From the wink, wink, nudge, nudge files comes the continuing saga of Bjorn Lomberg whose controversial book 'The Skeptical Environmentalist' had the author up on charges of scientific dishonesty by the Danish scientific establishment. Now Lomberg, who beat the rap, is heading an effort to 'save the world'.
Perhaps Mr. Lomberg should be given a standing ovation for attaching a price tag to the environment. The only way, it seems, for current economic models to validate environmental problems and issues is by determining the 'worth' of each article now contained by faith alone. By attacking the economic postulate that labor is the exclusive source of wealth it may now be possible to set a standard for conduct under legislative decree not possible since Adam Smith taught us the road to riches by valuing the contribution of people -- an ideology of revolution consumable by the thinkers of his time who used calculation to build wealth.
Perhaps the work done under the Copenhagen Consensus will redefine economics to include what has only been known and acted upon by intuition since the days of Smith, and not by the calculation upon which so many decisions to exploit are made.
Like a phoenix new methodologies arise from the ashes of what was. With the environment at stake it isn't a good idea to rely on a miracle as the phoenix does. In reality if we get to ashes we are too late.
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/3/7/23496/47566
The Economist magazine has started a project, headed by Bjorn Lomberg, author of "The Skeptical Environmentalist", to gather together economists and domain experts to answer the question of how the world should rank its problems and how they can be dealt with.
In this weeks Economist there is an article outlining the project. The project also has its own website.
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