Summarised by Centrist
Economist Dr Tilak K. Doshi says that a second Trump administration could upend the climate agenda, with potential rollbacks of Paris Agreement commitments and a renewed focus on practical energy policies.
“The climate industrial complex fears the prospect of the Trump administration’s pullout of the Paris agreement for the second time,” Doshi argues.
Doshi critiques the World Bank for prioritising climate advocacy over poverty alleviation. An Oxfam report further revealed nearly USD $41b (NZD $73b) in unaccounted climate finance, highlighting governance failures. Dr Jim Yong Kim, appointed under Obama, banned fossil fuel financing in the US despite internal cost-benefit analyses, a move author and former UK government advisor Rupert Darwall condemned as “saving the planet on the backs of the poor.”
The UN IPCC has embraced controversial “attribution science” to link extreme weather events to human activity, contradicting earlier findings that such links lack confidence. Policies like New York’s USD $3b (NZD $5.4 billion) annual climate law rely on these claims, though experts like Steve Koonin argue they lack scientific grounding.
Doshi sharply questions claims of economic advantages around renewables: “Surely, if replacing fossil fuels with wind and solar energy and electric vehicles promote growth and employment, then wouldn’t countries such as China and India naturally race towards this best of all possible worlds without expensive green subsidies and punitive anti-fossil fuel policies?”
