Ideas change everything

Global priorities bigger than climate change

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Bjorn Lomborg |

TED2005

• February 2005

Given $50 billion to spend, which would you solve first, AIDS or global warming? Danish political scientist Bjorn Lomborg comes up with surprising answers.

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Want to use TED Talks in your organization?

Given $50 billion to spend, which would you solve first, AIDS or global warming? Danish political scientist Bjorn Lomborg comes up with surprising answers.

Want to use TED Talks in your organization?

This talk was presented at an official TED conference.

Read our curation guidelines.

About the speaker

Global prioritizer

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Danish political scientist Bjorn Lomborg heads the Copenhagen Consensus, which has prioritized the world's greatest problems -- global warming, world poverty, disease -- based on how effective our solutions might be. It's a thought-provoking, even provocative list.

Learn more

Cool It

Bjorn Lomborg | Knopf (2007)

Bjorn Lomborg - *Cool It*

Since the Talk: 8 years later, the biggest problems in the world

Nearly a decade after he gave his talk, Lomborg shares his latest thinking on where we should focus spending to maximize social good.

What do global problems cost us?

Watch Bjorn Lomborg's follow-up talk and read a Q&A on what the numbers mean.

This talk was presented at an official TED conference.

Read our curation guidelines.