Diese Woche fand in der dänischen Hauptstadt der Copenhagen Consensus 2008 statt. Organisiert wurde das Ganze von meinem guten Freund and Kollegen Bjorn Lomborg. Heute berichtet die Times über die wichtigsten Ergebnisse der Tagung. Fazit: Die Bekämpfung von Hunger und Unterernährung sind die wichtigsten globalen Prioritäten. Der Klimawandel kam wieder, wie schon vor vier Jahren, auf den letzten Platz:

Malnutrition should be the world’s major priority for aid and development, a panel of eight leading economists, including five Nobel laureates, declared yesterday. The provision of supplements of vitamin A and zinc to children in developing countries, to prevent avoidable deficiencies that affect hundreds of millions of children, is the most cost-effective way of making the world a better place, the Copenhagen Consensus initiative has found. Three other strategies for improving diets in poor nations were also named among the top six of 30 challenges assessed by the project, which aims to prioritise solutions to the world’s many problems according to their costs and benefits. Efforts to control global warming by cutting greenhouse gas emissions, however, were rated at the bottom of the league table, as the economists considered the high costs of such action were not justified by the payoffs. Research into new low-carbon technologies, such as solar and nuclear fusion power, was ranked as more worthwhile, in 14th place. The previous Copenhagen Consensus, held in 2004, also listed global warming as its lowest priority. The exercise was organised by Bjorn Lomborg, the controversial Danish statistician who has long argued that though climate change is real, current approaches to fighting it offer poor value for money.

Mehr Informationen finden sich auf der offiziellen Webseite des Copenhagen Consensus 2008.