Why economics is the answer

And why Stephane Dion should consider a similar approach to priority-making.

The Copenhagen Consensus, far from jumping on bandwagons and joining senseless scaremongering tactics, groups several prominent economists in order to determine global priorities. The peculiarity of this exercise is the focus on the economics of intervention, rather than other considerations. Cost-benefit analysis may sound insensitive, but it does yield a very commonsensical priority list. They're back, for CC2008.

The outcome of the 2004 Copenhagen Consensus can be found here. This year's topics are Disease, Water & Sanitation, Education, Women & Development, Global Warming, Air Pollution, Malnutrition, Trade Barriers, Conflicts and Terrorism. You can make your own ranking on the Times website.

What's so special about the Copenhagen Consensus? Its 2004 ranking sent the Kyoto accord rock bottom in the priority list, dismissing current climate change strategies as too costly for no benefit, whereas tackling diseases, malnutrition and trade barriers monopolized the top five. It is a politically unbiased recommendation for enhancing development while minimizing the costs associated with it. Rather than feeding dreams and delusions, the Consensus crunches numbers, which are less opinable than the IPCC's scaremongering.

The Times presents some of the criticism aimed at the Consensus:

Further criticism has been directed at the merit of considering these issues purely in terms of cost and benefit. Factors such as social justice, ecological stewardship and political acceptability are also important, but are exceptionally difficult to price.

These factors are also highly irrelevant. The best social justice is not dying of an avoidable disease and having food on your table, not being arrested for no reason and being free from the threat of conflict. Political acceptability, instead, relies on appeasing lobbies which currently set public policy, such as the farm subsidy and CAP lobby. Money speaks louder than politics, thus cold hard data from the Copenhagen Consensus is more likely to ring the right bells in the heads of policymakers than half-baked political arguments that stand no chance against the lobby powers.

Dion should get a bunch of Canadian economists together and let them set his priorities. Maybe then he wouldn't be committing the Carbon Tax political suicide.

Further reading:

http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com

A Global Farce

So Zimbabwe has been selected by African nations to chair the UN body on Sustainable Development. In response to the critics who mentioned Zimbabwe's dismal human rights record, the country's Ambassador to the UN blurted "What have human rights got to do with sustainable development?". The BBC was quick to remove that quote from their story overnight. Another shining gem of Zimbabwean political strategy was to claim that asking the African group to change their candidate was an insult as it implied that "Africans can't think".

Well here are some bits of commonsense for you. Human rights happen to be the basis of sustainable development. It is the aim to bring about economic development while at the same time keeping the environment safe and improving the quality of life of the country's population, rather than siphoning off all the money to private accounts as many African politicians seem to do with great gusto. Zimbabwe has shown no record whatsoever of even attempting to achieve those aims, let alone telling others to follow in their "righteous" path. The mere thought of such a pariah sitting on some top seat in any international organisation makes stomachs turn and twist!

The casting of a ballot for Zimbabwe is a display of patent lack of any kind of intelligence or political knowledge, let alone common sense. African nations sure can think, but it doesn't mean they always think right. By nominating Zimbabwe they managed to undo many efforts to gain respectability on the international stage, and have done more damage to the UN and the cause of sustainable development than the USA could ever dream of doing.

Sustainable development is the future, it needs a strong cause leadership and political sway. Countries are struggling to achieve sustainable development, trying as hard as they can to catch up with the best technologies and strategies available. Look at any country that hasn't got a civil war going on. Take any country that is trying to achieve the aims set out in the millenium development goals. What the cause of sustainable development needs is leadership by example. The current system of regional chairmanship rotation doesn't help either: why should a leader be determined by the region of origin? If a leader is good then he must stay. If a country runs a body well it should bloody well keep doing it. And if you have to select a stricly African country, at least choose someone respectable, like Kenya for instance. Not Zimbabwe!

This is just the latest move that will make a joke of sustainable development and the United Nations as a whole, like it needed any more beating. Zimbabwe sitting in the UN is already a perverted quirk, just because there's no rapid procedure for booting out a country and its moronic representatives. This latest twist is just what will show how ineffective and corrupt the UN is on the inside, among its member nations. Who will respect the UN after its members voted in the world's pariah to lead one of its key causes? Nice job, dumbasses!