The era of being cheered for every green promise has ended. Now it’s time for business leaders to get back to business
Over the past decade, the leaders of corporate and international organizations became used to being lauded for making grand but ultimately empty green promises on stages in Davos and at climate summits. How quickly things have changed! Fear of being called out by the Trump administration is forcing many leaders to change course — at least in their rhetoric.
World Bank president Ajay Banga’s first move taking over the institution in 2023 was to extend its mission from ending poverty to dealing with climate change and making the planet “livable.” And last November, as he headed to the COP summit in Azerbaijan, Mr. Banga graced the cover of Time Magazine’s “climate issue,” warning that climate change was “intertwined” with every challenge.
Yet today he somewhat implausibly tells reporters, “I’m not a climate evangelist.” The shift in self-identification is meaningless without deeper change, however. For the development banks, ending poverty is still a big challenge. Astonishingly, the World Bank and the African Development Bank want climate projects to be, respectively, 45 per cent and 55 per cent of their lending.
For the rest of this column: https://financialpost.com/opinion/bjorn-lomborg-the-political-climate-on-climate-has-changed