12 cost-effective ways to help the world’s poorest Opinion With global development goals falling short and resources dwindling, nations and philanthropists must abandon the comprehensive Sustainable Development Goals and instead focus their limited funds on a dozen proven, highly cost-effective policies, says Bjorn Lomborg The start of a new year is a time for reflection and resolve. Yet amid our personal goals for 2026, [...]
COP30 must move beyond doomsday narrative Green campaigners insist that emissions cuts must come first for the poor - when what they really need are jobs, food and an escape from poverty.
The World Bank should focus on poverty, not climate change Opinion Research repeatedly shows that pound for pound, core development investments — like improving maternal health, advancing e-learning, or enhancing agricultural yields — deliver much greater and faster benefits than climate spending, writes Bjorn Lomborg With Cop30 underway in Brazil, the United States has told the World Bank to stop obsessing about climate and get back to [...]
Ignore the climate alarmism – the biggest polluter is poverty April 22, 2025 Instead of being scared by sensationalist rhetoric into spending trillions on policies that won’t work, we should remember the remarkable progress nations have made on the environment as they have become richer, says Bjorn Lomborg As we mark Earth Day, it’s tempting to believe that the world is on the brink of environmental collapse. We [...]
Reparations won’t fix climate change November 18, 2024 Wrong-headed demands that every single person in the rich world should pay $1000 a year in climate reparations will squeeze aid funding and do nothing to advance the green transition. The money would be better spent on R&D to drive down the cost of renewables, says Bjorn Lomborg The UN climate summit in Azerbaijan is [...]
How do you really improve schools? (Hint: it’s not smaller classes or paying teachers more) October 14, 2024 Malawi, one of the poorest countries in the world with overcrowded classrooms and teacher shortages, is embracing pioneering technology – and turning its schools around, writes Bjorn Lomborg Childrens’ educational test scores are a major cause for concern across the world. Learning plummeted nearly everywhere during the Covid pandemic – but even before that, standardised [...]
Don’t let green dogma get in the way of climate science July 22, 2024 Activists including Greta Thunberg have shut down a key research project into geoengineering — a potentially game-changing technology — arguing that it could provide an excuse not to cut fossil fuels. We can’t afford to let climate science become politicised, says Bjorn Lomborg Climate studies are increasingly becoming politicised. Harvard University recently shut down a key geoengineering [...]
Earth Day: 50 years on, there is impressive progress to cheer April 22, 2020 As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Earth Day and the birth of modern environmentalism, we should pause to give each other a virtual “high five” for the impressive environmental progress society has accomplished during this span. We should also think about the ways we can make the next 50 far more effective. Case in [...]
Why embracing freer trade could be our best chance to help the world’s poor October 27, 2014 WITH one simple policy – more free trade – we could make the world $500 trillion better off and lift 160m people out of extreme poverty. If there is one question we have to ask ourselves, it is: why don’t we? In 2000, the international community agreed a set of important targets to improve the [...]
