:36,100 --> 00:41:38,260 Then cutting their carbon emissions.
702 00:41:38,460 --> 00:41:42,340 So we have been focusing on the wrong ways to fix climate change.
703 00:41:42,540 --> 00:41:44,540 And I think it's very likely that if we
704 00:41:44,740 --> 00:41:49,940 keep on doing these poor policies, we're going to see more people voting for
705 00:41:50,140 --> 00:41:51,580 the likes of Donald Trump.
706 00:41:51,780 --> 00:41:55,220 I don't agree with a lot of the things that Donald Trump has done.
707 00:41:55,420 --> 00:41:58,740 But I think we are seeing that also in a lot of Europe,
708 00:41:58,940 --> 00:42:02,260 right wing populist parties that are essentially saying enough.
709 00:42:02,260 --> 00:42:03,380 We don't want to pay for this.
710 00:42:03,580 --> 00:42:05,700 And remember, these current climate
711 00:42:05,980 --> 00:42:09,100 policies have to be endured for decades on end.
712 00:42:09,300 --> 00:42:14,020 And most most likely most of them will be scrapped at one point or another.
713 00:42:14,220 --> 00:42:17,100 So instead, we need to spend less,
714 00:42:17,300 --> 00:42:22,260 but spend much smarter and dramatically increase research and green energy R&D,
715 00:42:22,460 --> 00:42:25,780 which would be much cheaper, much more effective and also leave
716 00:42:25,980 --> 00:42:28,900 money for all the other problems we should be fixing.
717 00:42:29,100 --> 00:42:31,260 Right. Emissions is going up.
718 00:42:31,260 --> 00:42:31,820 That is true.
719 00:42:32,020 --> 00:42:35,500 But it's in many countries they are going down or they're not going up.
720 00:42:35,500 --> 00:42:38,140 And still we are getting more people and we are getting richer.
721 00:42:38,340 --> 00:42:41,820 So per capita emissions are falling in some countries.
722 00:42:42,020 --> 00:42:43,620 Isn't that a little bit good?
723 00:42:43,820 --> 00:42:44,460 Absolutely.
724 00:42:44,460 --> 00:42:47,940 I mean, I'd rather live in a world where we cut emissions than where we don't.
725 00:42:48,140 --> 00:42:49,380 But there are real trade offs.
726 00:42:49,380 --> 00:42:50,980 And that's what we've spent the last,
727 00:42:51,180 --> 00:42:54,780 I don't know, half hour, three quarters of an hour talking about because we can't
728 00:42:54,980 --> 00:42:59,140 do it all so we can decide we're going to spend a significant part of our wealth
729 00:42:59,340 --> 00:43:02,660 on cutting emissions now in a rich country like Sweden.
730 00:43:02,660 --> 00:43:05,340 You can decide to do that and you can get away with it and you can
731 00:43:05,540 --> 00:43:07,700 do this for for a fairly long time.
732 00:43:07,900 --> 00:43:11,540 But there are also powers that eventually turn up and say,
733 00:43:11,740 --> 00:43:15,860 especially when this hurts a lot of poor people, because it will poor people in rich
734 00:43:16,060 --> 00:43:20,140 countries, so poor people in Sweden who feel the struggle from having to pay
735 00:43:20,340 --> 00:43:24,180 an expensive energy bill, who can't fill their gas tank, so on.
736 00:43:24,380 --> 00:43:25,780 Those are real issues.
737 00:43:25,980 --> 00:43:30,140 And eventually that will turn up in the and at the ballot box.
738 00:43:30,340 --> 00:43:35,140 But this is much, much more important to realize you can't make India
739 00:43:35,500 --> 00:43:39,140 or Africa or Indonesia decide to say this.
740 00:43:39,340 --> 00:43:43,860 I mean, it was somewhat underreported, but I don't know if you noticed
741 00:43:44,060 --> 00:43:49,700 during the Brazil leadership of the latest climate conference.
