This is a question that the Copenhagen Consensus aims to answer. A nonprofit project founded in 2002, it employs many economists to calculate the costs and benefits of possible solutions to global problems, and gives a estimation of the benefits reaped from each dollar spent.
Here are their calculations for 2015:
Something immediately visible is that climate change is placed low on priorities. While climate change is clearly happening, and has significant consequences, it's just not efficient to find a solution to it. In fact, it's less efficient to actually solve climate change than simply adapting to the conditions.
It's pretty clear, then, why solutions involving world trade gives a ridiculous amount of benefit - when more countries are trading, it leads to economic growth for everyone. It also makes sense why things like health and gender issues are to be prioritized: with more people (especially women) unburdened of things like unplanned children or disease, there is more productivity.
In the end, this is in no way a ranking of problems in terms of significance. But it's an interesting thought to find solutions with world trade in order to have more budget to tackle more pressing problems.
I find it interesting that a single dollar could lead to a product 2000 times its value, but at the same time there are factors blocking many of these from occurring. For example, the Doha Development Round, which according to the chart would lead to the most economic benefit, broke down in negotiations in 2008.
ReplyDeleteThis is super cool. It is interesting to see how people prioritize certain issues. Many people would likely disagree with the fact that climate change is not a high priority. When I first read that I disagreed as well. However, after reading the rest of the post and understanding that it is ranked based on what is most feasible and efficient it makes sense that climate change isn't ranked that high because it just more efficient to adapt than to try and fix it.
ReplyDeleteThis is interesting to see that other issues are more feasible to solve. However I think despite the opportunity cost of fixing climate change over other issues it is still worth it. One way or another climate change impacts all of us in an arguably more significant way. I think we must tackle the heaviest issue first before we focus on issue more specific to different groups.
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