The Economist's Cookbook

Here is a great bit by Don Boudreaux over at Cafe Hayek on the Copenhagen Consensus and Bjorn Lomborg.

Funny how when the economists examine the best ways to make the worst off people in the world better off, global warming is at the bottom of the list. Up near the top are steps to fight malnutrition and ... wait for it ... increases in Free Trade policies.

Here is a magnificent quote from Lomborg's piece in the Wall Street Journal:

The benefits of freer trade were estimated in a paper presented by Professors Kym Anderson and Alan Winters. They found that a successful Doha Round could generate up to $113 trillion in new wealth during the 21st century, at a cost of $420 billion or less from inefficient industries going bust. If you like ratios, that's a return of $269 for every $1 of cost. A less conservative projection puts the gains three times higher. More than 80% of this global windfall would go to the world's poorest countries.

Suck it Al Gore ...

This goes to reinforce something that I've come to believe: Modern Environmentalism as we know it in the west is a hobby of rich white people with too much time on their hands. People that are too busy being anti-capitalist rather than Pro-Earth.