After the Paris Climate Agreement was signed in 2015, the World Bank declared a perilous “new course,” vowing to lead the way on green financing.

Today, it funnels 44% of its funds — $42.6 billion annually — into climate projects, siphoning resources from the world’s most desperate needs.

As its largest shareholder, the United States cannot continue to ignore this climate fixation.

At Monday’s World Bank Annual Meeting, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent must demand that it explicitly scrap its wasteful climate targets — and redirect its attention to its true objective.

Remember, the Bank’s purpose has always been lifting poor people out of poverty.

But as the climate-change narrative took hold, poverty was implausibly linked to 100-year temperature changes.

The World Bank, misrepresenting one of its own thoughtful reports, claimed in 2015 that without climate action more than 100 million additional people might be poor in 2030.

Ironically, that report found that a renewed focus on prosperity could lift almost a billion people out of poverty, but climate action would have virtually no impact by 2030.

World Bank President Ajay Banga, nominated by President Joe Biden in 2023, claims poverty and climate must be tackled jointly.

As well-meaning as this may be, it is dangerous sophistry.

Tackling poverty through nutrition, health and education can quickly help hundreds of millions of people live better lives at low cost.

Tackling poverty through climate action will do next to nothing  — yet climate policy costs easily run into the trillions, while harming the world’s poor by driving up costs of fertilizer and energy.

Rigorous research shows that dollar for dollar, core development investments — like improving maternal health, advancing e-learning or enhancing agricultural yields — deliver much greater and faster benefits than climate spending.

The World Bank’s own client surveys show people in poorer nations rank climate change near the bottom of their concerns.

Raiding development funds for climate initiatives isn’t just misguided but an affront to human suffering.

Developing nations today need cheap, reliable power to industrialize, create jobs and thrive — just as rich countries did a century ago, and China did over recent decades.

Most of Africa remains quite poor with little access to energy beyond wood and hydro power. The average poor African uses as much fossil fuel in a year as an American uses in less than 9 days.

The World Bank aims to connect 300 million more Africans to electricity by 2030 through its Mission 300 initiative — a worthy goal that’s being sabotaged by its fixation on renewables.

The bank’s energy access plans signed with 29 countries are “prioritizing” solar and wind, while tiptoeing around fossil fuels.

What’s more the Rockefeller Foundation, the bank’s Mission 300 partner, touts renewables as the “most cost-effective and rapid route to prosperity.”

This is fantasy: While solar and wind can be cheaper than fossil fuels when the sun is shining and the wind blowing, it is infinitely costly when there’s no sun and wind.

Reliable power requires extensive backup that drives costs up significantly.

That’s why rich countries, despite their green rhetoric, still get more than three-quarters of their energy from fossil fuels.

While African leaders will politely speak green to Rockefeller Foundation and the World Bank, their actions speak more loudly.

Last year, Africa added five kilowatt-hours of electricity for each person from solar and wind — but added almost five times more from fossil fuels, because they’re cheaper and more reliable.

Across all energy use (not just electricity), Africa increased its solar and wind consumption a bit, but increased its fossil fuel consumption 22 times more.

Bessent has lambasted the World Bank for “mission creep,” for vapid slogans like “ending poverty on a livable planet,” and for lending to middle-income China.

He is right to push reforms, including a tech-neutral energy policy that prioritizes affordability.

But the United States should go further and demonstrate bold leadership by insisting that the World Bank scrap its ring-fenced funds for climate.

Scarce funds should go toward tackling poverty head-on, not to trendy  green goals.

Climate change demands action, but not at poverty’s expense.

Rich governments should invest in long-overdue R&D for breakthrough green technologies — affordable, reliable alternatives that everyone, rich and poor, will adopt.

The World Bank’s decade-long detour into climate activism is not saving the planet.

Instead, it’s abandoning the poor — and has influenced other development organizations to do the same.

It is high time for this giant to be pushed back on course.

Bjorn Lomborg is president of the Copenhagen Consensus, visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, and author of “False Alarm” and “Best Things First.”