July 9, 2006: Left rational? ... Prioritization

Get Your Priorities Right -- A rationalist crusader does the math on global warming. Kimberley A. Strassel, July 8, 06 via newsbeat1
In 2001, Bjorn Lomborg published "The Skeptical Environmentalist."
www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008626

NEW YORK--Bjorn Lomborg [....] Two hundred years ago ,,, the left was an "incredibly rational movement." ... Since then, the world's do-gooders have succumbed to "romanticism; ...

[....] Political figures don't like to make choices; they don't like to reward some groups and not others; they don't like to admit that they can't do it all. They are political. Not rational.

... the Copenhagen Consensus Center ... eight U.N. ambassadors, including John Bolton. (China and India signed on, though no Europeans.) They were presented with global projects, the merits of each of which were passionately argued by experts in those fields. Then they were asked: If you had an extra $50 billion, how would you prioritize your spending?

... I want to put a No. 1 by each of these projects, they are all so important.' .... So rank they did. And perhaps no surprise, their final list looked very similar to that of the wise economists. At the top were better health care, cleaner water, more schools and improved nutrition. At the bottom was . . . global warming. [....]