742 00:43:49,900 --> 00:43:51,940 Lula also announced that they were going
743 00:43:52,140 --> 00:43:55,580 to drill a lot more off the coast of the Amazon forest.
744 00:43:55,780 --> 00:43:59,300 And, you know, they were sort of challenging him and saying, Mr.
745 00:43:59,500 --> 00:44:05,460 President, you're head of the climate conference and you want everyone to cut.
746 00:44:05,660 --> 00:44:09,820 And he was like, yeah, but we're a poor country and we also want to have more opportunity.
747 00:44:09,820 --> 00:44:11,740 We want to get a lot more people out of poverty.
748 00:44:11,940 --> 00:44:13,300 And that's just how it has to be.
749 00:44:13,500 --> 00:44:14,860 And that's, of course, obvious.
750 00:44:15,060 --> 00:44:18,140 I mean, we've recognized this because if you and I live there,
751 00:44:18,340 --> 00:44:24,140 especially if we were poor, we would want our president to do the same thing.
752 00:44:24,340 --> 00:44:27,380 Most of the climate politics are ineffective and bad.
753 00:44:27,580 --> 00:44:31,660 Are there examples of good policies that we should do more of?
754 00:44:31,860 --> 00:44:34,700 So unfortunately, there has not been very many.
755 00:44:34,700 --> 00:44:35,420 I mean, there was a big
756 00:44:35,620 --> 00:44:41,140 study a couple of years ago that looked at four thousand climate policies and only
757 00:44:41,340 --> 00:44:47,100 zero point sixty seven percent, so less than one percent of them had measurable impact.
758 00:44:47,300 --> 00:44:52,900 So what that tells you is, no, most of them have just been really, really bad.
759 00:44:53,100 --> 00:44:55,500 This doesn't mean that.
760 00:44:55,700 --> 00:45:00,900 So I think some of these things that we do for other reasons.
761 00:45:00,900 --> 00:45:04,860 So for air pollution reasons, for instance, getting rid of coal is a great idea.
762 00:45:04,860 --> 00:45:07,660 And much of the rich world, not mainly because of climate change,
763 00:45:07,860 --> 00:45:10,420 but because they pollute a lot and because we're rich.
764 00:45:10,620 --> 00:45:15,260 That is actually a really bad idea because they kill people from from air pollution.
765 00:45:15,460 --> 00:45:18,380 There's also the argument of getting
766 00:45:18,580 --> 00:45:23,420 more energy efficiency has been good for many countries who didn't go on the on
767 00:45:23,620 --> 00:45:27,940 the fracking revolution, so are dependent on having to import a lot of fossil fuels.
768 00:45:28,140 --> 00:45:32,700 It's good, all things equal, that you don't have to import as much fossil fuels
769 00:45:32,900 --> 00:45:34,780 so that you save on energy.
770 00:45:35,060 --> 00:45:39,180 But unfortunately, no, many of these policies have just been, you know,
771 00:45:39,380 --> 00:45:42,500 just breaking even or worse than that.
772 00:45:42,700 --> 00:45:46,100 The plans for emission trading system in the EU.
773 00:45:46,300 --> 00:45:47,260 Is that a good idea?
774 00:45:47,460 --> 00:45:52,300 So it's certainly a better idea than most of these other tendencies that we want
775 00:45:52,500 --> 00:45:58,180 to give subsidies or that we want to just determine how to do this, because if you do
776 00:45:58,380 --> 00:46:03,580 it through a trading system or a carbon tax, which is essentially the equivalent,
777 00:46:03,780 --> 00:46:04,660 you get a more efficient.
778 00:46:05,060 --> 00:46:05,620 Allocation.
779 00:46:05,820 --> 00:46:08,580 So any economists would say this is an improvement.
780 00:46:08,780 --> 00:46:14,900 But again, when when you're going to say by 2040, we want to cut 90 percent of our emissions.
