The world is failing on its development promises. These are known as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), agreed by all governments in 2015 to be achieved by 2030. Progress across all these promises – including in areas as important as eradicating poverty and ending hunger – is happening at less than one-fourth of the pledged speed. On current trends, the world will reach its 2030 promises half a century late.
CLIMATE activists and politicians constantly tell us electric cars are cleaner, cheaper, and better. Many countries, including the UK, Germany and Japan, will even prohibit the sale of new gas and diesel cars within a decade or two. But if electric cars are really so good, why do we need to ban the alternatives? And why do we need to subsidise electric cars to the tune of $30 billion per year?
IT’S easy to believe that life on Earth is getting ever-worse. The media constantly highlight one catastrophe after another and make terrifying predictions. With a torrent of doom and gloom about climate change and the environment, it’s understandable why many people – especially the young – genuinely believe the world is about to end. The fact is that while problems remain, the world is in fact getting better. We just rarely hear it.
RUSSIA’S brutal war in Ukraine has precipitated a global food crisis, so policymakers everywhere need to think hard about how to make food cheaper and more plentiful. That requires making a commitment to producing more fertiliser and better seeds, maximizing the potential offered by genetic modification, and abandoning the rich world’s obsession with organics.
THE outcome of the UN Climate Summit in Glasgow (COP26) has been criticised by commentators as unambitious, with some calling it a “monumental failure”. Even the summit’s host, Prime Minister Boris Johnson admitted the deal was “tinged with disappointment.” This is hardly surprising: historically, most climate promises have fared badly.
THE media gives outsized attention to plane crashes but simply reporting lots of stories of plane crashes does not provide a good insight into transport safety. You need statistics to realise that planes are much safer than cars.
DESPITE intense climate worries, electorates have been unwilling to spend the trillions needed to cut emissions dramatically. That is why climate campaigners have increasingly pursued a new strategy: forcing climate policy through courts. Across the world, the UN now counts at least 1,550 such climate cases in 38 countries, often filed by young people invoking a fear for their future. Unfortunately, such cases undermine democracy, harm the poor and sidetrack us from smarter ways to fix the clima
