Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
Since 2016 and the first Trump election, many on the left wore “resistance” like a merit badge. It was on yard signs, coffee mugs and cable news graphics.
Yet, after the results of the midterms, that brand has a problem. The “resistance” is headed to Washington.
Capitol building at sunset, Capitol Hill, Washington DC. American Congress.
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”
— H.L. Mencken
Since 2016 and the first Trump election, many on the left wore “resistance” like a merit badge. It was on yard signs, coffee mugs and cable news graphics.
Yet, after the results of the midterms, that brand has a problem. The “resistance” is headed to Washington.
Line up the energy records of the new class and a pattern jumps off the page. Net-zero deadlines imposed by executive order. Pipelines voted down. Oil and gas dismissed as a relic. Hundreds of billions in taxpayer money steered toward the climate movement.
These are the people that will now write the bills and set the hearing schedule. And they’re all in on the Green Agenda…depending on when you asked.
North Carolina’s Roy Cooper signed an executive order demanding net-zero emissions by 2050 and 1.25 million zero-emission vehicles on state roads by 2030.
Ohio’s Sherrod Brown voted against Keystone XL…twice.
Kansas’ Adam Hamilton, a megachurch pastor, preached a 2020 sermon calling for repentance over climate change and suggesting his flock rethink foods “like cattle.”
Maine’s Troy Jackson helped pass the state’s climate laws and sat down for a Q&A with a group pushing public ownership of Maine’s energy system.
That’s not a list of politicians auditioning for the moderate wing. They’re angling for a keynote at the next Sunrise Movement rally.
From Green New Deal to “All of the Above”
Then the campaigns started, and the positions changed. Correction: the stated position changed.
El-Sayed not only deleted his 2019 post “I believe in a Green New Deal,” he flip-flopped and said, “Look, I’m not going to defend the Green New Deal.”
In 2022, Talarico said, “Fossil fuels are destroying the planet.” By September, his campaign was assuring Texans he “knows how essential oil and gas is to Texas’s economy” and backs an “all-of-the-above” strategy. Talarico now says, “too many people in our party talk about eliminating oil and gas.”
South Carolina’s Annie Andrews ran with the League of Conservation Voters’ endorsement calling her “committed to bold climate action.” A week before the election, she said, “I’m an all-of-the-above approach.”
A campaign slogan costs nothing. A Senate vote goes on the permanent record, and the American public pays the bill
Starting in January, these senators will vote on permits, pipelines, power plant rules and tax credits. Every roll call will show which version showed up for work: the candidate who sounded like a wildcatter in October, or the activist who was there all along.
Nobody Voted for The Green New Deal
The exit polls back that up. In NBC’s exit poll, the economy was the top issue at 39%, followed by the state of democracy and immigration. Climate didn’t make the top three.
The election isn’t a permission slip for green mandates that taxpayers will be paying off long after this Congress is gone. After all, North Carolina knows how that goes.
Under Governor Roy Cooper, state and local governments pledged more than $1.2 billion in incentives for an electric vehicle plant. The 7,500 promised jobs shrank to about 1,400 while the opening slid to 2028. Earlier this year, the state sued to take back the land. Lawmakers in both parties signed off, but taxpayers are the ones left holding an empty lot.
The Shoe Is on the Other Foot
For years, Democrats described standing up to the people in charge was the highest form of patriotism.
Every time this caucus pushes a rule that raises a power bill, they should hear about it. Every time a pipeline permit stalls, the Kansas rancher and the Texas trucker deserve to know whose desk it’s sitting on.
China isn’t waiting on Senate hearings. It’s building coal plants faster than any nation on earth, and every kilowatt America refuses to make is one Beijing is glad to supply.
Voters gave the keys to the Senate, not a blank check for the Green New Deal.
For years, these former outsiders spent all their time “resisting.” Now, they will get to see how they like being resisted.
Only from polls where responders can claim to worry without having to pay for climate action–and not be told that their collective actions will not affect local or global climate for decades, if ever.
The pollsters might as well ask: “Do you want more or less extreme weather?” … “Do you want more or less safety?”