781 00:46:15,100 --> 00:46:16,660 That's just ludicrous.
782 00:46:16,860 --> 00:46:19,660 It's not going to happen at current technology.
783 00:46:19,860 --> 00:46:23,700 I mean, maybe that we find technologies that are so efficient that we can achieve
784 00:46:23,900 --> 00:46:28,060 this, but otherwise you're just going to get wholesale voter outrage and you're
785 00:46:28,060 --> 00:46:29,820 going to get these policies thrown out.
786 00:46:30,020 --> 00:46:33,900 That's part of the reason why I'm saying we can promise all these nice things.
787 00:46:33,900 --> 00:46:34,860 But once it starts.
788 00:46:35,060 --> 00:46:37,780 Getting really, really expensive, voters won't have it.
789 00:46:37,980 --> 00:46:42,500 And so, again, we need to find a policy that actually works in real life and not
790 00:46:42,700 --> 00:46:46,780 just one that makes especially green voters feel good right now.
791 00:46:46,980 --> 00:46:49,620 And these great promises that are never
792 00:46:49,820 --> 00:46:54,180 going to be met if you want to come to democracy.
793 00:46:54,380 --> 00:46:57,620 And what do you think about this political system and so on?
794 00:46:57,820 --> 00:47:00,860 Are the other risks and dangers that people are going?
795 00:47:01,060 --> 00:47:02,780 No,
796 00:47:02,980 --> 00:47:04,300 the promises are never met.
797 00:47:04,500 --> 00:47:07,020 So they are losing faith in politics.
798 00:47:07,220 --> 00:47:10,780 Oh, of course. I mean, it's it's a bad idea to have
799 00:47:10,980 --> 00:47:14,620 politicians promise stuff that they're not actually going to achieve.
800 00:47:14,820 --> 00:47:17,420 That was true when we talked about the sustainable development goals.
801 00:47:17,620 --> 00:47:19,460 That's true about the climate policies.
802 00:47:19,660 --> 00:47:25,380 But I think whereas most politicians probably knew that they were just
803 00:47:25,580 --> 00:47:29,620 bragging with with the sustainable development goals because they kind of knew,
804 00:47:29,620 --> 00:47:33,420 of course, we're not going to eradicate poverty and eradicate hunger and eradicate
805 00:47:33,420 --> 00:47:34,580 infectious disease.
806 00:47:34,780 --> 00:47:38,420 That's just silly to make these promises, what we should have promised,
807 00:47:38,620 --> 00:47:42,580 like we did in the millennium development goals, to cut them by two thirds or cut
808 00:47:42,780 --> 00:47:46,180 them by half or something realistic that would have been sensible.
809 00:47:46,380 --> 00:47:49,140 The other thing is just propaganda.
810 00:47:49,340 --> 00:47:52,500 But I think on climate, a lot of people have bought in.
811 00:47:52,500 --> 00:47:53,820 A lot of politicians have bought in.
812 00:47:54,020 --> 00:47:55,140 This is the end of the world.
813 00:47:55,140 --> 00:47:56,940 So we just have to do everything.
814 00:47:57,140 --> 00:48:02,300 But of course, when it comes down to it, for most people, it is a problem.
815 00:48:02,300 --> 00:48:03,940 But it's also a problem.
816 00:48:04,140 --> 00:48:06,180 I can't afford to
817 00:48:07,580 --> 00:48:13,260 fill up my gas tank in the car or afford to keep the whole house heated.
818 00:48:13,260 --> 00:48:14,900 We know, for instance, in many countries,
819 00:48:15,100 --> 00:48:19,540 probably not so much here in Sweden because we have a fairly equal society.
820 00:48:19,740 --> 00:48:23,220 But in Britain, for instance, about a third of all retirees,
821 00:48:23,420 --> 00:48:30,940 they keep parts of their house unheated in the winter because they just can't afford to.
