Why new thinking is needed on climate change

THE 2018 UN climate change summit, which ended on Saturday night in Europe, has underlined that the international consensus around tackling this issue is under attack again by multiple key governments. This threatens to slow the pace of efforts to decarbonise, and it is clear that a different approach is now needed.

While a deal was ultimately agreed at the weekend, a growing number of governments from the United States to Russia and Brazil and Turkey are raising concerns about the 2015 Paris deal. Hopefully, this year's event in Poland will prove a line in the sand here. For it is crystal clear that if the necessary action on global warming to mitigate its worst impacts is to be undertaken, critics such as US President Donald Trump need to be faced down with their views about global warming.

Mr Trump and others have lambasted the Paris agreement arguing it is a grand hoax and unwelcome distraction, despite the now overwhelming evidence about the risks of climate change. Yet, even if, remarkably, it turns out that the vast majority of scientists in the world are wrong about global warming, what the Paris deal will help achieve is moving more toward gradually cleaner energies, making the world a less-polluted and more sustainable place.