Seldom has any boondoggle cost the taxpayers more than the bugaboo of climate change. The climate scolds, crying that the sky is falling, have convinced powers-that-be (and perhaps shouldn't) to spend roughly $10 trillion, worldwide, on trying to find the Earth's thermostat in the arrogant presumption that we know what the planet's correct temperature is.
Look at a map of the Earth. Look at the locations and shapes of the continents. Look at the coastlines. This is how things are now. Next, look at a map of Earth in the Permian. One giant continent, Pangea, and one giant ocean, Panthalassa. The climate was much warmer. The landscape was very different. Nothing is permanent about the planet. The climate changes. Even the continents themselves move and change. We cannot stop it, and we are now seeing, more and more every day, what a waste of time and money it is to try.
A new Master Resource piece by Steve Goreham has some details.
Since the founding of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1992, the UN has led efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to try to fight human-caused global warming. Delegates from more than 180 nations meet at the annual UN Conference of the Parties (COP) to discuss climate action, with recent COP attendance exceeding 50,000 attendees.
But there is no evidence that UN COP meetings and more than $10 trillion spent on renewables over the last 30 years have affected the climate. The average atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, which is blamed for global warming, has been rising over the last 50 years without any change to the trend.
Here's a relevant chart:
— Ward Clark (@TheGreatLander) February 9, 2026
Every tranche of billions spent made no difference in increasing CO2 levels. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was created, and nothing changed. COP1, CP3, the Kyoto Protocols happened, and nothing changed. COP15, COP21, the Paris Accords happened, and nothing changed. COP28 and COP30 happened, and nothing changed.
Trillions spent, and nothing changed.
Read More: Former Climate Scold Now Admits CO2 Isn't Destroying the Planet
Net Zero Won't End in 2050: Three Countries Now Demanding Billions More for Forests
Nothing changed, except that the number of coal-fired electrical generation plants, especially in the developing world, is increasing at quite a rate. Mr. Goreham has that information as well.
But net zero policies cannot support the energy needs of growing developing nations. Also, the rise of artificial intelligence drives a huge need for electrical power in advanced nations that cannot be supplied by intermittent green energy sources. Businesses and political leaders now realize that Net Zero and ESG are not the keys to the future.
Today, more than 6,500 coal-fired power plants operate with more than 1,000 new plants in planning or under construction. Coal plants provided 34% of world electricity in 2024, the leading source. Leaders call for an end to coal-fired power, but coal consumption grew to an all-time high in 2024. Still, 700 million people still do not have access to electricity and about two billion suffer blackouts or brownouts every other day.
In 2021, Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), said, ”If governments are serious about the climate crisis, there can be no new investments in oil, gas, and coal from now—from this year.” But last year the IEA World Energy Outlook predicted that oil demand would continue to increase to 2050 and that gas consumption would increase 30% by 2050 in their “current policies scenario.”
The increased use of petroleum isn't all about energy, either. Petroleum may well be the most important commodity in our modern, technological lifestyle. Almost everything in our modern world is impossible without it.
In 2024, journalist-energy consultant Ron Stein pointed out that over 6000 products widely used today are based in full or in considerable part on crude oil and natural gas (another fossil fuel). The range of products he mentions merely for illustrative purposes—replicated below—is simply staggering:
“tooth brush, safety goggles, lipstick, airplane, contact lenses, smart phone, laptop computer, rubber gloves, crayons, helmet, washing machine, ski jacket, wind turbine, dentures, fitness tracker, yoga outfit, shampoo, headphones, garden hose, syringe, running shoes, carbon-fiber bicycle, toy blocks, electric piano, kayak, saran wrap, cotton towels, pills, chemical fertilizer and electric car.”
The entire climate change movement has been a litany of failure - an expensive litany of failure.
The climate is changing. It's warming. In that the scolds are correct, up to a point - the point at which they claim people are a major effector of that change. The climate, especially in the northern hemisphere, has been warming since the end of the last major glaciation. It will keep warming for many thousands of years yet, until the inevitable vast cycles of the planet's oceans, of its orbit, of its rotation, cause another major glaciation, and sooner or later, that will happen.
Human efforts have small say in these vast patterns, these vast cycles that take place over thousands of years, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of years. Through most of Earth's history, it's been warmer than it is now, and if you ask any climate scold how they know what the Earth's "correct" temperature is, you're liable to get a blank look; they cannot acknowledge or admit their own hubris.
We have spent trillions on this nonsense, and all we have to show for it are fields of ugly solar panels, thousands of acres covered with eagle-killing windmills, and not one jot of change in the slowly warming Earth, and not one iota of change in the slow increase of CO2 in the atmosphere.
