Science Quote by Bjorn Lomborg

Lomborg’s line performs a neat rhetorical pivot: it acknowledges the ambient fog of crisis while quietly arguing that crisis is a lousy baseline for judging reality. “Of course” is the tell. It concedes what the audience already feels - the daily feed of wars, fires, inflation, disease - and then flips the frame from headline to trajectory. That “but on the other hand” is doing heavy lifting: it invites a more statistical, long-view mindset without sounding like a scold.

The intent is less “stop worrying” than “stop letting problems monopolize your metrics.” Lomborg’s public role has long been to challenge catastrophe narratives, especially around climate and development, by emphasizing trends in health, poverty, and technology. In that context, the quote functions as a permission slip to ask an unfashionable question: not whether the world is messy (it is), but whether it is net-improving. It’s an argument for comparative thinking - “right direction” over “perfect outcome.”

The subtext is a critique of the media-political economy of doom. Problems are infinite; attention is scarce. If you only tally failures, you can always “prove” decline. By shifting to directionality, Lomborg nudges readers toward indicators, trade-offs, and prioritization: which problems are shrinking, which are growing, which interventions scale. Still, the vagueness of “right” and “wrong” leaves a back door: progress for whom, and at what cost? That ambiguity is also why the line lands; it feels like common sense while smuggling in a worldview that prefers trendlines to moral panic.