Sustainable Development Goals – Are There too Many?

Global free trade provides the greatest opportunity to improve human welfare over the next decade and a half. It has already helped lift more than a billion people out of poverty over the past quarter-century. Lowering trade barriers even more could double average incomes in the poorest parts of the world over the next 15 years.

Yes, there are costs to free trade that must be better addressed; but the costs are vastly outweighed by the benefits. Yet, in rich countries today, the mood has turned against free trade. That is a tragedy.

By Nicholas Newman, Oxford Prospect.  Increasingly, we are hearing the term that something must be done to solve the world’s almost never-ending ending crises. The media is full of pressing appeals that every problem is urgent and must be tackled immediately, with often little regard to the economic and social costs involved. Unfortunately, for policy makers, the real world of geopolitics and budgetary issues forces politicians to prioritise decisions. Often such policy decisions will be both tough to make and politically unpopular with the public at large.

The restoration of the ozone layer proves that we can solve environmental problems when we have good replacements for pollutants. In an interview for America's Newsroom, Lomborg points out that the lesson for climate change is that we need to innovate cheap and reliable energy that can truly outcompete fossil fuels.