What an increasingly wonderful world

Campaigners have warned that net zero pledges made at COP26 are "doomed to fail" without regulation. But environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg tells Julia Hartley Brewer: "Young people are terrified but It's important to tell them there is less chance of them dying. This is not the end of the world." He also warns that world leaders at COP26 are trying to "force" net zero targets that will be "incredibly costly and politically impossible." 

Partisan “fact checks” are undermining open discourse about important issues, including climate change. Earlier this month I wrote an accurate post on Facebook about the growing polar-bear population. The post undercut alarmist climate narratives, so it was wrongly tagged as a falsehood.

The online world has become a free-speech battleground. Tech platforms have sided with illiberal regimes to censor posts while flagging “misinformation” in free countries. We all share a legitimate interest in avoiding outright falsehoods, but much censorship today — whether at dictators’ behest or in the name of eradicating “misinformation” — ultimately is about restricting discourse to a narrow corridor of the politically acceptable. That makes it harder to identify smart policies.