WTH Should I Read This Summer? Best Things First by Bjorn Lomborg

It may not come as a surprise that in much of the developed
world, money spent is not necessarily money used well. We have
done podcasts on the ideological and political dangers of bad
development policy, but the dollar-to-donuts, real practical bent
of the conversation is just as important. Because at the end of
the day, the international community has come up with many (169)
development objectives, most all of them unreachable (we have
only met one). Instead of looking at the trajectory of UN
sustainable development goals and bemoaning their overreach and
underperformance, Bjorn Lomborg presents a realistic
re-orientation of priorities. He has whittled the 169 UNSDGs down
to 12 actionable steps the international community can take to
challenge today’s problems. The goals are straightforward,
cost-effective, and good faith – for anyone discouraged by the
constant backsliding and bureaucratic stagnation of today, this
is a refreshing step forward.


Bjorn Lomborg is the president of the think tank Copenhagen
Consensus Center and the former director of the Danish
government's Environmental Assessment Institute. He became
internationally known for his best-selling book The Skeptical
Environmentalist (2001). Bjorn is listed as one of Time’s 100
most influential people, and his most recent book is Best Things
First: The 12 Most Efficient Solutions for the World’s Poorest
and Our Global SDG Promises.


Download the transcript here.