“Say ‘enough’ to the United Nations/IPCC/COP process. Call off the CO2 fests. Shift from mitigation (fail) to adaptation. Demote government, promote realism and civil society. And practice social justice with the new imperative: First, do no harm. That starts and ends with energy prices–no climate premium please.”
Most people sense that the planet is in deep trouble and want to do something. Welcome to the climate majority.
Climate majority? Only from polls where responders can claim to worry without having to pay for climate action–and not be told that their collective actions will not affect local or global climate for decades, if ever. The pollsters might as well ask: “Do you want more or less extreme weather?” … “Do you want more or less safety?” The fix is in.
CMP is dedicated to “effective, coordinated climate action by a broad-based coalition of citizens; from grassroots initiatives to high-level policy.”
Through grassroots and policy level organising with communities, schools [“Climate Courage Schools”] and businesses [“Regulate Us. Better.”], we are working to turn that silent majority into a self-aware one — one that is able to slow climate breakdown and prepare for the impacts that are already underway.
Freak Out?
The CMP recently stated that “Most climate scientists are quietly freaking out,”
A 2021 anonymous poll by Nature found that the vast majority of climate scientists don’t believe humanity will limit warming to 1.5°C. In fact, 60% expected temperatures to rise beyond 3.0°C — levels that mean a high risk of triggering “hothouse Earth” conditions. So it comes with no surprise that 82% of those same scientists expected to see catastrophic impacts to our civilisation in their own lifetimes. Yet almost none were saying so publicly.
Enter a new term, scientific reticence, “when being too cautious puts us at risk.”
This kind of silence has a name. James Hansen — the godfather of climate science — calls it “scientific reticence”: scientists’ tendency to hold back from stating their conclusions in full. There’s also a communication problem baked into scientific culture: researchers are trained to lead with uncertainty, even when the evidence is overwhelming. A finding with 90–95% confidence is remarkably strong but will often be communicated with ifs and buts and doubt – every caveat chips away at the message, and the public often walks away hearing cool uncertainty rather than alarm.
“Other people are waiting on scientists to take bold action on climate,” the Climate Majority Project continues.
That reticence has real consequences. Business leaders, policymakers, and civil servants often rely on scientific consensus to justify urgent action. When scientists won’t spell out how bad things truly are, it quietly removes the permission others feel they need to sound the alarm themselves.
Strange. The IPCC and mainstream media live off the “consensus” argument. And critics have responded that science is not consensus, and climate models are not science. Academic climate scientists are all-in with alarmism to demonstrate their importance as “experts” and to keep the government money flowing. Never mind Climategate or RCP 8.5. Just keep alarming and don’t dare get skeptical. The benefits of anthropogenic climate change? Don’t go there; let the skeptics do that and stick to the consensus meme.
Back to the upside down Climate Majority Project:
This matters more than it might seem. Research on climate communication consistently finds that powerful people respond strongly to direct, negative facts — more than to hopeful messaging. Frank, emotionally honest speech from scientists could itself become a tipping point, particularly when paired with visible public support for action.
Again, this seems opposite of the real world. The “negative facts” is the neo-Malthusian narrative since Paul Ehrlich in the 1960s. Doom fatigue set in a long time ago. The latest iteration–the European heat waves this summer–is not demonstrative because it is localized.
Gotta fundraise. Can’t be too negative. There is hope….
There are signs the taboo is lifting. Hansen was among the first prominent scientists to say plainly that mainstream climate action has failed. Since then, a Guardian poll of scientists, Bill McGuire’s book Hothouse Earth, and a petition signed by 1,500 climate scientists have all declared the 1.5°C target effectively dead.
Greater scientific openness could be a catalyst — for coalition-building, for mobilisation, and for giving people permission to speak honestly about what the evidence actually shows. If you are a scientist, or know a scientist, forward this message along. One of the positive things about silent majorities is that sharing messages such as this one can actually make a difference.
The Climate (non)Majority Project ends:
If you know a scientist, share this with them. One of the hopeful things about silent majorities is that the more we become aware of all the others who share our concerns, the more we can build the feeling of being part of a movement large enough to make a difference.
