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taxpayer-funded inventions if NIH granted gal observers predict that NIH will reject the the petition. “It’s a misapplication of the petition, Love is hoping for a boost from statute … [that] would likely have serious University of California, Los Angeles.
election-year politics. “Drug pricing is a big political issue” that President George W.
said AAU representative Theodore Poehler, Bush won’t want to hand to his opponent, he vice provost for research at Johns Hopkins Rohrbaugh, head of the agency’s technology- says. Love has also asked NIH to exercise transfer office, said he plans to “move expe- march-in rights on another drug, Pfizer’s would be a major deterrent to licensing in- Xalatan glaucoma treatment, which he says ventions … if potential licensees believe costs up to five times more in the United the government has authority” to control make the final decision. Although many le- Economists Rate Greenhouse Gas Curbs a Poor Investment
COPENHAGEN—Feel like throwing your tax
money away? Invest in measures to rein in global warming. That’s the controversial conclusion, at least, of a workshop here last week that brought together a varied group of economists, including three Nobel laureates, to analyze spending on global problems.
Participants of the “Copenhagen Consen- sus” weren’t purely naysayers: They lauded, as money well spent, initiatives proposed to com- bat AIDS, malaria, and malnutrition, for ex- ample. “This will help us focus on the more important problems,” says workshop organizer Bjørn Lomborg, director of the Environmental Stacked deck? Bjørn Lomborg (right) with Danish Prime
Many scientists don’t buy that argument, however. “We shouldn’t be spending less on Change (IPCC), which predicts an increase “Climate change is not an economics prob- sanitation. The problems are interrelated,” in average global temperatures of between lem. It’s an ethics problem,” he says. Adds says Stephen Schneider, a climatologist at 1.4° and 5.8°C by the year 2100. Lomborg John Holdren, an environmental policy ex- Stanford University, who labels the work- acknowledged that the report is “the best of pert at Harvard University, “One can’t help shop’s premise “phony and a distortion.” our knowledge on climate change.” The eco- The stated premise was that the industrial- nomic benefits of stemming global warming both the participants list and the framing of Lomborg rejects that charge, arguing that The 10 Challenges
the workshop’s organization was “unbiased.” Armed conflicts
was short on environmental expertise. “I in- Climate change
vited other economists,” who declined to Communicable diseases
come, he says, dismissing his critics as “con- Education
spiracy theorists.” Lomborg plans to distrib- Financial instability
ute the panel’s conclusions to governments Governance and corruption
cerns (Science, 2 January, p.
Malnutrition and hunger
Population and migration
economists convened an alternative confer- Sanitation and water
ence, “Global Conscience,” in Copenhagen Subsidies and trade barriers
last week to discuss sustainable development.
“We shouldn’t choose between poverty eradi- cation and prevention of climate change,” to base spending on cost-benefit ratios. Mea- line of argument, concluding that Cline’s pro- says co-organizer Christian Jørgensen, chair sures to stem climate change should compete posals would be “very bad” investments. Pan- of the nonprofit Danish Ecological Council.
for development aid, Lomborg suggests, be- elist Nancy Stokey, an economist at the Uni- “Prevention of climate change will pay off; it cause according to predictions “the develop- versity of Chicago, explains that the solutions will reduce our dependence on Middle East ing world will suffer most of the damage from would require “large expenditures for bene- oil, and it will create a new industrial sector fits that would come far in the future.” Even for renewable energy and energy conserva- with a less limited budget, the Kyoto Proto- tion.” Clearly, economics alone won’t recon- the right-leaning Danish government, Lom- col, in the panel’s view, is not worthwhile.
cile these sharply divergent world views. borg invited the nine economists who attended That leaves scientists such as Schneider, —including Nobelists Robert Fogel of the a lead author of the IPCC report, fuming.
John Bohannon is a writer based in Berlin.

Source: http://www.johnbohannon.org/NewFiles/lomborg.pdf