Dave Bangert

dbangert@jconline.com

LAFAYETTE, Ind. — When the call didn’t want to connect from Lafayette to Copenhagen, Denmark, on Friday morning, a few rushed emails, third-party texts and traded numbers later Bjorn Lomborg was on the phone, picking up the charges.

“Actually, it's a lot cheaper calling the other way,” Lomborg laughed. “So this is certainly efficient from a global point of view.”

And that’s as good a place as any to pick a conversation with Lomborg, president of an economic think tank called the Copenhagen Consensus Center, ahead of his visit to Purdue University on Tuesday for a public conversation with President Mitch Daniels.

Lomborg, controversial no doubt, is all about the dollars and cents when it comes to global issues, assigning cost analysis to prioritize climate change, overpopulation, energy production and you name it. His 1998 book, “The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World,” questioned how well attention to, say, global warming meshed with other, potentially better priorities. Or, as his think tank puts it, “The Smartest Targets for the World.”

It’s the sort of skepticism that tends to get ripped as hard-headed and provocative for provocation’s sake. “Just about everywhere you look, momentum is building to solve climate change. … And then there is Bjorn Lomborg,” Nathaniel Keohane, vice president of the Environmental Defense Fund, wrote in a 2016 piece for Forbes, that unspooled a detailed criticism built on the thesis contained in the headline: “Bjorn Lomborg’s climate analysis is a mess.”

Closer to home, the grumbling in some parts of the research campus that Daniels is giving Lomborg the megaphone of a Presidential Lecture Series slot — 6:30 p.m. Tuesday in Fowler Hall inside the Stewart Center — is for real.

“We welcome diverse voices on campus, but this invitation is baffling,” said Jeffrey Dukes, a biology and forestry professor and director of the Purdue Climate Change Research Center. “People in the audience should realize that Bjorn Lomborg is just a propaganda artist. He supports his arguments by twisting facts and cherry picking data. That's no way to begin a constructive discussion on any topic.”

Lomborg settles in for the interview by acknowledging the campus rumblings “I’m sure it’s there.”

“I’m glad we’re able to connect,” he said after the Friday morning, international-rates confusion. “Conversation is what we need more of. Let’s talk.”

OK, then.

Question: You know, I'm wondering as you're coming to Purdue, how did you first cross paths with Mitch Daniels in your work? And what’s the upshot of what you’ll talk about?

Lomborg: You should probably ask him because I understand that he's read a number of the things that I've produced. … I don't want to give away too much because I don't want people to just read your article and not come. At the end of the day there's an enormous amount of things that crave our attention. There are lots of problems in the world and there's also lots and lots of solutions to big problems in the world. They're all basically crying out and say, "Pick me! Pick me!" You know, "Spend money on me!" This is both true for governments and it's true for philanthropists. …

What my organization tries to do is to get a sense of: Where can you actually do the most good? Instead of just talking about what is the most attention-grabbing thing, then where can you actually do the most good? We do that with lots of economists.

Of course, that doesn't mean we're just about money. We're both looking at the economic impact, but also the social impact — typically how many people won't die if you implement this solution — and the environmental impact. How many wetlands will you save or how many species will you save? That kind of thing. Then what we try to do is translate all of that into a monetary term. So essentially we provide you with a menu where you can see, "If I spend it all here, I'll do $2 of social and environmental and economic good. If I spend it all here, I'll do $20 of social and environmental and economic good." So we try to sort of gently push you towards doing the thing that'll do $20 before you do the things that'll just do $2.

PART OF DANIELS' LECTURE SERIES: J.D. Vance and 'Hillbilly Elegy' for a condescending campus

GEORGE WILL AT PURDUE: Of trigger warnings and offended campuses

EDUCATION CHIEF: Arne Duncan and the Mitch Daniels mutual fan club

'DEAL WITH IT': Mitch Daniels and Purdue's free speech policy

Q:You know, the metrics that you're talking about right now really fit in with what Mitch Daniels is all about, whether it's in education, in business, in all kinds of things. Some here are stewing, saying that he's complicit with your skeptical take on climate change, just by having you show up on campus. Is that a fair or unfair criticism?

Lomborg: I have no idea what he thinks about these issues, but I would certainly not imagine that you don't want to hear sensible arguments. … First of all, let's get this clear. Climate change is real. It's happening, and it'll overall be a negative impact for humanity. It's definitely a problem. It's something that we need to fix. That's not where my quibble is. My concern is, and I think there is very good literature that shows that this is the case, that the current approach to tackling climate change is phenomenally ineffective.

