The Copenhagen Consensus is arguably the world’s most rational approach to Government spending.    The group, which includes many luminaries in economics, science, and development, reviews many approaches to making the world a better place and ranks them in terms of global priority.     The approach takes the return on investment in terms of dollars for lives very seriously.   Unlike political spending these decisions are looking at the most bang for the buck, rather than the most political benefits which are often strongly influenced by irrational concerns from lobbyists or personal agendas.     Obviously there’s no perfect way to allocate money but it’s certainly the best major effort to date and people *opposed to this approach* should be the ones making their case against it.      One of the most pressing reasons to move ahead with these efforts – even during a time of economic crisis – is that they are very, very cheap ways to do a huge amount of good both morally and strategically.    The reason we do not proceed?   Ignorance, pure and simple ignorance.

http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/Default.aspx?ID=953

Copenhagen is not focused on reviving the flailing global economy although I’d love to see us evaluate the types of global stimulus we’d see by funding innovative solutions to pressing global problems.     New grass for the national mall might put a few fertilizer guys to work for a few months, but it would be a lot more interesting  (let alone morally imperative) to throw a tiny fraction of that budget item towards some innovative new jobs in the health and poverty sectors, where simply improving health and reducing poverty will have powerful positive effects on raising the US and global GDP.      Raising living and health standards lowers birth rates so one of the consequences of spending the relatively tiny sums budgeted  by Copenhagen Consensus is helping to reduce population pressure as well as improve the quality of life for those already here.