Swift death of the 'Green Consensus'

Countries across the world are scaling back their climate ambitions from the high points of the past few years

Will we look back on the years between 2020 and 2023 as the high point of the “green growth” consensus? As the pandemic struck three years ago, a cohort of like-minded leaders across the world used the extraordinary cash that they were able to squeeze out of their treasuries for revival and recovery packages that leant heavily into a greener recovery. This reflected an apparent consensus across much of the world of the importance of climate change as an existential issue; that future growth could and would be less carbon-intensive than before; and that governments could and should put a