Interview with Bjørn Lomborg

Here follows a translation from Danish of an interview of Bjørn Lomborg conducted on the 23rd of November 2007 by science journalist Lennart Kiil.

Lennart Kiil: When did you first become interested in political science?

Bjørn Lomborg: When I studied in the US during the Cold War in the eighties. With the nuclear threat as a part of everyday life, I asked myself, how I could make the world a better and more peaceful place. I thought the best way would be as a politician.

I asked myself, how do you become a politician? You study political science. Later I discovered that it was harder than expected to become an influential politician. I, furthermore, found the academic aspect more interesting.

LK: Which event or person was instrumental for your career developing the way it did?

BL: It was when I got Jørgen Poulsen as a lecturer. He was interested in almost everything academic and he showed me that being an academic was to reflect. That it can be exciting and entertaining as well as incredibly challenging.

It was almost a revolution to go from feeling that I attended something, which could be described as an education factory, where you just go from one class to the next to get through the curriculum, to suddenly being challenged to learn to think, to learn to formulate good arguments and also to realise how incredibly many bad arguments, there is in the world.

It was a big experience for me personally and it also meant that I could suddenly delve much much more into the discussion, which I find absolutely critical in order to properly participate at a university.

LK: Do you think that generally the situation has improved regarding being critical also to what comes from within or do we still not question what we hear? Do we dare to challenge what we learn at the university in general? .

BL: I do not think it is a question of daring to challenge. It is more a question that the universities have turned into educational factories – and I think they have been for the past 20-30 years, where the majority of the faculty has been forced to think in budgets and in number of degrees awarded annually, which has resulted in large classes where the right answers are taught and tested in large exams designed in such a way that there is only one right answer. This is fine for teaching students the basics of a subject, but not as fine if you also wish to teach them to reflect and become independent thinkers.

Of course there is also a certain degree of nostalgia in it, but this idea, which they still adhere to in Cambridge and Oxford, where two or three students still meet and discuss with the professor, is a completely different way to gain insights into what it is to be an intellectual.

BL: Yes, it is the feeling to be allowed to delve into a subject and to come up with good arguments – and this, I think, is extremely important for the university. I think that perhaps sometimes we neglect this aspect.

LK: I can see that you to some degree used the internet to communicate your arguments. Which role do you believe that the internet should play compared to TV and the written press?

BL (laughs): Firstly, I do not think it is up to me to decide which role it should play. Secondly, I am inclined to believe it is something we will see in due time.

The internet gives an opportunity to find information incredibly fast. Wikipedia is a good example of providing both information, which is very very widely available and at the same time actually quite good.

LK: Can the internet give better opportunities for debate?

Yes, but the problem with the internet – as those who use it a lot know – is that there are also incredible much gibberish. The newspapers’ debate sections at least have the possibility to make a certain selection of what is interesting and significant.

It is important to me, because there are many people criticising me and I cannot in any possible way respond to everything. I have simply chosen to say that I primarily respond to what people say in the important written press.

This is not to say that the other critique is not important, but I have to decide what, of all this, I respond to. Here I still believe that the newspapers – and that is also why people still read them – have an important function, because they are helping to focus and concentrate what it is that we are talking about.

There are good blogs, but they just have not found their role yet.

LK: Which goals do you have for your future career?

BL (laughs): Well…I try to see, where it is, I can use what I can best.
At the moment this is clearly in the Copenhagen Consensus and I imagine that it will continue to be so for the next many years. Where we have analysed Latin America, but where we also want to analyse individual countries, which will take many years.

But there are many areas.

I also participate in the global discussion of climate change. I, furthermore, hope there are many other areas that I wish to visit, when I have finished with climate and priorities.

LK: Ok, then just a few quick questions about your book Cool It: You accept that global warming is a reality and that it is primarily caused by human activity?

BL: Yes.

BL: Well. There are many arguments for higher energy prices. A CO2 tax.

The problem is that we must be careful not to tax too much, because like there is a disadvantage with too little tax there is actually also a disadvantage with too much tax. We would end up with a smaller economical growth than we could otherwise have had.

We have also seen that although the energy prices, primarily that of oil, have more than doubled, it still has not caused people to use significantly less energy.

What is absolutely critical, is the technologies that come in 20-30-40 years’ time. They do not primarily arise because of the market pressure, but more because we invest in fundamental research, which can result in breakthroughs, which later make it possible for private companies to take almost fully developed technologies to the market.

LK: So it is necessary with state interference of the market?

BL: Yes, but just like we also accept that medical companies are not conducting fundamental research. They do not lay the ground for how the products of the medical industry should look like in 50 years.

They lay the ground for how products should look like in the next 10 years. And that is fine.

However, we must also ensure that we invest in fundamental research, so we can develop even better drugs in 50 years’ time. We have to think at energy in a similar way.

That is to say that of course should the energy companies give us the best ideas for the coming five to ten years, but we have to ensure that there are better ideas in 50 years’ time.

LK: So the market is too short sighted to solve the problem by itself?

BL: Yes. The problem is that even if you develop something that is ready in 50 years, there is no guarantee that you will get your investment back. Those on the market do not survive by great discoveries, but by all the spin-offs, which are created as a consequence of the fundamental research. That is why there is a collective advantage by investing heavily in research and development.

LK: OK – last question. Why do you think so many have such a black and white view of the situation surrounding global warming?

BL: The problem has got an almost religious aspect for many people. Now that God is dead, it can be a way for people to give their life some meaning. The problem with it is just that we become much less efficient in solving the problem, if we do not deal with it rationally.

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The original interview in Danish can be found here .

Permission for translation has been obtained from both Lennart Kiil and Bjørn Lomborg.