There's an old saying that applies to, well, almost everything, but certainly to the claims of climate scolds: "Money talks, and (the stuff you find at the wrong end of a bull) walks." It's never been truer than now, when the developed nations of the world have spent trillions trying to deal with natural processes and failing.
That's to be expected. The planet and its climate are a lot bigger than we are. But that hasn't stopped the climate scolds and their fellow travelers from spending our money in the attempt, enough money to cover the land surface of the earth with $20 bills, and they have accomplished nothing. Hydrocarbon use has never been higher.
Over at The Empowerment Alliance, columnist Gary Abernathy has brought the numbers and gives us an enlightening metaphor in the bargain.
Nearly all of us have fallen prey to schemes, scams or even well-intentioned projects that come up short of the results promised for the money spent.
For instance, the new year has undoubtedly brought the annual rush of gym memberships from Americans convinced they’ll shed those holiday pounds and get back into shape. Or there’s that extended warranty we were talked into on a large kitchen appliance that wouldn’t go bad unless it was dropped from the top of a 10-story building. How ‘bout that costly monthly charge we incur for a streaming service so we can enjoy the one show we’re really going to watch?
Time and again, Americans find themselves on the short end of the stick, paying through the nose for services that never live up to their promise. Nowhere is that more evident than in the decades-long climate-based hoax that promised a revolution in the energy industry to save us all from extinction.
In other words, that's money that's almost certainly always wasted. Here's the key difference: When people buy extended warranties or gym memberships, they are spending their own money. (Full disclaimer: I know a few people who have had gym memberships for years and gained a lot of good from it. I have my own gym; it's called Alaska.)
Climate scolds and their political fellow travelers, though, are spending our money. And what are they getting for it?
A recent column by William Murray, former chief speechwriter for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and a past editor of RealClearEnergy, lays bare how promises made by far-left environmentalists fell far short of their assurances. Murray points out that $20 trillion – that’s $20 trillion – has been spent (over the last couple of decades, according to his source), largely by the U.S. and Europe, to “decarbonize” the global economy. Murray notes that the expenditure is “pretty much the total present value of America’s GDP.”
The result? “Hydrocarbon consumption continued to increase anyway. All that was achieved was a tiny reduction, just 2%, in the share of overall energy supplied by hydrocarbons. Put simply, as the energy pie got bigger and all forms of energy supply increased, hydrocarbons ended up with a slightly smaller share of a larger pie.”
$20 trillion. That's "trillion" as in "T" followed by "rillion." That's over half the United States' national debt.
Overall, hydrocarbon consumption increased. And bear in mind, this is just talking about direct energy consumption. This doesn't take into account all the other uses of fossil hydrocarbons. Everything we use, almost every aspect of our everyday lives, is dependent on byproducts of oil and gas. Plastics, pharmaceutical precursors, detergents, paints, batteries, synthetic rubbers, clothing, you name it - all dependent on good old petroleum. Not to mention motor fuels, including gasoline and the diesel fuel that is required to move every product anywhere.
Hydrocarbons, gas, coal, and oil are going to be a necessary part of our economy for the foreseeable future, and that's just a fact. But there's more to Mr. Abernathy's argument.
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As we have come to expect, the climate scolds aren't completely forthcoming when they make claims about the issue.
Haven’t renewables made great strides? That’s what we read in the mainstream media, parroting the renewables industries. But read the careful wording used by most advocates of renewables when they boast about advancements.
For instance, The Renewable Energy Institute featured a story headlined, “Renewables Account for 90% of US Power Generation in 2024.” Wow! But the details were a little less impressive, clarifying that “renewable energy made up nearly 90% of the total US power generation capacity added during the first 3 quarters of 2024, as per a review conducted by the SUN DAY Campaign using Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) data.”
At first glance, readers not carefully parsing the language – or relying only on the headline – might think that renewable energy accounted for 90 percent of total power generation in the first three quarters of 2024. Of course, that’s not the case. The story was merely claiming that 90 percent “of the total US power generation capacity added (emphasis added)” was from renewable energy.
Forget energy for a moment, and consider the journalism aspect here. The Renewable Energy Institute runs a headline claiming that renewables account for 90 percent of electricity generation in 2024. Now, that's laughable on the face of it, to anyone who has done any reading at all on energy policy and the numbers around it. Only when one gets into the story does one note, some ways down, that they refer only to added power generation. Given the trillions spent on windmills and solar panels, and - note that 2024 was still under the energy-unfriendly Biden administration here in the States - virtually no traditional generation capacity was added.
That's misleading, and likely deliberately so; this should have earned someone some stink-eye from an editor, and may well have done so, were not the editor likely on the same page of the same agenda.
It's beginning to look a lot like the forces of reason are starting to pull ahead here. Not only is logic and science on our side, not only are people starting to realize that the Earth doesn't have a thermostat we can adjust and that we wouldn't know what the "correct" temperature range is even if it did, but people are also starting to figure out that trillions of dollars, much of it taxpayer money, has been dropped down rabbit holes to no good end. Look at the two recent events that have traditionally been cuddle-buddy rooms for climate scolds, COP30 and the World Economic Forum; the former was notable for who didn't attend, as well as the hypocrisy of those who did. The latter's attendees figured out at last that the World Economic Forum isn't and shouldn't be the World Climate Forum, and we should note that President Trump should take a lot of the credit for that, given the steamroller approach he takes to these issues.
Yes, it looks like people are starting to come around, and maybe soon, anthropogenic, earth-threatening climate change will go the way of phrenology.
But we ain't there yet.
