From Tilak´s Substack

By Tilak Doshi

‘It’s better to be at the table than on the menu’ is a commonly used idiom in politics, business, and negotiations, meaning that it is crucial to be actively involved in decision-making processes rather than being the subject of decisions made by others. The idea is simple enough – stay inside a flawed institution to wield influence rather than bolt and shout from the sidelines.

Bjørn Lomborg argued for the case to ‘be at the table’ in a Washington Post op-ed last week, urging the United States to remain in the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) rather than follow through on President Trump’s instincts to withdraw. Lomborg argues that for a mere $1.8 million annually – pocket change in Washington’s bloated budget – the US can leverage its position as the largest donor to push for “honesty, cost-effectiveness and balance” in the IPCC’s work. It’s a pragmatic pitch, one that appeals to those who believe in incremental reform over radical rupture.

But here’s the rub: what if the game is so rigged, so profoundly dysfunctional, that staying in only props up the rot? In such cases, exiting isn’t surrender – it could be a strategic masterstroke, a way to delegitimise the entire charade and force real change from without.

This is precisely the case with the IPCC, an organisation whose apex has long devolved into a pulpit for alarmist prophecies, distorting science in its ‘Summary for Policymakers‘ to serve the Net Zero agendas of European elites. Lomborg’s advice, well-intentioned as it may be, misses the forest for the trees.

The US should pull the plug, not just on participation but especially on funding, delivering a major shake-up to the UN’s climate machinery and loosening the EU’s grip on global environmental policy.

Exit vs Voice

The adage about being ‘at the table’ assumes a functional system where voices can be heard, compromises struck and progress made. Think of trade negotiations or arms control talks, where insiders can nudge outcomes. But in dysfunctional institutions, entrenched interests, bureaucratic inertia and ideological capture co-opt, marginalise or expel dissenters. Remaining legitimises the farce, lending credibility to outcomes that perpetuate harm. From the outside, an ex-member has options to build alternatives, rally coalitions and apply pressure without the constraints of internal protocols.

Founded in 1988 under the UN umbrella, the IPCC was meant to provide objective assessments of climate science. Instead, it has become a vehicle for catastrophe-mongering, with summaries for policymakers – drafted and approved by governments – amplifying worst-case scenarios while burying nuances in the fine print. In his book Unsettled, Steve Koonin gives a detailed account of how the climate change message gets distorted as the underlying research literature goes through successive political filters and gets converted to report summaries subject to alarmist and apocalyptic media coverage and politicians’ soundbites.

Lomborg misses a key fact. The IPCC’s power comes not from thousands of pages of analysis. It comes from one document: the ‘Summary for Policymakers’ (SPM). This is not a neutral scientific précis. It is a negotiated political text, approved line by line by government delegates, many of whom arrive with explicit policy objectives already fixed. Scientists may object but governments decide. As Steve Koonin and others show, this process often deletes doubts. It weakens warnings. And it changes facts to fit policy narratives. Whatever ‘voice’ scientists exercise inside the IPCC is overridden at precisely the point where it would matter.

Lomborg himself has spent decades criticising this, from his seminal The Sceptical Environmentalist to False Alarm, where he dismantles the economic absurdities of trillion-dollar green schemes that impoverish the poor “without cooling the planet”. He knows the IPCC’s reports are laced with alarmism: models that overstate warming, ignore adaptation and peddle doomsday narratives to justify draconian policies.

Yet Lomborg clings to the insider illusion. He believes that leverage by the US as typically the top funder can temper the excesses – keep the summaries honest, inject objective cost-benefit analysis and curb the hysteria. But this overlooks the IPCC’s structural rot. The panel’s processes favour consensus over contestation, with lead authors often being activists rather than pursuing dispassionate science. Dissenting views, like those on solar forcing or natural variability, are side-lined. Governments, especially from the EU bloc, dominate the approval sessions, ensuring outputs align with Net Zero imperatives.

Withdrawal is Liberation

Staying in means the US ultimately endorses the IPCC – its scientists contribute chapters, its diplomats haggle over wording and its dollars bankroll the show. Even if America pushes back, the compromises dilute its stance. Resources squandered on endless meetings could fund independent research. Exiting frees Washington to denounce the IPCC unreservedly, eroding its aura of infallibility.

Moreover, withdrawal isn’t isolation; it’s liberation. The US can forge parallel institutions: a coalition of sceptical nations – India, Brazil, Argentina – focused on pragmatic climate policy. Think adaptation over mitigation, energy security over virtue-signalling. Public advocacy, diplomacy and media campaigns can spotlight the IPCC’s biases, much like Lomborg does, but amplified by state power.

