What Adam Smith’s the Wealth of Nations Can Teach Us About Today’s Failed Energy Transitions

What Adam Smith’s the Wealth of Nations Can Teach Us About Today’s Failed Energy Transitions

By Simon Mair In November 2025, the United Nations held its 30th Climate Change Conference (COP30) in Belém, Brazil, marking three decades of annual negotiations to address the human drivers of global warming. Yet since the first COP meeting in 1995, global carbon emissions from fossil fuels grew from 23 billion tonnes to an all-time high of 38.1 billion tonnes by the time leaders from nations around the world descended on South America for its …