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Press release

Controversial environmentalist named one of the 75 most influential in the 21st century

Denmark, September 23, 2008: In the October issue of the American magazine Esquire, Bjørn Lomborgis named as one of the 75 most influential people of the 21st century. As the only Dane in 2008, Bjørn Lomborg now features on three international lists of the most influential people in the world.

This year, Esquire celebrates its 75th anniversary and in this connection, the American magazine has asked which people worldwide contribute with something important and significant to the world in the 21st century. The list also features the Nobel Prize winner, Al Gore, the philanthropist, , the presidential candidate, Barack Obama, talk show host, Oprah Winfrey, media mogul, Rupert Murdoch, and the governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

They will save the world

The naming of Bjørn Lomborg as one of the 75 most influential people of the 21st century happens just four months after the two American Journals, Foreign Policy and Prospect, selected Lomborg as one of the 100 most intellectual public people in the world. In May, Lomborg featured on a list of the world’s leading figures prepared by the two journals together with, among others, the writers, Salman Rushdie and Umberto Eco as well as a number of other intellectuals such as Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Noam Chomsky, Jarred Diamond, William Easterly, Pope Benedict XVI, Thomas Friedman, Malcom Gladwell, Jürgen Habermas, Samuel Huntington, Garry Kasparov, Paul Krugman, Steven Levitt, James Lovelock, Sunita Narain, Steven Pinker, Jeffrey Sachs, Amartya Sen, Lawrence Summers, Craig Venter, E. O. Wilson, Martin Wolf, Mohammad Yunus, and Fareed Zakaria.

In January this year, the British centre‐left newspaper, The Guardian, chose to publicly recognise Lomborg’s work by selecting him as one of the 50 most important people who can help save the planet. According to The Guardian, Bjørn Lomborg is an essential balance in ensuring that the environmental debate does not get out of hand. The list also features the Federal Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, and the previous Vice President of the US, Al Gore.

Universities to contribute to the debate

Bjørn Lomborg is an adjunct professor at Copenhagen Business School (CBS) where he heads the Copenhagen Consensus Center.

“Copenhagen Business School should not only be an excellent research and educational institution. It is also the universities’ job to contribute to the public debate by passing on knowledge and, in particular, to ensure that the knowledge is passed on in a way that makes it useful. Bjørn Lomborg has been able to establish and vitalise an exhaustive knowledge on economic prioritisations,” says Finn Junge‐Jensen, CBS President. “Under the aegis of Copenhagen Consensus, Bjørn Lomborg and the many leading and Nobel Prize winning economists taking part in the ongoing work of the Copenhagen Consensus Center have emphasised CBS’ high international profile.

“This recognition of Bjørn Lomborg is an expression of his clout and of Copenhagen Consensus and Bjørn Lomborg having a message that is as simple as it is important: We owe it to the poorest population of the

COPENHAGEN CONSENSUS CENTER COPENHAGEN BUSINESS SCHOOL • SOLBJERG PLADS 3 • 2000 FREDERIKSBERG • DENMARK +45 3815 2255 • [email protected] • WWW.COPENHAGENCONSENSUS.COM Press release third world countries to carefully consider which of the world problems we want to spend our limited resources on solving,” says Henrik Lando, professor at Copenhagen Business School and member of the advisory board of the Copenhagen Consensus Center. “These lists only confirm what many of the world’s leading economists and Nobel Prize winners have demonstrated by working together with Lomborg that our – often petty – debates at home overlook the fact that Copenhagen Consensus has succeeded in putting better prioritisations and economic sense on the international agenda.

Contact: Copenhagen Business School, www.cbs.dk President Finn Junge‐Jensen, mobile: 20 74 20 89, [email protected]

Copenhagen Consensus Center, www.copenhagenconsensus.com, Project Manager, Tommy Petersen, mobile: 51 29 01 31, [email protected]

The Copenhagen Consensus Center was established as a centre at CBS on 1st January, 2006 and is an expression of an important new thinking with regard to putting prioritisation on the agenda.

