Things aren’t going well for climate alarmists these days. In both the United States and Europe, we are finally beginning to see a societal shift from climate alarmism to climate realism, which is long overdue and cause for considerable optimism.
The resounding victory by Donald Trump on November 5 was a godsend for climate realists because Trump intuitively understands that U.S. energy dominance is vital to a prosperous and secure West.
While campaigning, Trump made it crystal clear that he intends to unleash the American energy sector, particularly with regard to new oil and natural gas extraction projects. Moreover, Trump has pledged to pull the United States out of the Paris Climate Accords, authorize the construction of new pipelines throughout the nation, allow U.S. exports of U.S. liquified natural gas to our European allies, eliminate President Biden’s electric vehicle mandate, and abolish a host of frivolous regulations that have handicapped U.S. energy production in recent years.
It also must be noted that among the American population, climate alarmism seems to be on the decline as well. In years past, climate change consistently ranked among Americans’ top concerns. However, as several recent polls show, Americans now rank climate change last or near-last in terms of their highest concerns.
Meanwhile, in Europe, climate realists continue to make progress by calling attention to the absurd measures taken to prevent a so-called climate catastrophe.
In many ways, European climate alarmists have been much more successful in implementing their net zero policies and forced transition to wind and solar. Germany, for instance, began its quest for a green grid long before the United States and many other nations even considered such a monumental endeavor.
Unfortunately, this gamble has not paid dividends for the German economy or the German people. As the Harvard International Review recently reported, Germany is in the midst of an “energy crisis” due its unwise decision to forgo fossil fuel energy sources in place of wind and solar. Of course, it didn’t help that Germany also shut down all of its nuclear power plants after the Fukushima disaster.
The situation in Germany is so bad that talk of energy rationing has even entered the picture.
Like Germany, several other European countries jumped on the climate alarmist bandwagon years ago, much to the detriment of their citizens. From the Netherlands to France, farmers and many others have protested against the implementation of climate alarmist policies that put their livelihoods in jeopardy.
As Arnaud Rousseau, who leads one of France’s largest farmers union, put it, “What is happening at the moment stems from the accumulation of rules that at first you accept ... until it becomes too much.”
While the bottom-up protests in Europe and the victory for Trump bodes well for climate realism, it would be foolish to believe that this necessarily means climate alarmists are on their back foot.
Instead of listening to peoples’ genuine concerns about high gas prices and electricity bills, their apprehensiveness to buy electric vehicles, their questioning of the green transition, or any other uneasiness they may have about upending their daily lives, climate alarmists believe it is best to smash them into submission.
Take John Kerry’s latest comments as a case in point. In late November, the former Special Presidential Envoy for Climate discussed the future of climate action at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government
“We’re on the brink of needing to declare a climate emergency, which is what we really have,” Kerry declared at the outset. “We need to get people to behave as if this really is a major transitional challenge to the whole planet, to everybody,” he added.
Kerry also believes Africans must choose “the right kinds of energy” in a diatribe that could have been mistaken for the rant of a colonialist overlord a few centuries ago.
The point is that Kerry and many other climate alarmists likely realize that their iron grip on the climate change narrative is slowly but surely loosening. Such is why he and others are ramping up the rhetoric; it is a move steeped in desperation.
Perhaps the fact that Americans (and Europeans) are less trustworthy in once-venerable institutions like the mainstream media, academia, Hollywood, and government has planted a seed of climate change doubt in their minds.
Or, maybe ordinary, hard-working Americans and Europeans are sick and tired of paying through the nose to keep the lights on and the gasoline tank full.
Whatever the reasons may be, it sure looks like climate realism and commonsense energy policy is on the rise while climate alarmism moves closer to the ashbin of history, where it rightfully belongs.
Chris Talgo (ctalgo@heartland.org) is editorial director at The Heartland Institute.