Copenhagen Consensus
The approach is justified as a corrective to standard practice in international development, where, it is alleged, media attention and the "court of public opinion" results in priorities that are often far from optimal.
The 2012 conference ranked bundled micronutrient interventions the highest priority,[3] and the 2008 report identified supplementing vitamins for undernourished children as the world’s best investment.
In May 2012, the third global Copenhagen Consensus[5] was held, gathering economists to analyze the costs and benefits of different approaches to tackling the world‘s biggest problems.
In addition, the Center commissioned research on Corruption[17] and trade barriers,[18] but the Expert Panel did not rank these for Copenhagen Consensus 2012, because the solutions to these challenges are political rather than investment-related.
Slate readers' ranking corresponded with that of the Expert Panel on many points, including the desirability of bundled micronutrient intervention; however, the most striking difference was in connection with the problem of overpopulation.
[20] Nobel Prize winners marked with (¤) In the Copenhagen Consensus 2008, the solutions for global problems have been ranked in the following order:[21] Unlike the 2004 results, these were not grouped into qualitative bands such as Good, Poor, etc.
Kåre Fog further pointed out that the future benefits of emissions reduction were discounted at a higher rate than for any of the other 27 proposals,[23] stating "so there is an obvious reason why the climate issue always is ranked last" in Lomborg's environmental studies.
Increasing the availability of micronutrients, particularly reducing iron deficiency anemia through dietary supplements, was judged to have an exceptionally high ratio of benefits to costs, which were estimated at $12 billion.
The fourth priority identified was controlling and treating malaria; $13 billion costs were judged to produce very good benefits, particularly if applied toward chemically-treated mosquito netting for beds.
Cline relies on various research studies published in the field of economics and attempted to compare the estimated cost of mitigation policies against the expected reduction in the damage of the global warming.
Members of the panel including Thomas Schelling and one of the two perspective paper writers Robert O. Mendelsohn (both opponents of the Kyoto protocol) criticised Cline, mainly on the issue of discount rates.
(See "The opponent notes to the paper on Climate Change" [28]) Mendelsohn, in particular, characterizing Cline's position, said that "[i]f we use a large discount rate, they will be judged to be small effects" and called it "circular reasoning, not a justification".
[31] Tom Burke, a former director of Friends of the Earth, repudiated the entire approach of the project, arguing that applying cost–benefit analysis in the way the Copenhagen panel did was "junk economics".
[32] John Quiggin, an Australian economics professor, commented that the project is a mix of "a substantial contribution to our understanding of important issues facing the world" and an "exercises in political propaganda" and argued that the selection of the panel members was slanted towards the conclusions previously supported by Lomborg.
[33] Quiggin observed that Lomborg had argued in his controversial book The Skeptical Environmentalist that resources allocated to mitigating global warming would be better spent on improving water quality and sanitation, and was therefore seen as having prejudged the issues.
Under the heading "Wrong Question", Sachs further argued that: "The panel that drew up the Copenhagen Consensus was asked to allocate an additional US$50 billion in spending by wealthy countries, distributed over five years, to address the world’s biggest problems.
[35] Michael Grubb, an economist and lead author for several IPCC reports, commented on the Copenhagen Consensus, writing:[36] To try and define climate policy as a trade-off against foreign aid is thus a forced choice that bears no relationship to reality.
This way of posing the question is both morally inappropriate and irrelevant to the determination of real climate mitigation policy.Quiggin argued that the members of the 2004 panel, selected by Lomborg, were "generally towards the right and, to the extent that they had stated views, to be opponents of Kyoto.
[31] Commenting on the 2004 Copenhagen Consensus, climatologist and IPCC author Stephen Schneider criticised Lomborg for only inviting economists to participate:[37] In order to achieve a true consensus, I think Lomborg would've had to invite ecologists, social scientists concerned with justice and how climate change impacts and policies are often inequitably distributed, philosophers who could challenge the economic paradigm of "one dollar, one vote" implicit in cost–benefit analyses promoted by economists, and climate scientists who could easily show that Lomborg's claim that climate change will have only minimal effects is not sound science.Lomborg countered criticism of the panel membership by stating that "Sachs disparaged the Consensus 'dream team' because it only consisted of economists.