Or do the opposite. Say “enough” to the United Nations/IPCC/COP process. Call off the CO2 fests. Shift from mitigation (fail) to adaptation. Demote government, promote realism and civil society. And practice social justice with the new imperative: First, do no harm. That starts and ends with energy prices–no climate premium please.
In the global push for “climate action,” non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and philanthropic foundations position themselves as impartial guardians of the planet.
The result?
Policies that exacerbate energy poverty, hinder economic development, and promote anti-humanist doctrines like Net Zero, all while claiming the moral high ground.
Guest Post by Stephen Heins, originally posted at The Word Merchant.
In the global push for “climate action,” non- governmental organizations (NGOs) and philanthropic foundations position themselves as impartial guardians of the planet. Yet beneath this veneer lies a web of conflicts of interest that distorts energy policy and fuels destructive lawfare. These entities, often funded by billionaires, dark money networks, and even foreign governments, prioritize ideological agendas over human well-being.
The result? Policies that exacerbate energy poverty, hinder economic development, and promote anti-humanist doctrines like Net Zero, all while claiming the moral high ground.
The Machinery of Climate Lawfare
Consider the Rockefeller family’s long-standing involvement. For over a decade, Rockefeller-funded groups have spearheaded legal crusades against fossil fuel companies, launching subpoenas and lawsuits aimed at crippling the industry. This “climate lawfare”—using courts to enforce environmental policies—isn’t just activism; it’s a strategic assault on reliable energy sources.
In the U.S., state attorneys general and NGOs have pursued cases against oil giants, often backed by millions from anonymous donors and left-wing foundations like the Tides Foundation and George Soros-linked groups. Firms like Sher Edling have raked in tens of millions from such dark-money sources, orchestrating multi-state tort claims that impose immense financial burdens on traditional energy producers. Meanwhile, these same legal networks have expanded their scope to include broader product liability and chemical litigation, prioritizing systemic disruption over practical engineering solutions.
These conflicts extend globally. The European Climate Foundation (ECF) continues to funnel vast, anonymous donations to lobbying outfits and legal activist groups like ClientEarth, which challenge traditional energy and infrastructure projects under the guise of climate justice.
Simultaneously, ties to foreign influence and geopolitical maneuvering have repeatedly surfaced in Western anti-energy campaigns. Groups frequently evade stringent transparency requirements while pushing policies that undermine domestic energy independence. This isn’t environmentalism; it’s economic self-sabotage disguised as philanthropy.
Skewing Science and Suppressing Realities
The problems multiply when these NGOs influence energy policy. By shaming governments and funding alarmist research, they skew public discourse toward renewables at any cost. Studies examining institutional climate funding show how heavily financed NGO research overwhelmingly promotes catastrophic narratives while ignoring disclosure requirements and economic trade-offs. This bias correlates directly with advocacy ties, turning objective science into political activism.
Trustees at major conservation NGOs are routinely linked to elite financial institutions, from investment bank executives to billionaire spouses, seamlessly blending profit motives with green rhetoric.
At its core, this agenda embodies anti-humanism on a global scale. Climate alarmism and rigid Net Zero targets demand sacrifices that disproportionately burden the developing world. In Africa, where hundreds of millions still lack reliable electricity, NGOs routinely block fossil fuel and nuclear projects through legal pressure, treating the continent like a perpetual ward.
Women suffer most: indoor air pollution from biomass cooking kills millions annually, and without grid power, they endure grueling labor for basic survival needs. Yet, major philanthropic organizations continue to pour millions into anti-fossil campaigns, entirely ignoring these human tolls.
The Renewable Hypocrisy and Energy Sanity
Renewables exemplify the systemic hypocrisy. Touted as saviors, they rely on massive government subsidies to compete, yet their inherent intermittency demands backups from fossil fuels or nuclear power—which NGOs routinely oppose due to “climate arrogance.” Until wind and solar stand entirely on their own, unsubsidized and profitable, they are no panacea. Groups backed by tax-subsidized “charities” divide societies and stifle development. This isn’t cooperation; it’s exclusionary zealotry that prolongs energy poverty.
Actual progress demands energy humanism: a “Best of the Above” approach embracing all energy sources to end poverty. Advanced nuclear energy, including small modular reactors (SMRs), offers abundant, reliable power for modern demands—including the massive electrical loads required by AI data centers—without the pitfalls of weather-dependent renewables.
