by Victor Davis Hanson
The climate creed that once ruled unquestioned is cracking as energy needs, geopolitical reality, and basic science force the West to admit carbon isn’t dying anytime soon.
For decades, the monolithic and sacrosanct international climate change hierarchy went unquestioned.
Western nations in particular spent trillions of dollars over the past half-century to subsidize expensive but erratic wind and solar energy while demonizing carbon fuels as toxic threats to the planet.
Like Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion dogma, climate change orthodoxy was embedded into every aspect of Western culture, from the corporate boardroom to the university campus.
Question whether man-made global warming was truly responsible for increased temperatures rather than natural, often centuries-long cycles of heating and cooling of the planet, and one was labeled a climate crank.
Everything from declining fertility to forest fires was ridiculously attributed to climate change.
But the causes of both demographic crises and charred landscapes were more likely the result of new affluent lifestyles that saw child-rearing as too expensive and time-consuming, and misguided forest policies or underfunded firefighting.
Yet reality has caught up with the near-religious climate change cult.
One, the left-wing tech billionaires—exemplified by former climate change zealot Bill Gates—have become apostates of the green movement. Now they do not warn of a planet threatened by too much man-made heat but rather by too little man-made kilowattage.
They believe artificial intelligence will prove as transformative as the Industrial Revolution. But to win the AI revolution will require vast increases in electricity production, of up to a staggering 100 gigawatts a year of additional capacity.
Such enormous demand—to build the equivalent of a hundred huge power plants per year—is far beyond the ability of “renewables” alone.
Instead, the only solution is an “all of the above” strategy of building more nuclear, natural gas, clean-coal, wind, and solar generation plants.
Two, ascendant China’s massive arms buildup and its bullying Belt and Road imperialism have finally put international “climate accords” into question.
Even the environmentalist King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden has recently let it slip that he is troubled by why Europe sandbagged its own economy by shutting down its formerly efficient nuclear and fossil fuel plants. He reminded the world that the European Union nations contribute only six percent of the planet’s carbon emissions.
The West finally realizes that a cynical China has been playing it for years by funding green propaganda abroad.
Indeed, Beijing guilt-tripped Europe and the U.S. on global warming while it exported billions of dollars of cheap wind and solar generation products—often below its own cost of production.
Meanwhile, China plows ahead, building two to three coal and nuclear generation plants per month.
Under the propagandistic banner of “climate change,” China hopes that its Western competitors invest in inefficient and high-priced renewable energy. Meanwhile, its own expanding fossil fuel and nuclear industries ensure it will enjoy global price advantages in both trade and armament.
Three, the global climate crisis shakedown has become shameless. Formerly third-world nations now demand from the West hundreds of billions of dollars in “climate reparations” for carbon emissions released decades ago.
Yes, the West burned more oil and gas. But it also provided the rest of the world with carbon-fueled cars, factories, and modern consumer goods.
Green critics fail to concede that almost all global technology and modern industrial products come from either the West or westernizing copycats.
Four, energy production is at the nexus of conflict and can mean life or death for nations. To the degree the United States and its allies produce lots of natural gas and oil, they can protect the West from crippling embargoes and cutoffs from anti-Western energy producers.
During the Ukraine War, America exported liquefied natural gas to Europe, not solar panels or turbine blades. And it will be increasingly essential to keep Europe afloat as Russia turns off its export spigot.
When oil and natural gas are affordable, thanks to the fossil fuel production of Western nations, then illiberal and bellicose oil-exporting countries like Iran and Russia have less money to spend on aggressive wars or subsidizing their global terrorists.
Five, science is not fossilized in amber but dynamic and changing.
Increasingly, climatologists are no longer afraid of being bullied by global green scolds.
They point out that while accurate temperature recording is only a couple of centuries old, the planet has been here for over 4 billion years. And it reveals plenty of evidence of natural climate volatility.
Extreme heat and cold spells lasted in nature for centuries—and did so long before humans appeared, little more than 300,000 years ago.
So, the public is sick of pseudoscientific activists peddling their doom-and-gloom wares for their own particular and profitable agendas.
Elite green gurus often buy seaside estates while warning of devastating tidal waves to come. They fly in carbon-spewing private jets while ordering the poor to turn down their air conditioners.
In sum, carbon is dead, long live carbon!