Bjorn Lomborg Biography Quotes 20 Report mistakes

20 Quotes
Occup.	Scientist
From	Denmark
Born	January 6, 1965
Age	61 years

Early Life and Education
Bjoern Lomborg (born 1965) is a Danish author and political scientist best known for his work on environmental policy and global prioritization. Raised and educated in Denmark, he trained in political science and developed a strong interest in statistics and game theory. His early academic work emphasized quantitative methods, an orientation that later shaped his approach to public debates about the environment and development. As a young scholar, he began teaching and mentoring students in methods-driven courses, encouraging careful reading of data and skepticism about widely repeated claims that lacked rigorous empirical support.

Academic Career and Turn Toward Environmental Questions
Lomborg taught for years at a Danish university, where he introduced students to statistical reasoning and the use of large data sets in political and social analysis. In the late 1990s he encountered the writings of the economist Julian L. Simon, whose contrarian arguments about long-run improvements in human welfare and resource abundance inspired Lomborg to test popular environmental assertions with data. Working with students, he undertook a series of empirical checks that led him to argue that many environmental indicators were improving rather than worsening, and that priorities should be set by comparing costs and benefits rather than by urgency or fear alone.

The Skeptical Environmentalist and the Scientific Debate
These efforts culminated in his book The Skeptical Environmentalist, first published in Danish and then in English in 2001. The book claimed that while environmental problems exist, the state of the world was often better than portrayed, and that policy should be guided by measured outcomes and cost-effectiveness. It drew intense criticism from prominent scientists and commentators, including John Holdren, Stephen Schneider, and E. O. Wilson, who challenged Lomborg's use of sources, interpretations, and conclusions. In Denmark the dispute took an institutional turn: the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty issued a harsh critique of the book, describing it as falling short of scientific standards. The Danish Ministry of Science later annulled that finding on procedural grounds, leaving intact the broader public debate but rescinding the official censure. The controversy amplified Lomborg's public profile and placed him at the center of an enduring argument over evidence, uncertainty, and the communication of environmental risk.

Public Service and the Environmental Assessment Institute
Amid this debate, the Danish government appointed Lomborg in the early 2000s to lead a new Environmental Assessment Institute in Copenhagen. In that role he pursued cost-benefit analysis as a tool for evaluating environmental regulations, arguing for prioritization based on measurable welfare gains. Supporters saw a needed corrective to symbolic policy making; critics worried that the approach understated non-market values and long-term ecological risks. The appointment and the institute's work were intensely scrutinized in Denmark's press and parliament, reflecting both his influence and the polarization surrounding his views.

Copenhagen Consensus and Global Prioritization
Building on his preference for comparative analysis, Lomborg founded the Copenhagen Consensus Center, which convenes economists and other experts to rank global challenges by the payoff of specific interventions. The first Copenhagen Consensus meeting in 2004 brought together leading economists, including several future or current Nobel laureates such as Thomas Schelling, Robert Fogel, Douglass North, and Vernon Smith, to weigh options ranging from disease control and nutrition to trade and climate mitigation. The panels frequently elevated interventions like micronutrient fortification, tuberculosis and malaria control, and expanded immunization as extraordinarily cost-effective, while ranking some emissions-reduction schemes lower when judged solely by near-term benefit-cost ratios. Over subsequent years the center organized regional and global assessments, engaged with discussions around the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and commissioned academic teams to evaluate policies in low- and middle-income countries. Lomborg's role was to frame the questions, recruit experts, and communicate results, while the panels' findings reflected the judgments of participating economists rather than his alone.

Climate Policy, Media, and Later Work
Lomborg has argued for carbon pricing, greater investment in energy research and development, and adaptation strategies that reduce climate vulnerability, while criticizing targets he sees as costly relative to expected benefits. He has been a prolific columnist, publishing essays through Project Syndicate and major newspapers, and he has debated climate communicators and scientists in public forums. His book Cool It extended his climate arguments to a broader audience, and a documentary film of the same name, directed by Ondi Timoner, followed him as he engaged allies and critics and visited projects he considered promising. Later publications distilled Copenhagen Consensus research into accessible priorities for philanthropists and policymakers and presented case studies on health, education, and governance interventions with high social returns.

Collaborators, Critics, and Influence
Throughout his career, Lomborg has operated in a public arena alongside influential figures. Julian Simon's ideas provided an early catalyst. Economists such as Thomas Schelling, Robert Fogel, Douglass North, and Vernon Smith helped establish the credibility of the first Copenhagen Consensus exercise by lending their expertise to its rankings. Policymakers and civil servants in Denmark collaborated with him during his tenure at the Environmental Assessment Institute. On the other side of the debate, scientists like John Holdren, Stephen Schneider, and E. O. Wilson challenged his framing of environmental risks, arguing that aggregating disparate measures into cost-benefit ratios can obscure systemic and irreversible harms. The resulting exchange, sometimes sharp, has nonetheless pushed discussions of climate and development to be more explicit about assumptions, discount rates, and uncertainties.

Controversies and Institutional Challenges
Lomborg's high public profile has periodically collided with institutional politics. Plans to establish new policy centers with him as a leader have at times been withdrawn after public criticism, illustrating how his name can be both an asset and a liability. He has maintained, however, that robust, transparent cost-benefit analysis helps governments and donors achieve more with limited resources, and that open disagreement is a sign of healthy policy debate rather than a reason to withdraw.

Legacy and Ongoing Work
Lomborg's legacy lies less in a single theory than in the practice of prioritization and the insistence that evidence about human welfare trends matters for policy. He helped normalize the idea that philanthropists and governments should compare interventions across sectors and countries, asking which choices save the most lives or deliver the greatest prosperity per dollar. Even many critics of his conclusions have adopted elements of this framework when advocating for their own preferred policies. As a public intellectual from Denmark with training in political science and a taste for quantitative argument, he has been a persistent voice for explicit trade-offs in environmental and development policy, continuing to work with economists, public health experts, and policymakers to identify interventions that he argues can do the most good at the least cost.

Our collection contains 20 quotes who is written by Bjorn, under the main topics: Truth - Equality - Science - Reason & Logic - Decision-Making.

Bjorn Lomborg Famous Works