822 00:48:31,140 --> 00:48:32,260 And many of them stay
823 00:48:32,460 --> 00:48:34,780 in bed longer in order to stay warm.
824 00:48:34,980 --> 00:48:36,780 Those kinds of things are just no.
825 00:48:36,980 --> 00:48:40,060 That's not how a civilized and developed country should be.
826 00:48:40,260 --> 00:48:44,980 And we need to come to terms with saying we shouldn't offer everything on the altar
827 00:48:45,180 --> 00:48:48,180 of climate change in order to do ineffective policies.
828 00:48:48,180 --> 00:48:49,820 We should be focusing on spending less
829 00:48:50,020 --> 00:48:56,820 money much more effectively so we both fix climate and fix all the other problems.
830 00:48:57,020 --> 00:49:00,380 Vi på Danske Bank vet att företag har olika mål.
831 00:49:00,580 --> 00:49:03,260 I en värld som ständigt förändras hjälper vi
832 00:49:03,260 --> 00:49:03,820 i ditt företag.
833 00:49:04,020 --> 00:49:07,980 Vi ger företag att navigera om världen, från de minsta till de största.
834 00:49:08,180 --> 00:49:12,260 Vi ger företag finansiell rådgivning i Sverige och i resten av Norden.
835 00:49:12,460 --> 00:49:19,830 Vi är hela Nordens företagsbank, Danske Bank.
836 00:49:20,030 --> 00:49:21,310 A bit on that topic.
837 00:49:21,510 --> 00:49:25,990 You argue in another of your pieces from last year that voters has grown tired of
838 00:49:26,190 --> 00:49:31,270 politicians who compete to scream the most and loudest about imminent danger.
839 00:49:31,470 --> 00:49:32,790 And that's a good thing, I reckon.
840 00:49:32,990 --> 00:49:33,910 Yes, yes.
841 00:49:34,110 --> 00:49:36,950 I mean, look, we got to stop scaring
842 00:49:36,950 --> 00:49:37,950 our kids witless.
843 00:49:38,150 --> 00:49:42,430 As I mentioned, the fact that by the end of the century, the average person will
844 00:49:42,630 --> 00:49:48,910 only be 435 percent as rich rather than 450 percent should mostly be celebrated.
845 00:49:48,910 --> 00:49:52,110 I mean, yes, it's still a problem that we could have done even better.
846 00:49:52,110 --> 00:49:54,030 And yes, there's a lot of things in there.
847 00:49:54,230 --> 00:49:56,510 But this is not the end of the world.
848 00:49:56,710 --> 00:50:00,390 Us scaring kids witless has been a terrible thing.
849 00:50:00,590 --> 00:50:03,070 It's led to a lot of psychological problems.
850 00:50:03,270 --> 00:50:06,230 And quite frankly, I understand a lot of kids who have decided.
851 00:50:06,230 --> 00:50:11,070 No, I, you know, I don't want to go to school or I don't want to get a kid.
852 00:50:11,270 --> 00:50:13,310 Those are terrible outcomes if they are untrue.
853 00:50:13,510 --> 00:50:17,630 And I think it's very, very obvious that the data tells you these are untrue.
854 00:50:17,830 --> 00:50:22,470 So when we get politicians who scream a little less and who start having a more
855 00:50:22,670 --> 00:50:26,670 sensible conversation, yes, climate change is one challenge that we need to fix.
856 00:50:26,870 --> 00:50:30,270 Let's fix it smartly so we can also afford all the other things.
857 00:50:30,470 --> 00:50:35,150 Remember, for most Europeans, we've started realizing, oh, we got to pay a lot more
858 00:50:35,150 --> 00:50:35,950 for our defense.
859 00:50:36,230 --> 00:50:40,790 There's actually real problems in the world that could come and bite us in the
860 00:50:40,990 --> 00:50:43,590 behind in just a couple of years.