Principles of energy sanity—abundance, reliability, infrastructure expansion, economic growth, human health, and sound capital formation—must guide policy. Profits and managed debt, not endless mandates and subsidies, build sustainable futures.
The enormous problems we face stem from unaccountable power. Lawfare drains vital resources, threatening national security by weakening domestic production. To fix this, we must demand absolute transparency: complete donor disclosures and strict conflict-of-interest policies that go far beyond token gestures. We must end tax breaks for political advocacy disguised as charity.
We must prioritize human flourishing over alarmist dogma. Only then can we harness energy for all, not just the elite-funded few.
“Our psychedelic-climate leaders are active today, creating change and doing compelling transformational work in this space.”
Yes, this group exists. I found out when Emily Atkin of Heated endorsed it with her statement:
Personally, when I take mushrooms, the last thing I want to do is think about climate change. But that’s apparently what I should be doing…. Psychedelics for Climate Action, or PSYCA, argues that the use of mind-altering substances and Indigenous plant medicines—like ayahuasca, psilocybin, ibogaine, ketamine, and LSD—can inspire people to help solve the climate crisis.
The PSYCA’s webpage asks: “With countless climate solutions, why are we in a crisis?” The pitch: “Join a community of 12,000 raising & expanding consciousness to discover pathways forward.”
PSYCA founder was profiled as a “social entrepreneur” by The New York Times:
Marissa Feinberg is the founder of Psychedelics for Climate Action, an organization dedicated to raising and expanding consciousness to discover pathways forward. Previously, Feinberg contributed to the co-working and environmental movements by co-founding Green Spaces NY for social entrepreneurs, which was acquired and became part of the global Impact Hub network.
Feinberg launched Triple Bottom Why, a communications consultancy for values-aligned organizations, leading her to work with Nushama Psychedelic Wellness and inspiring her to help bridge these ecosystems.
PSYCA claims “a rising psychedelic-climate trend” led by “our pioneers & catalysts….” Action items (verbatim):
Psilocybin research in legal jurisdictions – a tool for regenerative leadership
Consciousness-raising through meditative states
Activism to preserve the Amazon’s plant medicines and Indigenous wisdom
Storytelling to drive awareness & action, from TV and film to branding & PR
Psychedelic therapy for healing self, the collective, and Mother Earth
Bloomberg puts in a good word: “Proponents of a new wave of interest in hallucinogens say the right trip at the right time can change how people think about the natural world.”
Want to learn more? PSYCA offers the following venues (verbatim):
In-person: Live events, small and large, with curated content
Online events: town halls, global connectors
Access & discounts to related events & conferences
Optional: Private or public directory & networking
Tools & resources to develop & grow our ecosystem
Spotlight your work: 13,000 subscribers, WhatsApp groups, podcast (coming soon)
Access to aligned projects, ventures, and campaigns
I’ll pass…. And the climate movement pretends they are not fringe and ‘out there.’
Climate colonialism “forces a re-embodiment and relocation of how, why and who is at fault/responsible. The climate is failing to change. It is being colonised and forced to alter, modify, and – as catastrophes indicate – it is rebelling and resisting the assault upon it” (Doreen Martínez, 2014).
Viewed through the lens of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 13 on climate action, this quote is a critique of climate colonialism. Martínez is saying that responsibility for the climate crisis is being displaced onto the communities and countries that contributed least to the crisis, while Global North actors retain the authority to define both the problems and solutions.
…
To change this, the global higher education sector must invest more in climate literacy through teaching and learning focused on decolonial climate pedagogy. This will allow for a comprehensive dialogue that can influence how current and future generations understand what climate solutions exist and how they can help those most affected.
Researching a decolonial approach
To better understand how decolonial climate pedagogy might be reflected in higher education, a research project was undertaken drawing on the International Association of Universities (IAU) SDG 13 Global Cluster, a network of lead and partner universities within the IAU Global Cluster on Higher Education and Research for Sustainable Development which collaborates on initiatives related to climate action.
