Political crises, scandals, and dysfunction continue to dominate the global news agenda. Unsurprisingly, therefore, many people missed the United Kingdom’s announcement last month that it will spend £600 million ($779 million) to provide 20 million more women and girls in the developing world with access to family planning. But the UK government’s decision – based on research by the Copenhagen Consensus Center that shows family planning is one of the smartest possible development investments – is a vitally important one. Currently, hundreds of millions of women are unable to choose the number...

As it is becoming obvious that political responses to global warming such as the Paris treaty are not working, environmentalists are urging us to consider the climate impact of our personal actions. Don’t eat meat, don’t drive a gasoline-powered car and don’t fly, they say. But these individual actions won’t make a substantial difference to our planet, and such demands divert attention away from the solutions that are needed. Even if all 4.5 billion flights this year were stopped from taking off, and the same happened every year until 2100, temperatures would be reduced by just 0.054 degrees...

Many western donors love the idea that instead of dirty, coal-fired power-plants, poor nations should ‘leapfrog’ straight to cleaner energy sources such as off-grid solar technology. The World Bank is at the forefront of these efforts, no longer funding coal energy projects. Off-grid solar projects begin with grand intentions, but too often end with recipients barely better off. We can see this in the small Pacific island nation of Fiji, where the government – advocates of strong global climate policy – teamed up with a Japanese technology company to deliver off-grid solar power.

Speaking at the United Nations, 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg said that if humanity really understands the science of climate change and still fails to act, we’re “evil.” This is because climate change means “people are dying.” Helpfully, she also told us what we must do to act correctly: In a bit more than eight years, we will have exhausted our remaining allowance for carbon emissions, so we must shut down everything running on fossil fuels by 2028. While this claim is not uncommon, it is fundamentally misguided. Yes, global warming is real and human-caused, but her vision of...

Over the past 25 years, nearly 1.2 billion people around the world have been lifted out of poverty, while both malnutrition and the risk of death from air pollution have decreased. Taken together, these achievements are nothing short of a miracle. But two global trends now threaten to slow the momentum in reducing poverty. The first is nationalist opposition to free trade. Rising protectionism is imperilling economic growth – including in the world’s poorest countries, which would benefit most from a more open global trading system. Concluding the long-stalled Doha Round of global trade talks...

World leaders will soon arrive in New York for a climate summit likely to do little more than add to the hysteria drowning out any sober talk on climate policy. Amid warnings that we have days left to act, politicians will jostle to share the spotlight with celebrity activists such as 16-year-old Greta Thunberg, who came from Europe by wind-powered boat. Hurricane Dorian looms large over proceedings as a harbinger of doom. After 30 years of failed climate policy, more of the same is not the answer. Since the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit, our use of renewable energy has increased by only 1...

Ahead of the Climate Action Summit that will bring together world leaders in New York on Sept 23, exaggeration about global warming is greater than ever. While some pundits continue, incorrectly, to insist that global warming is a made-up story, far more insist, also incorrectly, that we face an imminent climate crisis. Adding to the polarization on the topic makes it impossible to engage in sensible policy discussion. For example, we are constantly told that climate change is to blame for an increase in extreme weather conditions such as flooding, droughts and cyclones. But the UN...

Is global warming to blame for the Syrian war? Democratic presidential candidates Pete Buttigieg, Beto O'Rourke and Bernie Sanders seem to think so. At the CNN climate town hall this month, Buttigieg and O'Rourke referred to climate change as a national security threat that contributed to causing the Syrian civil war. “Wars that were precipitated by climate change, like Syria, will pale in comparison to the wars that we see in the future,” O'Rourke warned. Both candidates follow the lead of Sanders, who has long claimed that “climate change is directly related to the growth of terrorism”...