Leaders try to fix every problem — like poverty and education — but end up getting nothing done

In an interview with Wall Street Journal editor Paul Gigot, Lomborg points out that even though climate change is one problem we need to fix, the world’s poor have many more urgent concerns of which rich countries, multilateral institutions and even development organizations are losing sight.

2014-03-17 Germany is a showcase for how-not-to in green energy. It is pumping hundreds of billions of euros into subsidies for ineffective and unreliable solar panels and wind turbines that leave poor people struggling to pay their electricity bills and do almost nothing for the climate. 

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.