861 00:50:43,790 --> 00:50:47,870 And there are lots of other problems across the European continent.
862 00:50:48,070 --> 00:50:49,350 We're not competitive enough.
863 00:50:49,550 --> 00:50:52,990 We have very, very high energy prices, which is one of the outcomes of climate
864 00:50:53,190 --> 00:50:58,470 policy, and we have unfunded not here in Sweden, in the Nordics, but in general
865 00:50:58,670 --> 00:51:03,190 unfunded pension systems that are going to erupt really badly in just a couple of
866 00:51:03,390 --> 00:51:05,710 decades, we have lots of other problems.
867 00:51:05,910 --> 00:51:06,190 Let's.
868 00:51:06,390 --> 00:51:10,230 Let's not make ourselves so weak for one thing that doesn't work, namely the
869 00:51:10,430 --> 00:51:13,910 current climate policies that we can't actually fix all these other things.
870 00:51:14,110 --> 00:51:17,110 So we can also, I don't know, stand up to Trump.
871 00:51:17,310 --> 00:51:21,670 Another question, maybe a bit of a side note, but in Sweden for a few years ago,
872 00:51:21,870 --> 00:51:27,990 it was a very common message from politicians that you didn't have to choose
873 00:51:28,190 --> 00:51:33,190 between economic growth and climate transition because they were walking hand in hand.
874 00:51:33,390 --> 00:51:35,710 Actually, there was a green transition was
875 00:51:35,870 --> 00:51:37,830 itself a path to growth.
876 00:51:38,030 --> 00:51:40,190 Was this never true or was it true?
877 00:51:40,390 --> 00:51:45,470 I don't think it was ever true, but it's very obvious now that we can see it's not true.
878 00:51:45,670 --> 00:51:48,150 Obviously, if you recognize this.
879 00:51:48,350 --> 00:51:49,990 Yes. Oh, of course.
880 00:51:50,190 --> 00:51:56,950 And the simple point is, look, if green was really cheaper, everyone would just be doing it.
881 00:51:57,150 --> 00:52:03,750 This is not a hard thing to to to to think about if getting getting on the green wave
882 00:52:03,950 --> 00:52:05,670 was just something everyone wanted to do.
883 00:52:05,870 --> 00:52:08,510 We didn't need to have any climate summits.
884 00:52:08,710 --> 00:52:10,190 Everyone would just be doing it.
885 00:52:10,390 --> 00:52:15,750 The reason why we have to twist each other's arms and our own arms is,
886 00:52:15,950 --> 00:52:17,870 of course, that we're actually asking people to do.
887 00:52:18,070 --> 00:52:20,190 I'm sorry. Would you mind having more expensive
888 00:52:20,390 --> 00:52:25,470 electricity, but at least it'll not be you can't be confident they'll be there when you need it?
889 00:52:25,670 --> 00:52:27,750 Yeah, that's that's just a terrible argument.
890 00:52:27,950 --> 00:52:29,790 And of course, you can do this.
891 00:52:29,990 --> 00:52:33,710 Economists will always tell you with enough money you can do whatever you want,
892 00:52:33,910 --> 00:52:35,230 but you just can't do everything.
893 00:52:35,750 --> 00:52:37,910 And so this costs real resources.
894 00:52:38,110 --> 00:52:41,150 And that's, of course, why we're seeing across the European continent,
895 00:52:41,350 --> 00:52:44,150 a lot of people saying, no, I don't want to do this anymore.
896 00:52:44,350 --> 00:52:48,390 I think it's a tragic outcome of well-intentioned policy.
897 00:52:48,590 --> 00:52:50,830 So I think all of the green people who are
898 00:52:50,830 --> 00:52:53,710 arguing we should do something about climate change, they're well-intentioned.
