Two years after the Paris climate agreement was signed, the French capital this month again attracted the world’s great and good, who gathered for President Emmanuel Macron’s One Planet summit.

When famine strikes, governments and international donors step in with life-saving aid.

President Donald Trump’s withdrawal of the US from the Paris climate agreement leaves the US without a global warming policy. That is alarming. But the world’s response — to double down on the pact in opposition to Trump — should also cause concern.

Poverty is humanity’s cruelest affliction. If you are extremely poor, you cannot afford to avoid even the easily curable diseases that cause every sixth human death.

According to popular wisdom, 2016 was a terrible year. Horrific terror attacks struck many countries. The Syrian crisis claimed tens of thousands of lives. Turkey withstood suicide bombings and a failed coup. More than 70 countries experienced a decline in freedom.

Hunger has wracked humanity since time immemorial. Nearly every major society has been shaped by famine; one estimate suggests that China suffered drought or flood-induced starvation in at least one province almost every year from 108CE to 1911.

Global free trade provides the greatest opportunity to improve human welfare over the next decade and a half. It has already helped lift more than a billion people out of poverty over the past quarter-century.