Among others, the following people feature on Esquire’s list:

Ratan Tata (the leading industrialist in India) , Michael Bloomberg & Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jeffrey Immelt (CEO of General Electric), (founder of Facebook), John Roberts (Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court), Tiger Woods, Jeffrey Koons (artist), Santiago Calatrava (Turning Torso in Malmö), Philip Seymore Hoffman (actor), Barack Obama, Lula (President of Brazil), (founder of PayPal), Bernard Arnault (CEO of LVMH, including etc.), (CEO of Oracle), & Sergei Brin (founders of Google), George Clooney, Bill & Melinda Gates, (CEO of Amazon.com), David Cameron, Bill & Hillary Clinton, John Mackey (CEO of Whole Foods), Steve Jobs (CEO of Apple/Mac), Will Smith, , and Al Gore.

For further information on the Copenhagen Consensus Center and Bjorn Lomborg see below.

COPENHAGEN CONSENSUS CENTER COPENHAGEN BUSINESS SCHOOL • SOLBJERG PLADS 3 • 2000 FREDERIKSBERG • DENMARK +45 3815 2255 • [email protected] • WWW.COPENHAGENCONSENSUS.COM Press release

The Copenhagen Consensus Center has recently been responsible for the following initiatives, among others:

Copenhagen Consensus, May 2008 In May, the Copenhagen Consensus Center (CCC) held the international conference, Copenhagen Consensus 2008. At the conference, a panel of eight international top economists met in Copenhagen, among them were five Nobel Prize winners. Their task was clear: to analyse and prioritise the more than 40 solutions to ten of the world’s largest problems – solutions that had been identified in the new Copenhagen Consensus analyses prepared for the conference. For the final prioritisation list, see http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/Default.aspx?ID=953.

Currently, CCC is working on implementing and specifying the top six solutions of the list. In the autumn, this work will result in more detailed reports on how to implement the top six solutions.

Copenhagen Consensus in Central America, September 2008 In an attempt to advance the political dialogue on how to solve the challenges of Central America, the influential regional magazine, ”Estrategia y Negocios” (Strategy and Business) invited the Copenhagen Consensus Center to Central America. The objective was to get the regional politicians of both sides to meet and discuss prioritisations in taking into account the countries’ budget restrictions and to make use of Bjørn Lomborg’s “Copenhagen Consensus” to agree on the way forward. The prioritisation took place in El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala as well as Costa Rica from 2nd – 8th September, 2008.

Wall Street Journal and Copenhagen Consensus, July 2008 In the wake of Copenhagen Consensus 2008, the American newspaper, launched a Copenhagen Consensus process. Over a period of four weeks, Bjørn Lomborg wrote a full page on the Copenhagen Consensus 2008 results and six powerful Americans suggested how they would spend $10 billion extra on improving the world.

See http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/Default.aspx?ID=836 for further information about the articles and analyses.

Bjørn Lomborg is:

Author of The Skeptical Environmentalist and Cool It One of the world’s 75 most influential people – Esquire, 2008 One of the "50 people who could save the planet" ‐ UK Guardian, 2008 One of the top 100 public intellectuals, Foreign Policy & Prospect Magazine,2008 One of the world's 100 most influential people ‐ Time Magazine, 2004 'Young Global Leader' ‐ World Economic Forum, 2005 Former director ‐ Denmark's Environmental Assessment Institute Director ‐ Copenhagen Consensus Center Adjunct Professor ‐ Copenhagen Business School

COPENHAGEN CONSENSUS CENTER COPENHAGEN BUSINESS SCHOOL • SOLBJERG PLADS 3 • 2000 FREDERIKSBERG • DENMARK +45 3815 2255 • [email protected] • WWW.COPENHAGENCONSENSUS.COM