Q: Describe what you mean by that. What is the approach right now as you see it?

Lomborg: It's really just a manifestation of feeling good about yourself. Most of the global approaches to global warming over the last 25 years have been, "Let's make grand promises and not fulfill them," which of course simply means that you feel good. You feel that you've certainly done something about this. You've said how terrible it is and we got to do something. Then what you end up doing is terrifically little. …

Certainly, at the (European Union) we've actually committed to cut carbon emissions quite significantly, so about 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 and to 40 percent below in 2030. That's going to have real costs, because it basically means you have to get electricity and you have to get energy from sources that are more expensive. It'll also have a benefit, because you will cut down on (carbon dioxide) emissions and hence cut down on dangerous global warming. There is both cost and there are benefits. The problem is the costs are much, much larger. … So essentially you spend about $200 billion and you get $10 (billion to) $20 billion of benefit, basically to people far into the future. You're essentially spending a dollar and doing some 5 (cents to) 10 cents of good. I would argue that that's a really, really poor way to help the world.

Q:What’s a better way, are you saying?

Lomborg: What we should be doing, and what the analyses show is we should be investing a lot more in green energy (research and development). Basically make future green energy so cheap that everyone would want to switch. Instead of trying to get everyone to switch when it's rather expensive to switch, we should focus on the research that will make it cheap or, even better, cost-effective to switch, so that everyone would switch. Not just rich, well-meaning Americans and Danes who would do it a little bit on the margin, but also all the people who don't believe in global warming, and also all the Indians and the Chinese and everybody else. Because it was simply cheaper.

Q: Do you find that people understand fundamentals and the nuances of climate change, or is this just one of those issues that you're picking a side and you're not going to change your mind no matter what anyone else says?

Lomborg: Global warming has become a party-identification tool instead. So, if you're a Democrat, you're incredibly worried and you want to throw everything and the kitchen sink at this. And if you're a Republican, you think this is all crap. Neither approach is very helpful in order to solve a real problem. What I would like to see is have this conversation saying, "Look. It is a real problem. It's not the end of the world."

Q: Do you feel that when you come on college campuses you get some of that side eye and people who feel that you're just simply feeding those looking for excuses to do nothing about climate change?

Lomborg: Look, not everyone is going to agree with me and that's fine. … This is about having a sensible conversation, and I think you can legitimately have a discussion about: Is the damage in 2070 … going to be 0.2 percent or is it going to be 2 percent? … But I don't think you can go out and say it's 50 percent or it's 100 percent, and I don't think you do anyone any service by making that argument. Likewise, of course, you don't make any service by saying, "No, no, no. It's zero. It doesn't exist." Coming together and realizing, "Look, this is a problem. We tackle this problem like we tackle all the others, by being smart, not by being scared and running around headless."

Q: Out of the metrics you're talking about, what’s the best cost-benefit problem you see, then?

Lomborg: Some of the best investments are actually in … things unfortunately Donald Trump doesn't like.

Q:Such as?

Lomborg: (One) is in contraception for women. There's about 215 million women who don't have access to contraception, and if we could get them access it would mean about 150,000 fewer women dying in childbirth every year. It would mean because you could better space your kids, that about 600,000 kids wouldn't die each year. … Overall, we estimate that for every dollar spent on contraception you'd do about $120 worth of good.

Q: That's the best investment that you see?

Lomborg: No. That's the second best. The best investment is spending money on getting free trade. Basically free trade is held up by a lot of agricultural interests and others. If you pay them off, the benefits of more free trade are amazing, especially for the Third World in the long run. … We estimate for every dollar spent basically paying off interest groups like farmers you will do about $2,000 worth of good. …

In some sense you could say we're the defenders of the boring problems. The boring problems just happen to have really effective solutions. It's much more fun to be in a demonstration where you're talking about something that has the cute pictures of great animals or crying babies or the great PR, but we're trying to say, "But look, you also need to look at what's the best bang for the buck. It's more boring, but ultimately it'll actually help make sure that you didn't just spend your life on doing something that felt good, but something that actually did good."

Q: It will be interesting to see what sort of reaction you get on campus. Just mentioning your name seems to get people riled.

Lomborg: Oh, yeah. Look. There's a lot of people who have sort of a very strong reaction, and my sense is that these are the people who have probably only heard a sort of cartoon caricature of what I say. Let me invite them to come and hear what I have to say and then decide I'm an idiot.

Bangert is a columnist with the Journal & Courier. Contact him at dbangert@jconline.com. Follow him on Twitter: @davebangert.