What to do with an extra $75 billion

The Copenhagen Consensus, a group of 50 economists, including 5 Nobel laureates, studied the major problems of the world to see how we could best use resources to help improve the lives of the world's people. The idea--if $75 billion were to be invested, what would the priorities be.

The answers were interesting. Global warming was not in the top ten. Three proposed solutions came in at the 14th, 29th and 30th in the top thirty cost effective solutions. Combating malnutrition among the 140 million children of Africa with vitamins would cost only $60 million, but would yield "benefits" in terms of reduced health care costs and other associated costs of this loss of over $1 billion. In fact five of the top ten solutions were related to malnutrition, one (immunization for children) had to do with disease, one had to do with increasing trade to help provide economic stability, and one was related to education. The results can be seen in full in this .pdf file. The next twenty were dominated by solutions related to dealing with diseases and water supply (6 of 10).

I have referenced this study before in a number of conversations, and impressed by the group's thinking(Link to site here). While not saying that global warming is a problem, the study's participants believe that seeking to implement most proposed solutions is prohibitively expensive, will yield less than significant results, and would take away the chance to deal with problems that are as devastating to people but are, in fact, treatable.