899 00:52:53,710 --> 00:52:55,830 I mean, just like the people who are saying we should do something about
900 00:52:55,830 --> 00:52:58,950 education in the developing world or the people who are saying we should get rid
901 00:52:59,150 --> 00:53:02,030 of malaria, they're all well-intentioned people.
902 00:53:02,230 --> 00:53:04,630 It just so happens that the well-intentioned
903 00:53:04,630 --> 00:53:05,710 people on climate change.
904 00:53:05,910 --> 00:53:10,110 Have been pushing a policy that we knew 30 years ago wouldn't work,
905 00:53:10,310 --> 00:53:13,430 that we knew 20 or 10 years or five years ago wouldn't work.
906 00:53:13,630 --> 00:53:17,670 And now most people can see, oh, well, yeah, it was really expensive and didn't
907 00:53:17,870 --> 00:53:20,910 work very well and most people are going to say no to this.
908 00:53:21,110 --> 00:53:26,030 So let's find a smarter and cheaper and more effective way to deal with climate
909 00:53:26,030 --> 00:53:29,030 change so we can do the exact same thing that we talked about in the beginning
910 00:53:29,030 --> 00:53:32,590 of the program, namely being smart and effective on all the different things
911 00:53:32,790 --> 00:53:34,550 that we need to worry about.
912 00:53:34,750 --> 00:53:35,630 Our time is over.
913 00:53:35,830 --> 00:53:38,470 The time is up, but just a few questions more.
914 00:53:38,670 --> 00:53:41,350 Are you familiar with the Swedish term Åsiktskorridoren?
915 00:53:41,550 --> 00:53:43,710 Oh, yes. I love that term.
916 00:53:43,910 --> 00:53:46,310 I don't know how to translate it, but it's a great term.
917 00:53:46,510 --> 00:53:49,910 I love to sort of translate it when I tell other people about Sweden.
918 00:53:50,110 --> 00:53:52,990 Has it been a real thing when it comes to climate politics?
919 00:53:53,190 --> 00:53:57,350 Well, certainly where I've experienced it, I haven't been all that much involved
920 00:53:57,550 --> 00:53:59,990 in Swedish politics, but this is all over the place.
921 00:54:00,190 --> 00:54:04,910 Everybody has been for a very long time saying, no, no, you can't say anything but
922 00:54:05,070 --> 00:54:07,950 climate is the end of the world and we need to do everything about it.
923 00:54:08,150 --> 00:54:12,510 So even though I've never denied climate change, I've always said, yes,
924 00:54:12,510 --> 00:54:14,350 it's a real problem. It's a manmade problem.
925 00:54:14,350 --> 00:54:17,310 It's something that we need to fix, but it's not the only.
926 00:54:17,510 --> 00:54:19,470 Oh, wait, you're a terrible person, right?
927 00:54:19,670 --> 00:54:22,990 I mean, this was literally the reaction for a very long time.
928 00:54:23,190 --> 00:54:24,230 It is no longer.
929 00:54:24,430 --> 00:54:28,870 And I think part of this is because we started realizing, oh, he's right.
930 00:54:29,070 --> 00:54:33,110 But also because it has become much more common, like Bill Gates and many others,
931 00:54:33,310 --> 00:54:34,830 to say, wait a minute.
932 00:54:35,030 --> 00:54:36,990 We actually also have other problems.
933 00:54:37,190 --> 00:54:39,790 And I think the invasion of Ukraine,
934 00:54:39,990 --> 00:54:44,910 Covid, have also made it clear to people, oh, wait, we were not, you know,
935 00:54:45,110 --> 00:54:52,150 we had this idea back in when the when the when the wall fell and the whole world
936 00:54:52,350 --> 00:54:57,310 seemed to all come around at a sort of Western liberal democracy kind of thing.
937 00:54:57,510 --> 00:55:01,390 We thought history had ended and we really just had this one problem.
938 00:55:01,390 --> 00:55:02,630 We need to fix climate change.
