Bjorn Lomborg Trump was right to leave Paris climate deal

The world faces many challenges, between the impacts of inflation and high-interest rates, the lingering impacts of the COVID pandemic, and geopolitical conflicts such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Amid all this, 2023 marks the halftime point for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—the sprawling list of 169 ambitions in which all global leaders have promised everything to everyone.

In their bids to showcase climate leadership at the UN Climate Summit in Glasgow (COP26), leaders of rich nations are once again talking of ambitious carbon reduction targets. President Biden, for example, has reaffirmed his goal of creating “a carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035 and net zero emissions economy by no later than 2050.”

Politicians are gathering in Poland for a climate summit being billed as the most important conference since the Paris treaty was signed in 2015. Around the world the chattering classes have declared that more political willpower is needed to solve global warming. This is deluded: it ignores the privileged place climate change has among all of humanity’s challenges and misses the real reasons for our failure.