…
South-South connection
South-South connections are important because countries in the Global South often share related histories of unequal development and thus common goals. That said, these partnerships aren’t inherently decolonial and need to be examined for internal hierarchies.
…
Ultimately, this research project emphasises the work needed within decolonial climate action through teaching and learning. This is a mechanism that is often neglected in SDG 13. However, it is the tool that best advances climate education by moving beyond interventions that reproduce the assault on our climate and help us toward solutions that respond to climate resistance.
Shrika Madivanan is studying for a Masters in Research and Innovation in Higher Education (MARIHE) through Erasmus Mundus and recently completed an internship at the International Association of Universities (IAU) with a focus on higher education and research for sustainable development.
I guess if you can teach students what words like “pedagogy” mean, this would improve their vocabulary and mastery of language skills.
But I’m not sure saying to a potential employer “I mastered decolonial pedagogy at school” would necessarily guarantee you a job. Unless maybe you were applying for a job with the United Nations.
And Shrika, you need to be a little less subtle with your more funding requests, it is traditional in these articles to be a bit more direct, by saying something like “more research is required”.
Aaron Regunberg’s essay ‘Why Climate Politics Can’t Wait’ published last week in Boston Review reads as an anxious sermon aimed at wavering Democratic strategists as the mid-term elections approach. Its target is what the party’s own consultants now call ‘climate hushing’ – the quiet retreat from apocalyptic messaging.
Aaron Regunberg’s essay ‘Why Climate Politics Can’t Wait’ published last week in Boston Review reads as an anxious sermon aimed at wavering Democratic strategists as the mid-term elections approach. Its target is what the party’s own consultants now call ‘climate hushing’ – the quiet retreat from apocalyptic messaging.
As Matt Huber recently wrote in the New York Times, “The Democratic Party remains deeply unpopular. The way out is to stop elevating a litany of single-issue policies that appeal to the already converted. When it comes to climate change, for now, it might be better to say nothing at all.” Huber, like his compatriots on the Left, argues that Democratic advocacy on climate has pushed working people away from the party and that rebuilding a working-class base requires dropping the fight for climate action. New York’s Kathy Hochul, California’s Gavin Newsom, and a growing list of other Democrats – the party’s hitherto leading climate change ideologues – have concluded that talking incessantly about decarbonisation is an electoral liability rather than an asset for the party.
The Boston Review is not some marginal activist newsletter. Founded in 1975 and published in partnership with MIT, it has spent five decades as one of the American Left’s most serious intellectual addresses – the venue where figures like Martha Nussbaum, Amartya Sen and Cornel West have published, and where the ‘Boston Review Forum’ format has shaped how progressive policy elites argue with each other. When something appears there, it is aimed not at swing voters but at the strategists, academics and staffers who set the intellectual agenda for the Democratic Party’s activist wing. That is what makes Aaron Regunberg’s essay worth taking seriously. It is not a fringe complaint. It is the progressive intelligentsia’s own attempt to talk its elected officials out of the very retreat from climate messaging that voters have been rewarding at the ballot box.
Regunberg’s essay leans heavily on the idea that this year’s Strait of Hormuz war has finally handed climate advocates the perfect argument: “Sunlight does not have to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, and nobody ever went to war over wind.” He catalogues three arguments for “hushing” and sets out to demolish each. He fails at all three rebuttals, and the manner of his failure is instructive: concede a little ground to reality, then argue with great sophistication that nothing should actually change with respect to aggressive decarbonisation policies.
Rebuttal One: “Americans care more than the hushers admit”
Regunberg leans heavily on the Yale Programme on Climate Change Communication’s findings in a 2026 survey that majorities of voters blame global warming for rising grocery and utility bills, and that a majority say they would prefer a candidate who supports climate action:
The survey further shows that many climate policies poll very well. Some 77% of voters support regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant, while 65% support transitioning the US economy from fossil fuels to 100% clean energy by 2050. More than half of registered voters (58%) think that developing clean sources of energy should be a “high” or “very high” priority for the President and Congress, and the same percentage reported that they would prefer to vote for a candidate who supports action on global warming, compared to only 14% who’d prefer a candidate who opposes climate action.