939 00:55:02,630 --> 00:55:04,750 Sure, it's going to be expensive, but we can
940 00:55:04,950 --> 00:55:07,070 afford it and it's really the only thing we need to fix.
941 00:55:07,270 --> 00:55:13,070 Now everyone realize, oh, wait, there's a lot of other issues, you know, pension reforms,
942 00:55:13,270 --> 00:55:18,910 defense, the fact that we have so many other problems in the world that we need
943 00:55:19,110 --> 00:55:21,750 to tackle, make it much clearer to most people.
944 00:55:21,950 --> 00:55:24,990 We have to be really careful how we spend our money.
945 00:55:25,190 --> 00:55:28,990 So you and people who think like you, you are the winners.
946 00:55:29,190 --> 00:55:30,790 You're starting to win now.
947 00:55:30,990 --> 00:55:32,750 I can't believe that.
948 00:55:32,950 --> 00:55:34,830 No, no, I don't think that's the right way to think.
949 00:55:35,030 --> 00:55:40,790 Think about it as much more that I think most people were in a
950 00:55:40,990 --> 00:55:46,030 we're in a sort of idealistic scenario for for some decades and believing, oh,
951 00:55:46,230 --> 00:55:49,550 we can do all good things and we're all coming back to reality.
952 00:55:49,750 --> 00:55:51,470 I'm glad that we're all doing that.
953 00:55:51,670 --> 00:55:54,150 So I think it's more sort of welcome back to reality.
954 00:55:54,350 --> 00:55:58,350 Now, let's try to think about this smartly instead of just ideologically.
955 00:55:58,550 --> 00:56:04,070 Let's do this in a cost effective way rather than just wasting lots of resources
956 00:56:04,110 --> 00:56:06,070 on doing almost no good.
957 00:56:06,270 --> 00:56:09,590 Looking back at the history of the debate
958 00:56:09,790 --> 00:56:15,430 on climate, are there any topics where you personally have changed your position?
959 00:56:15,870 --> 00:56:17,150 Not on climate.
960 00:56:17,350 --> 00:56:22,310 No, I mean, so I've always tried to look at the latest evidence.
961 00:56:22,510 --> 00:56:24,390 So one of the things
962 00:56:25,710 --> 00:56:28,870 no, I'm going to give you an example that just shows you I was more right.
963 00:56:29,070 --> 00:56:31,630 So that's not a very good answer.
964 00:56:31,830 --> 00:56:33,910 So I think the fundamental point has always
965 00:56:34,110 --> 00:56:38,670 been that, yes, there is a climate problem, but no, it's not going to be the end of the world.
966 00:56:38,870 --> 00:56:40,670 And that's been my sort of basic argument.
967 00:56:40,870 --> 00:56:43,070 And most of the climate policies that we
968 00:56:43,270 --> 00:56:47,710 can act will have fairly high cost, but deliver very little only in 100 years.
969 00:56:47,910 --> 00:56:51,630 Those are simple, basic outcomes of the the way the climate works.
970 00:56:51,830 --> 00:56:54,030 And I think that's also why
971 00:56:54,230 --> 00:56:58,750 this has not been challenged in 20 or 30 years, because this was what the climate
972 00:56:58,950 --> 00:57:03,910 economists, I mean, William Nordhaus, who who who got the Nobel Prize in climate
973 00:57:04,110 --> 00:57:09,430 economics, he built the first models back in the early 80s, 1980s.
974 00:57:09,630 --> 00:57:11,550 And this was what the model showed back then.
975 00:57:11,750 --> 00:57:12,630 And we knew this.
976 00:57:12,830 --> 00:57:14,470 So I think much more know we were just
977 00:57:14,670 --> 00:57:19,470 in slightly La La Land for for 30 years and now we've come back to reality.
978 00:57:19,670 --> 00:57:21,630 Welcome back from La La Land.
