Obama is gone. The “green queen” Angela Merkel is struggling over coal. Britain is brexiting the green EU. Japan is silent, while China and India burn coal like crazy. Russia never did care. And so it goes.
All in all the international climate alarm movement looks to be somewhere between stalling and collapsing. There is still a lot of political noise but the big guns are mostly silent as 2017 draws to a close.
What is really important is that most of this big ticket movement away from alarmism is coming directly from the voters. America, Britain and Germany have all swung away from the left. Only France is still going green, where they appear increasingly isolated.
Mind you there is still alarmist action in the smaller countries like Canada, and the evergreen EU is trying to act, but it is slow going at best. Conversely, smaller countries like Poland are pushing hard for sanity. There is definitely no present consensus favoring climate alarmism among the nations of the world.
As a result the UN’s campaign to take vast sums away from the developed world, in the name of climate control, looks to be heading straight for a wall. So is the very idea of climate control via world domination.
Some of all this must be the Trump effect, but it is also people waking up to the reality of green pain with no gain. This is certainly true in Britain and Germany where energy costs have exploded. France’s heavy use of nuclear power has delayed these unwanted green policy shocks somewhat, but now they are going after cars, which means directly hitting voters.
It is important not to be misled by the political noise of far away promises, like phasing out coal or internal combustion cars by 2040. There are still a lot of green voters so they will always get distant political promises, but maybe little else. Distant promises are not action.
Of course there is still a lot to be done to rein in destructive climate alarmism. But the point is that right now that alarmism has very little steam on the international stage. Now is the time to take positive steps toward sane energy policies. Some countries are already doing this, especially America and the UK, but it is just a small start at this point.
Ending absurd subsidies for renewable energy is very important. So is deregulation, plus abandoning incredibly expensive nutty green causes like decarbonization. The big green hole we now need to climb out of is pretty deep, so we must start climbing seriously.
We also need to return climate science to rationality. This means funding real science, not computer driven scares. Climate change is a natural process that we do not understand and cannot control. So the grand challenge is to finally figure out how it works, not to fabricate coming catastrophes, which is all that a lot of today’s research amounts to.
Let’s get to work while the tide of rationality is with us.
Knocking out the green subsidies will kill the climate change scam. The ONLY reason why this idiotic movement got going in the first place was because there was money to be made. Reality is setting in and people and governments are finding out that renewable energy sources can’t deliver and that the only thing they deliver are soaring electricity prices and unreliable power. The green grids are killing economies and people.
Face it, the entire global warming movement was just an invention of affluent first world dummies who didn’t have anything constructive to do with their wealth and time. It’s just like eating disorders in the west. You don’t find anorexic teenage girls in Bangladesh.
It’s just question of time when the ridiculous windmills and solar farms end up in the junkyard.
“The ONLY reason why this idiotic movement got going in the first place was because there was money to be made.”
I almost said “bang on” but I think maybe the movement would have started anyway even without the money. But without the money it would have soon fizzled out.
Not sure that I agree. The environmental movement has been growing ever more powerful since the 1960s (when I started tracking it). The primary goal is power, not money. Scares are the primary tactic because scares create political power.
But as the power grew so did the corruption, with huge payoffs now being promised. Many countries and industries are now lined up to make huge amounts of money, but that is a relatively recent development..
The environmental movement has been around for decades, but without money it had no power. Money and power are synonymous in this case. Money buys politicians which in turn results in dumb legislation. Or in the terms of the shake down racket also known as the U.N., they extract wealth and power by just existing. The U.S.A. should also just stop funding the UN. That would do wonders for the world.
Every movement needs money but that does not make money the goal of the movement. I myself have a fundraiser:
https://www.gofundme.com/climate-change-debate-education
In the climate case we do have industry activists whose goal is money making for their companies, especially the renewables industry.
Money or power, which came first? It’s a chicken and egg kind of question. Who cares…
I can guarantee you that when the money (i.e., government subsides) runs out, the AGW movement will die. In fact, the environmental movement is bought and paid for by government funds, either directly or indirectly.
ALL of these “first world problem” movements are phony and superfluous. They are no different than the “let them eat cake” days of the past.
I think you may be underestimating just how dangerous the Greens really are. This is a movement on the scale of Communism last century. It is true that the alarmist scientists get billions from the US and other governments, but the activists not so much. The leading groups like Sierra Club, EDF, NRDC, WWF, etc., get relatively little federal funding.
A lot of people believe this green stuff. For example, EDF routinely calls up 500,000 personal emails backing the latest EPA proposed nonsense regulation. Our fight for freedom is really real.
I think you’re underestimating the power of the people which lies clearly on the other side of the environmentalist movement nut jobs. These are the folks that elected Trump, a victory against overwhelming odds which included the MSM, Hollywood, DNC, and every single left wing organization (and the RNC establishment).
The power of the “Greens” compared to the gun owning population of this country is insignificant. So if the greens want to start a war I think they should think twice.
Just because conservatives make little noise and never resort to extortion tactics (or act like little babies and commit acts of eco-terrorism), doesn’t mean that they are weak.
…and I think you’re overestimating it.
AGW is a well-understood scientific fact that’s withstood over a century of challenge.
Is there any number of people which would be able to overthrow this scientific understanding without data to back up what they say?
climate.nasa.gov/evidence
The Federal government is spending $50 billion per year on grants that support “anthrogenic (man-caused) global warming.” It they have been at this level for the 29 years of this fraud they have spent $1.45 trillion on it, ruined science education and publishing that can be estimated to about ten times the grant figure damage.
Wait: David Wojick of Heartland Institute?!?! The Heartland Institute that is a paid shill for the fossil fuel industry?!?! Where the “science director” is a convicted felon was sentenced to six months in prison for defrauding the EPA, even while he claims that the EPA is “fraudulent”?
Oh, well I guess we have PLENTY of reason to accept YOUR version of climate science…/sarc.
Hi Tree. I see you have been shopping at the Ad Hominems R us store. I am not “of Heartland” but I greatly admire them an collaborate from time to time. They did publish this blog article of mine awhile back:
http://blog.heartland.org/2017/06/join-the-fight-for-skepticism-in-schools/
Tree Party and the two lurking trolls that upvoted him are of the mindset you warn about. They are clueless when it comes to climate dynamics.
The “two lurking trolls” you mentioned are actually conversant with climate science while you, clearly, are not.
jmac: 18,856 comments, 43,636 upvotes.
robert: 24.433 comments, 46,477 upvotes.
Immortal600: 2369 comments, 1552 upvotes.
Apropos of nothing. Just sayin’…
Immortal600 – A troll accusing actual responsible citizens of being trolls – major fail!
Using votes to prove a point? Shallow. You are a troll. Nothing more needs to be said. You know nothing about climate dynamics and neither do they
Says the troll.
anyone who spends that much time in meaningless message forums is the epitome of a troll. Guess what, nothing said on forums is worth anything. This is not the real world.