Around the world, people are waking up to the benefits of freer trade. After years of free trade fatigue and growing protectionism, a majority of Americans now say the United States should pursue global free trade, while the European Union is striking free trade deals as fast as it can, and even regional geopolitical rivals China, South Korea and Japan have agreed to greater cooperation.

When a grid failure plunged 55 million people in Spain and Portugal into darkness at the end of April, it should have been a wake-up call on green energy. Climate activists promised that solar and wind power were the future of cheap, dependable electricity. The massive half-day blackout shows otherwise. The nature of solar and wind generation makes grids that rely on them more prone to collapse—an issue that’s particularly expensive to ameliorate.

With the benefit of hindsight, it’s easy to see that many of the major, doom-laden environmental predictions that gained widespread attention from the 1970s onward turned out to be completely wrong. Alarmists gained media acclaim and public attention for warning that we would quickly run out of most resources, and that overpopulation would lead to a global catastrophe, and even that air pollution would escalate to the point that we would need to wear gas masks outside by the year 1985.

Countries like Germany make a show of their virtue and insist that Africa remain impoverished.

Rich Western nations and their development banks love to parade their climate virtue and wag their fingers at Africa. They insist that the continent leapfrog from no energy to trendy renewables like solar and wind, even as wealthy nations run mostly on fossil fuels. With the biggest voting share in the World Bank, the U.S. has effective veto power over major decisions at the globe’s largest multilateral organization—and the moral duty to put its foot down.

Ask families in Germany and the UK what happens when more and more supposedly “cheap” solar and wind power is added to the national power mix, and they can tell you by looking at their utility bills: It gets far more expensive.

Subsidizing wind and solar wastes funds that would be better spent on R and D, adaptation and economic growth

Copenhagen Consensus Center Director Dr. Bjorn Lomborg discusses banks stopping virtue signaling on 'The Bottom Line.' #foxbusiness #economy #trump
 

Speaker Series: Climate Change Is Not an Emergency: A Discussion With Bjorn Lomborg

Getting to net-zero carbon emissions would benefit the average person. But the cost would be many times greater. For now, it makes no sense