979 00:57:21,830 --> 00:57:25,350 We covered quite a few topics, obviously not all of them.
980 00:57:25,550 --> 00:57:27,030 Are there anything specific you would like
981 00:57:27,230 --> 00:57:32,190 to add to the list as to summarize or anything extra?
982 00:57:32,390 --> 00:57:33,590 So I think
983 00:57:34,070 --> 00:57:38,590 we end up and I love the fact that we talk so much about the poor part
984 00:57:38,790 --> 00:57:43,110 of the world and this podcast, but we always end up because we live in the rich
985 00:57:43,310 --> 00:57:46,750 world, we end up talking about climate change because that's what
986 00:57:46,950 --> 00:57:50,950 takes up a lot more space in in in in a rich world setting.
987 00:57:51,150 --> 00:57:53,230 But I think it is important to recognize
988 00:57:53,430 --> 00:57:58,710 that about half this world's population, so about four billion people live in low
989 00:57:58,910 --> 00:58:03,590 and low middle income countries where the world is just unrecognizable
990 00:58:03,590 --> 00:58:06,510 to the immense luxury we live in.
991 00:58:06,710 --> 00:58:13,150 And so it is worth sometimes taking a step back and realizing, oh, my God, we have it.
992 00:58:13,350 --> 00:58:15,590 Well, our lives are good.
993 00:58:15,790 --> 00:58:17,990 And while it's great that we are also
994 00:58:17,990 --> 00:58:21,270 worried about climate change and all these other things, let's just remember
995 00:58:21,470 --> 00:58:27,150 that there are really, really big and very basic problems for the majority of humanity.
996 00:58:27,350 --> 00:58:30,430 And these are problems that we can solve at very, very low cost.
997 00:58:30,630 --> 00:58:33,270 So I encourage you to go to our
998 00:58:33,270 --> 00:58:35,070 website, CopenhagenConsensus.com.
999 00:58:35,270 --> 00:58:37,430 You can actually download that one pager
1000 00:58:37,630 --> 00:58:40,230 so you can see what the 12 solutions are.
1001 00:58:40,430 --> 00:58:42,390 And it's incredibly cheap.
1002 00:58:42,590 --> 00:58:46,070 And what I would hope is that we can push our politicians
1003 00:58:46,270 --> 00:58:50,630 to do a little more to make this world a much, much better place,
1004 00:58:50,830 --> 00:58:54,550 especially for the people who are not at all where we are.
1005 00:58:54,750 --> 00:58:56,110 Thank you for that summary.
1006 00:58:56,110 --> 00:58:59,390 And thank you so much for joining me today Björn Lomborg.
1007 00:58:59,590 --> 00:59:02,590 Stort tack också förstås till er som har lyssnat.
1008 00:59:02,590 --> 00:59:05,910 Och stort tack för att ni stod ut med min engelska också.
1009 00:59:06,110 --> 00:59:10,190 Det ni har lyssnat på, det är Leda-redaktionen, en podd från Svenska Dagbladet.
1010 00:59:10,390 --> 00:59:11,830 Som vanligt är ni varmt välkomna att höra
1011 00:59:12,030 --> 00:59:16,110 över till oss på redaktionen med tankar och synpunkter på det vi har precis diskuterat.
1012 00:59:16,310 --> 00:59:20,230 Antar att det finns en hel del tankar efter Björns utläggningar,
1013 00:59:20,430 --> 00:59:23,430 men också om ni har idéer och förslag på ämnen vi ska ta upp i framtiden.
1014 00:59:23,630 --> 00:59:27,390 Maila då till ledarsidan snabla.svd.se.
1015 00:59:27,590 --> 00:59:32,150 Dagens producent, han heter Jesper Sandström, ansvarig utgivare är Lisa Irenius.
1016 00:59:32,150 --> 00:59:35,150 Själv heter jag Andreas Eriksson och jag hoppas att vi hörs snart igen.
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