Citing overly broad polling data is the oldest trick in the alarmist playbook: polling on abstract sentiment is worthless once you ask people what they are actually willing to pay. The University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute, in its most recent AP-NORC survey, found that fewer than four in ten Americans would accept even a token one-dollar-a-month carbon fee, a figure that has been falling for years.
The claim that public concern for climate is deeper and more actionable than the “hushers” admit leans heavily on surveys showing majorities agree the climate is changing and support vague goals such as regulating carbon dioxide or expanding renewables. Yet these numbers evaporate when respondents are asked what they are prepared to pay. As critics have long noted, abstract support for environmental goals collapses once trade-offs in household budgets are introduced.
Regunberg’s own preferred source, the Searchlight Institute, found that only 17% of battleground voters say climate change affects their family “a great deal”. Caring about climate change in the abstract, the way one cares about world peace, costs nothing. Caring enough to accept higher energy bills is a different matter entirely, and it is the only kind of caring that determines whether a policy survives contact with a legislature. Regunberg never asks his readers to pay anything; he asks them only to vote for politicians who promise, vaguely, to make polluters pay.
Rebuttal Two: “Climate action is compatible with a working-class agenda”
Here Regunberg invokes Franklin Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps and Bernie Sanders’s 2016 campaign to argue that green politics and working-class politics have always been natural allies. The historical analogy is entirely beside the point. Roosevelt’s New Deal conservation programmes planted trees; they did not attempt to re-engineer the physical basis of an industrial economy inside a single generation. The obstacle facing today’s energy transition is not rhetorical positioning but arithmetic.
On the International Energy Agency’s own reckoning, renewables – after decades of subsidy, mandate and moral exhortation – are on track to reach barely a fifth of global final energy consumption by 2030, up from 13% in 2023. Heat, which the IEA notes accounts for almost half of final energy demand, remains overwhelmingly fossil-fuelled; aviation and shipping remain, in the IEA’s own words, almost entirely dependent on oil. Something on the order of four-fifths of global energy demand simply cannot be electrified on any timeline that a democratic electorate would tolerate.
The most revealing of Regunberg’s three rebuttals is the one that abandons economics altogether and retreats into conspiracy. He traces the Supreme Court’s ‘shadow docket’, the erosion of trust in science and the broader crisis of American democracy back to a decades-long fossil-fuel plot, and concludes that defeating authoritarianism therefore requires defeating Big Oil. This is a threadbare piece of institutional scapegoating of exactly the kind that has kept the climate-industrial complex solvent for 30 years: every inconvenient political development, from populist scepticism to judicial conservatism, is retrofitted into evidence of fossil-fuel malfeasance.
It conveniently ignores that the scientific foundation for the ‘existential threat’ framing Regunberg still leans on has itself been abandoned by the very institutions that built it. The IPCC’s own modelling community has spent the past several years quietly retiring RCP8.5, the extreme ‘business as usual’ emissions pathway that underwrote a generation of doomsday headlines, on the grounds that it was never a plausible outcome. The pattern now unfolding across the climate Establishment is not retreat but re-armament: concede that the worst-case scenario was fiction, then insist the emergency remains exactly as urgent as before. Regunberg’s essay performs the identical manoeuvre but with democracy in place of temperature. He cites floods, droughts, storms and heatwaves as proof of accelerating catastrophe, but conveniently ignores the empirical record which shows deaths from extreme weather have fallen by more than 96% since the 1920s, even as the global population has quadrupled and the planet has warmed. That is not a world lurching towards fascism-by-heatwave. It is a world getting steadily better at surviving weather, principally because fossil-fuelled economic growth financed the air -conditioning, the flood defences and the early-warning systems that did the actual work.
The institutional tell
What makes Regunberg’s essay worth dwelling on is not its argument but its inadvertent honesty about the state of the climate Establishment itself. He reports, almost in passing, that Politico is folding its climate-focused E&E News, that NPR has shut its climate desk, that the Washington Post’s climate team was laid off, and that even Bill Gates has pivoted to arguing that decarbonisation is not the primary threat to the world’s poor. These are not the actions of an institution confident in the durability of its narrative; they are the retreat from a story that has stopped generating returns, whether in terms of finance, engagement or votes. Regunberg’s response is to insist that the retreat is a political mistake rather than a rational adjustment to changed facts on the ground – falling public willingness to pay, a discredited emissions scenario and an energy transition that, on the IEA’s own numbers, is decades behind the schedule its advocates promised.
