Bjorn Lomborg TED Talk

Changing the world. This is what all people dream about in some way or another but very little succeed at actually doing. Bjorn Lomborg wants to give people the path to changing the world in the best ways possible, and compiled a list of the world's ten top problems. These problems included climate change, corruption, malnutrition, and disease among others. The Copenhagen Consensus, a program that Lomborg heads, used many world renowned economists to then research the benefits and costs of solving these different problems and came out with a list ranking the problems that should be solved. At the bottom of the list was climate change because of the high cost and low reward of solving this problem compared to other problems. Malnutrition was the second highest on the list because many millions of people simply don't get enough food or the food they get just does not have enough in it to sustain, but if this problem was focused on it would help many people and cost relatively little. The top solution on the list was the prevention of HIV/AIDS because if we focused on preventing HIV/AIDS we may prevent 28 million cases of the disease with only 27 billion dollars invested. This problem also topped the list since it is such a severe problem in Africa and that the benefits of the investment in prevention could reach 40 times as high as 27 billion dollars.

I thought of all of the TED talks I have done so far that this talk was definitely the best talk because while most of the time in the other videos was spent identifying the problem and very little time on giving a solution, most of the time in Lomborg's talk was directed at the solution. He wants people to use the information that he uses and share the ideas to have direct change on the world rather than having the listeners go around and simply regurgitate the problem. His proposed reforms will probably have a greater effect on listeners because they now know what to do.

I had to agree with a lot of the stuff he was talking about because the facts he laid out seemed very valid and very convincing. One thing that I questioned though was why clean water wasn't near the top of the list. Water is the most abundant and most essential resource on the planet and really would take steps in solving Bjorn's two top problems of malnutrition and preventing disease. A very large number of diseases are carried in the unclean water of third world countries but to nourish themselves the citizens of these nations must drink the water. If we make all of the water that people have to drink in this world it would probably have a profound effect on the disease totals and also more people could check that off of the list of their necessities to survive. I can't imagine it would cost very much to solve the problem of unclean water too because water is extremely abundant and there are plenty of ways in use in America today which filter large quantities of water, and due to the abundance prices are low.

Bjorn's speaking style was only mildly entertaining, but he found the necessary information to put in his TED talk that made it good. Other than a few pieces of humor, the talk was almost all facts and information, yet the information was interesting enough to keep people engaged. I think that 99% of the time to make a good talk one must entertain his audience so that they stay engaged, but the other 1% comes if the information shared is engaging enough in itself.

Bjorn Lomborg's TED talk really challenged people to go out into the world and change it, just like everyone dreams of doing. He gave the necessary information to change the world and the listeners of this TED talk may just be inspired to do so.