Now, consider the funding angle, which Lomborg downplays but is central to the case for exit. The US isn’t just a donor: it’s the whale in the UN pond. In 2024, America footed over a quarter of the IPCC’s budget – about $1.9 million out of a modest total, dwarfing China’s $23,000. The US provides 22% of the regular UN budget and up to 26% of peacekeeping. No other nation comes close. China, the second largest, pays far less relative to its economy.

In recent years, the IPCC has operated on a relatively modest annual budget financed through voluntary government contributions, with total income for 2024 reported at approximately $5-6 million. Meanwhile, within the broader United Nations system, the United States is the largest assessed contributor, responsible for about 22% of the regular UN budget and roughly 26% of the peacekeeping budget — shares set by assessment rules and far larger than those of most other states, including China.

This dependency is the Achilles’ heel of the UN’s climate apparatus. The IPCC, UNFCCC and related bodies rely on American largesse to function. Pull the funding, and the shockwaves reverberate. Bureaucrats scramble, programmes stall, and the edifice cracks. It’s not hyperbole: the Trump administration’s recent withdrawals from 66 UN and non-UN entities, including the key climate-focused IPCC and UNFCCC, have already triggered alarms about budget shortfalls and mission cuts.

The United Nations is confronting its most severe financial crisis in years as sweeping budget cuts approved by the US Congress threaten to dismantle critical programmes and eliminate hundreds of positions worldwide. According to press reports, the UN’s 2026 operational budget faces a devastating shortfall following Washington’s decision to significantly reduce its contributions.

This financial hammer is especially potent against the EU’s Net Zero stranglehold. Brussels has colonised UN agencies with its alarmist ideology, pushing carbon taxes, emissions trading and green deals that prioritise ideology over economics. The Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), set for 2026, exemplifies this – a tariff on carbon-intensive imports that’s less about the planet and more about protecting uncompetitive European industries while forcing the Global South to toe the Net Zero line. As I’ve argued elsewhere, the days are numbered for carbon colonialism, and the EU’s attempt to repeat imperial patterns under green guise will get increasingly threadbare and difficult as the US pursues a pro-fossil fuels agenda.

Time to Starve the Beast

The EU’s influence permeates the IPCC: European scientists dominate authorship, and summaries echo Brussels’ doomsaying to justify policies like the Green New Deal. Net Zero, with its ruinous costs – deindustrialisation in Germany, increasing risks of blackouts in the UK, farmer revolts in Europe – is exported via UN channels, pressuring developing nations to abandon fossil fuels. India and Brazil, for example, rightly decry this as hypocritical: the West industrialised on coal and oil, now denying others the same ladder out of poverty.

US withdrawal and defunding would shatter this hegemony. Without American dollars, the UNFCCC’s and IPCC’s credibility plummets – no more veneer of global consensus when the world’s largest economy calls it quits. EU nations, already straining under their own green follies (for instance, Germany’s chemical sector in precipitous decline thanks to Energiewende), can’t fill the gap.

The shock forces introspection: perhaps it might help dial back the alarmism and incorporate credible energy scenarios. Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s recent admission that Germany’s nuclear phase-out was a “serious strategic mistake” indicates the extent to which Germany’s dalliance with the Energiewende has unravelled.

Critics like the Environmental Defence Fund warn that this undermines US “global standing“. Nonsense. Standing comes from strength, not from subservience to flawed multilateral agencies held captive to the climate industrial complex. The Trump administration has rightly called for audits of international commitments which prioritise US national interest, yielding trade wins and energy independence. Exiting the IPCC aligns with this. Why patronise an organization which fuels policies which harm American workers and offshores jobs to China under green pretexts?

Lomborg fears abandonment cedes the field to alarmists. But that’s inverted logic. Insiders like him have poked holes for years, yet the narrative persists. External opposition, backed by funding cuts, is the disruptor needed. Of course, risks exist. Allies might grumble, but a weak and geopolitically irrelevant Europe is in no position to retaliate. Developing countries, weary of EU dictates, might applaud. Domestically, climate hawks will howl, but public fatigue with green costs (soaring bills, unreliable grids) provides cover.

In sum, the IPCC isn’t a table worth sitting at; it’s a trapdoor to economic suicide. Lomborg’s stay-and-fight strategy risks perpetual compromise in a rigged game. Exit, defund and oppose from outside – that’s the path to dismantling the alarmist edifice. As the largest UN benefactor, America’s withdrawal isn’t just symbolic; it’s a weapon against EU-driven Net Zero madness.

This article was first published in The Daily Sceptic https://dailysceptic.org/2026/02/27/why-the-us-exit-from-the-ipcc-is-an-unmitigated-good/

Dr Tilak K. Doshi is the Daily Sceptic‘s Energy Editor. He is an economist, a member of the CO₂ Coalition and a former contributor to Forbes. Follow him on Substack and X.