🔴 Conservative Analysis
What has 30 years of COP achieved?
🤖 AI-Generated Illustration by Mobile Digest
For three decades now, the UN's annual Conference of the Parties (COP) has pushed for ever-expanding government control and regulation in the name of addressing climate change. These talks consistently prioritize top-down mandates over free market innovation, infringe on national sovereignty and ind...
For three decades now, the UN's annual Conference of the Parties (COP) has pushed for ever-expanding government control and regulation in the name of addressing climate change. These talks consistently prioritize top-down mandates over free market innovation, infringe on national sovereignty and individual liberty, and threaten to hamstring economic growth and prosperity.
While environmental stewardship is indeed an important value, the COP climate agenda has become unmoored from scientific and economic realities. Activist doomsday predictions have repeatedly failed to materialize. Meanwhile, the free market has steadily delivered cleaner and more efficient technologies as societies grow wealthier. Expanded global trade, powered by affordable and reliable energy like clean natural gas, has lifted billions out of poverty.
Yet rather than embracing these positive trends, successive COPs double down on heavy-handed government intervention, unworkable renewable energy mandates, and wealth redistribution schemes that erode property rights. Developing nations are pressured to curb their growth and keep citizens in poverty.
All of this represents a worrying drift away from democratic accountability and constitutional restraints on government power. Unelected international bodies and bureaucracies should not impose costly and coercive policies on free societies. The way forward is to reaffirm individual and economic freedom, empowering people to create prosperity and enabling markets to drive sustainable environmental progress.
While environmental stewardship is indeed an important value, the COP climate agenda has become unmoored from scientific and economic realities. Activist doomsday predictions have repeatedly failed to materialize. Meanwhile, the free market has steadily delivered cleaner and more efficient technologies as societies grow wealthier. Expanded global trade, powered by affordable and reliable energy like clean natural gas, has lifted billions out of poverty.
Yet rather than embracing these positive trends, successive COPs double down on heavy-handed government intervention, unworkable renewable energy mandates, and wealth redistribution schemes that erode property rights. Developing nations are pressured to curb their growth and keep citizens in poverty.
All of this represents a worrying drift away from democratic accountability and constitutional restraints on government power. Unelected international bodies and bureaucracies should not impose costly and coercive policies on free societies. The way forward is to reaffirm individual and economic freedom, empowering people to create prosperity and enabling markets to drive sustainable environmental progress.