G20 leaders reach climate agreement, set carbon neutral goal for 'around mid-century’

Cooking over an open fire or with traditional stoves is widely practiced in Ghana, but these common methods carry serious risks. Emissions caused by the use of solid fuels such as wood and charcoal are one of the leading health concerns in many developing countries.

Globally, over 1.6 million people died in 2017 from diseases related to poor household air quality, and in Ghana, 10,000 lives are lost to this cause annually.

Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. That old quip, often attributed to Mark Twain or his friend Charles Dudley Warner, now guides most news coverage of severe weather. The media say that natural disasters are a result of climate change and we need to adopt radical policies to combat them.

The lesson from the federal government's failed backing of Solyndra is not that the United States should abandon energy innovation. It is that the government should not try to pick industry winners in the race to replace fossil fuels with an alternative. Solyndra is the now-bankrupt solar-panel manufacturer that received a $535 million federal loan guarantee in 2009 to build a factory based on the proposition that solar power should be captured through solar cylinders rather than the more established technology of silicon wafers.