Bjørn Lomborg

He earned an M.A. in political science in 1991 and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Copenhagen in 1994.⁠[1]

From 1997 to 2005 he was an associate professor of political science at Aarhus University. In 1998 he published the Danish-language book Verdens sande tilstand, arguing that environmental movements and researchers had painted far too pessimistic a picture; it set off a heated debate, and most of the researchers who took part criticised its conclusions and its use of sources.⁠[2]

In 2001 Cambridge University Press published the English edition, The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World (the publisher lists a paperback publication date of August 28, 2001), a 540-page book with more than 2,500 footnotes; the publisher describes the author as a former member of Greenpeace and says the book concludes there are more reasons for optimism than pessimism and calls for prioritising resources toward real problems.⁠[3]

In its January 2002 issue Scientific American published “Misleading Math about the Earth,” in which Stephen Schneider, John Holdren, John Bongaarts and Thomas Lovejoy criticised the book’s arguments on global warming, energy, population and biodiversity; he then wrote a detailed online rebuttal, and the magazine published responses to it.⁠[4]

From February 2002 to July 2004 he directed Denmark’s national Environmental Assessment Institute.⁠[1]

Before the ruling, the committees had received four complaints about the book, with accusations ranging from data fabrication and distortion to plagiarism and deliberate misrepresentation of others’ results.⁠[5]

In January 2003 the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty (UVVU) ruled that the book’s publication was “in clear breach of the norms for good scientific practice,” finding systematic one-sidedness while stating that this was not wilful or negligent; he called the ruling “inexplicable” because it did not comment on the complainants’ criticisms. Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said his tenure as director was not in question.⁠[6]

That month Poul Harremoës, a professor at the Technical University of Denmark, resigned from the institute’s board after it rejected his call to suspend Lomborg.⁠[7]

In December 2003 the Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation found that the committee’s judgment was not backed by documentation and was “completely void of argumentation,” annulled it and sent the case back; on March 12, 2004, the committee announced it would not reopen the case. He said the committee had reached the only logical conclusion.⁠[8]

In March 2004 he announced the Copenhagen Consensus in London; the first conference ran from May 24 to 28, and its research was published by Cambridge University Press as Global Crises, Global Solutions.⁠[9]

The eight economists he invited, several of them Nobel laureates, ranked how to spend an imaginary extra $50 billion, putting the fight against HIV/AIDS first with $27 billion and hunger second; climate change proposals came 16th of the 17 solutions ranked. He said that while money is scarce, it must go first where it does the most good.⁠[10]

From 2005 he was an adjunct professor at Copenhagen Business School, and from 2006 he headed the Copenhagen Consensus Center.⁠[2]

In 2007 Knopf published his Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming, which proposed a CO2 tax of about two dollars per ton, or at most fourteen dollars, and called on nations to spend 0.05 percent of GDP on research into non-carbon-emitting energy. A Publishers Weekly review called it thoroughly referenced but said it ignores many climate studies and contains “misleading generalizations.”⁠[11]

The second Copenhagen Consensus, in 2008, convened an expert panel of eight economists, including Nobel laureates Finn Kydland, Robert Mundell, Douglass North, Thomas Schelling and Vernon Smith, to consider how to use a hypothetical $75 billion over four years; micronutrient supplements for children ranked first, and mitigation-only climate policy ranked last of 30 solutions.⁠[12]

In late August 2010 he proposed spending $100 billion a year to tackle global warming, which some read as a change of position; he then said his views had not changed, that he had always said global warming is real, man-made and important, and that the cap-and-trade approach of the Kyoto Protocol had failed.⁠[13]

In 2010 Cool It, an 89-minute documentary directed by Ondi Timoner with him as its subject, was released. NPR critic Mark Jenkins called it an “unabashedly favorable” portrait; in the film he accepts that climate change is real and linked to human activity but rejects the most extreme scenarios, and he favours technical approaches such as new nuclear reactors and cloud brightening.⁠[14]

The third Copenhagen Consensus was a year-long project involving more than 65 researchers who assessed nearly 40 proposals across ten challenges; the expert panel’s findings, released on May 14, 2012, said fighting malnourishment should be the top priority and listed 16 investments, led by bundled micronutrient interventions.⁠[15]

