The Climate Movement Is Circling the Drain

That’s great for Democrats!

These are dark days for the climate movement. Indeed, the whole movement is failing apart in front of our eyes.

Consider:

1. Countries are back-pedaling away from their climate commitments as fast as they can. Ten years after the Paris Agreement on reducing emissions—which as, David Wallace-Wells notes, had been treated by the U.N.’s Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, “as though its significance approached, if not exceeded, that of the U.N. charter itself”—leaders of major countries can’t even be bothered to show up at the U.N.’s annual climate change conferences. For the upcoming November conference in Brazil (COP30), the overwhelming majority of countries have not submitted formal decarbonization plans and, of those that have, most are not compatible with the ambitious goals laid out by the Paris Agreement.

2. The U.S. is not back-pedaling, but sprinting, away from its climate commitments. The Trump administration pulled out of the Paris Agreement and has eviscerated Biden-era climate policy, including the elimination of subsidies for wind, solar and electric vehicles. There has been a thunderous lack of protest to these moves other than press releases from climate NGOs and garment-rending jeremiads from the usual suspects like Bill McKibben.

3. Despite decades of well-funded programs, mandates and targets, global progress on eliminating fossil fuels has been extremely slow. Today, 81 percent of world primary energy consumption still comes from fossil fuels and only 15 percent from renewables, less than half of which comes from wind and solar. The renewables share is higher for electricity generation, 32 percent, but electricity only accounts for 21 percent of global energy consumption.

4. The same goes for eliminating fossil fuels in the U.S. About 80 percent of American primary energy consumption comes from fossil fuels and just 12 percent from renewables, divided between seven percent from wind/solar and five percent from hydropower, biofuels and other renewables. The renewables share of electricity generation is higher at 24 percent but electricity only accounts for 19 percent of energy consumption.

5. Nor is the situation much different in China, which has become the improbable hero of climate obsessives like Wallace-Wells. China also gets 80 percent of its primary energy consumption from fossil fuels and 17 percent from renewables, about half of which comes from wind and solar. The modest share of the latter may surprise those who have heard that China is adding a great deal of solar capacity but they should keep in mind that China is also by far the world leader in adding coal capacity. The renewables share of Chinese electricity generation is only slightly above global average at 34 percent and electricity is still under a quarter of energy consumption.

No wonder interest in declining rapidly in the net-zero project. The euphoria of the 2015 Paris Agreement has run into the harsh realities of a global energy system based largely around fossil fuels that is very, very hard to change quickly. Nor should we wish to do so given the likely associated costs. As Vaclav Smil points out:

[W]e are a fossil-fueled civilization whose technical and scientific advances, quality of life and prosperity rest on the combustion of huge quantities of fossil carbon, and we cannot simply walk away from this critical determinant of our fortunes in a few decades, never mind years. Complete decarbonization of the global economy by 2050 is now conceivable only at the cost of unthinkable global economic retreat…

And as he tartly observes re the 2050 deadline:

People toss out these deadlines without any reflection on the scale and the complexity of the problem…What’s the point of setting goals which cannot be achieved? People call it aspirational. I call it delusional.

This reality has begun to sink in for political leaders around the world. Not only is net-zero by 2050 not going to happen but their constituents have a remarkable lack of interest in seeing this goal attained. In the United States, voters view climate change as a third tier issue, vastly prioritize the cost and reliability of energy over its effect on the climate and, if action on climate change it to be taken, are primarily concerned with the effect of such actions on consumer costs and economic growth. Making fast progress toward net-zero barely registers.

Put it all together and you can see why the climate movement is circling the drain. Since the 2015 Paris Agreement, they have thrown everything they had toward raising the salience of the issue. They have had enormous amounts of money behind them, astonishing buy-in from elites, and a cooperative media ecosystem that mandates use of the term “climate crisis,” pumps up every alarmist study and attributes every unusual weather event to climate change. What more could they ask?

And yet…most voters, especially working-class voters, just don’t care. Or at least not enough to disregard their frontline concerns about costs, economic growth, and consumer choice. Roger Pielke Jr.’s “iron law of climate policy”—that when policies focused on economic concerns confront policies focused on emissions reductions, it is economic concerns that will win out every time—remains undefeated.

In a rather desperate attempt to save their flailing movement, some climatistas have belatedly smelled the coffee and now proclaim that they are all about affordability and lowering the cost-of-living. This seems unlikely to work after years of yammering about the existential crisis of climate change—”more frightening than a nuclear war” as President Biden put it—which necessitates a complete makeover of the energy system. Rebranding as “we’re just folks who want to bring down your electric bill” is beyond disingenuous.

This is particularly so since the climate NGOs have not changed their basic goals and program in the slightest. As Matt Yglesias revealed, the League of Conservation Voters candidate questionnaire for this cycle still wants candidates to commit to maximalist clean energy targets (though no nuclear!), defend and extend (!) NEPA and aggressively kneecap fossil fuel production. Clearly, affordability rhetoric is just a temporary fig leaf for their unchanged priorities.

Other climatistas aren’t even bothering with the affordability dodge: they’re upping the ante. Now they want to fight the whole damn system! As a Politico article observed:

One set of activists is urging the environmental movement to join a broader anti-billionaire campaign led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), which accuses the Trump administration of attacking democracy to benefit the very wealthiest Americans…

On Saturday [during Climate Week in New York], dozens of groups that embody the spirit of Sanders’ and Ocasio-Cortez’s “Fight the Oligarchy” tour held the “Make Billionaires Pay” march, which brought 25,000 people to Manhattan’s streets and included demonstrations in cities around the country. Participants hoisted effigies of billionaires such as Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Tesla CEO Elon Musk and signs protesting Trump’s immigration policies and slashing of environmental rules…

Participants said delivering the critique on income inequality and the ultra rich would build common cause with like-minded individuals at a time when climate change feels less an immediate priority compared with people being detained over their immigration status.

Oh sure, that’ll work. Fold climate change completely into the progressive Omnicause, thereby positioning the issue even farther from the median voter.

As the (still well-funded) climate movement fades slowly into irrelevance, Democrats need to realize one important thing: this is great! They’re being let out of climate jail to think freely about their program for the future. The party has been way too identified with the climate movement and hostility to fossil fuels; way too preoccupied with climate change goals in framing their economic policies; way too dismissive of ordinary voters’ concerns about costs and economic growth and way too responsive to the priorities of liberal, educated elites instead of working-class voters. There’s a big, beautiful world out there of economic and energy policies that can now be considered without the climate movement’s thumb on the scales.

Freedom! Democrats should embrace it.