In 2014 the center launched the Post-2015 ConsensusConsensusConsensus is an annual cryptocurrency, blockchain, and Web3 industry conference hosted by the crypto media outlet CoinDesk (not the consensus mechanism of a blockchain). It was first held in New York in 2015 and later moved to Austin and Toronto; a Hong Kong edition was added from 2025, and since 2026 the main conference has been held in Miami.Open the full entry, bringing together 60 teams of economists to identify targets for the UN’s post-2015 agenda; it followed with Bangladesh Priorities (2015), Haïti Priorise (2016) and the India Consensus with the Tata Trusts (2017).⁠[9]

In his February 1, 2015 Wall Street JournalThe Wall Street JournalThe Wall Street Journal is a U.S. news publication founded in 1889, with a focus on business, finance and economics. It is published by Dow Jones, part of News Corp.Open the full entry op-ed “The Alarming Thing About Climate Alarmism,” he argued that much of the climate data is encouraging; scientists reviewing it for Science Feedback gave it a scientific credibility score of −1.6, and reviewers including Kyle Armour said it cherry-picked evidence and contained scientific errors.⁠[16]

In early April 2015 the University of Western Australia announced A$4 million in federal funding to set up an Australia Consensus Centre; amid strong opposition, Vice-Chancellor Paul Johnson announced on May 8 that the university would cancel the contract and return the money. In his statement he said the centre was not one to study climate change and that Lomborg would not run it day to day, and that he believed Lomborg met the criteria for an unpaid adjunct professorship.⁠[17]

Flinders University later considered a collaboration and Lomborg wrote in defence of the centre; in October 2015, with no Australian university willing to host it, the Turnbull government withdrew the promised A$4 million, as Education Minister Simon Birmingham announced at a Senate estimates hearing.⁠[18]

In 2018 Cambridge University Press published Prioritizing Development: A Cost Benefit Analysis of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, led by him, which assesses the costs and benefits of the 169 targets of the UN Sustainable Development Goals; a panel of Nobel laureate economists identified 19 standout targets.⁠[19]

Since 2020 he has been a visiting fellow at Stanford UniversityStanford UniversityStanford University is a research university in California founded by Leland and Jane Stanford in 1885 and opened in 1891.Open the full entry’s Hoover Institution.⁠[1]

On July 14, 2020, Basic Books published his 320-page False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the PlanetPlanet LabsPlanet Labs (brand name Planet) is a San Francisco-based Earth observation satellite company founded in 2010 by three NASA scientists; it designs, builds and operates a constellation of imaging satellites and provides daily imagery data and analysis of Earth. The company is a public benefit corporation listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker PL.Open the full entry; the publisher says the book argues that climate change is real but not an apocalyptic threat, and that panic has led to expensive but largely ineffective policies that crowd out investments such as immunisation and education.⁠[20]

He and climate journalist Andrew RevkinAndrew RevkinAndrew Revkin is an American environmental and climate journalist and author who covered the environment for The New York Times from 1995 and created its Dot Earth blog, later worked at ProPublica, the National Geographic Society and Columbia University, and wrote books including The Burning Season.Open the full entry appeared together on episode 339 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast, a climate change debate covering climate politics, electric cars, worst-case scenarios, hurricanes, economic models, climate policy and nuclear energy.⁠[21]

In 2023 the Copenhagen Consensus Center published his Best Things First, which proposes spending $35 billion a year on 12 policies including tuberculosis treatment, malaria control, maternal and newborn nutrition, childhood immunisation and electronic government procurement. Reviewer Robert M. Whaples found the overall approach sensible but questioned some of the cost estimates.⁠[22]

In a January 2026 column he argued that, with aid budgets shrinking, nations and philanthropists should abandon the all-encompassing Sustainable Development Goals and focus limited funds on a dozen policies that peer-reviewed research shows deliver very high returns.⁠[23]

As of October 2026 he is president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, on the research team of its Tennenbaum Program for Fact-Based Policy.⁠[24]

Personal website: Public link: https://lomborg.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[1]

X: Public account: https://x.com/BjornLomborg (opens in a new window)⁠[24]

Copenhagen Consensus Center: Official website: https://copenhagenconsensus.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[15]

Hoover Institution: Official website: https://www.hoover.org/ (opens in a new window)⁠[24]

Aarhus Universitet: Official website: https://www.au.dk/ (opens in a new window)⁠[5]