The same tell appears in Regunberg’s own choice of evidence for public concern. He cites the 2026 World Risk Poll’s finding that Americans dramatically underestimate how many of their fellow citizens see climate change as a serious threat, and reads this as an untapped reservoir of latent support waiting to be unlocked by braver messaging. A less generous, and I think more accurate, reading is that the gap between stated concern and perceived social consensus reflects exactly the phenomenon that pollsters call preference falsification: people tell survey-takers what sounds civically responsible, while quietly declining, at the ballot box and the checkout counter, to bear any cost for it. Hochul, Newsom and McKee are not misreading their constituents. They are reading them more accurately than the pollsters Regunberg prefers.
What a rational alternative looks like
None of this is an argument for cruelty towards the genuinely poor communities most exposed to weather variability. It is an argument for the kind of policy humility that Friedrich Hayek would have recognised: the refusal to substitute the “fatal conceit” of central planners – in this case, a coalition of activists, editors and consultants convinced they can engineer both a household’s energy budget and its political loyalties through sufficiently alarmist climate messaging – for the dispersed knowledge embedded in market prices and household choices. Voters are not failing to grasp the moral stakes of climate change, as Regunberg supposes; they are making entirely rational trade-offs between an abstract, long-horizon risk and the concrete, immediate cost of heating their homes and filling their tanks.
Democrats who have noticed this are not cowards captured by fossil-fuel money as the ‘climate hushing’ slur implies. They are instead turning “minimally pragmatic to keep their votes” – which, in a democracy, is meant to be the whole point. Regunberg wants Martin Luther King’s urgency applied to carbon dioxide. What he actually needs, and what Boston Review’s readers deserve, is arithmetic: how much energy the world actually consumes, how little of it can currently be electrified, and how little the public – asked honestly, in dollars rather than sentiment – is prepared to pay to close that gap. Until that reckoning arrives, climate politics can wait. The physics of a functioning economy, unlike the politics of a mid-term cycle, cannot.
“When my fiancée and I got engaged, we knew we wanted to celebrate our relationship in the company of our loved ones,” she begins. “As a climate journalist and a scientist interested in sustainability, we also knew we didn’t want our wedding to cause a lot of harm to the environment and climate.” She continues:
The average U.S. wedding generates roughly 56 tons of carbon pollution. That’s over three times the amount the average American produces in a year and almost nine times more than the global average per person. In addition to climate-warming pollution, weddings generate a lot of food and single-use plastic waste — by some estimates, the average wedding generates 400 pounds of waste.
Several “planet friendly” strategies are emphasized:
“Tighten your guest list.” Fewer people (why were they born anyway, Paul Ehrlich might have asked?). Fewer flights. Smaller places for conditioned air.
“Consider meat alternatives and look into venues that compost.”
“Choose a venue that is powered by renewable energy.”
“Use rentals or thrift items for decor, clothing, and more.”
And finally, “Talk about it!”
She adds:
Share climate action commitments with planners, venues, guests, and with anyone who will listen. The best way to exponentially grow the impact of the climate action that you take in your life is to normalize it for other people.
Hard Questions
Okay, no skeptics invited or even considered for a “green” wedding. Just Doomers. And turning to some hard questions:
Was it a beautiful day? Was the greenery notable? Why?
Was it held under a wind turbine or next to a solar farm? If not, why not?
How did the guests arrive at the wedding? Were the eco-sinful conflicted?
Is “climate friendly” a real sacrifice or just an excuse to save money and exclude the politically incorrect?
More hard questions could be asked, such as whether dairy products were offered in the coffee or contained in the desert. But that is the small stuff. The big stuff is what to do if a critic of climate exaggeration were to attend or converse. And would such talk by one of the newlyweds in the future be grounds for separation or divorce?
Saving money is a priority as in non-climate weddings. Maybe this can be the excuse for pairing down what many Deep Ecologists would call conspicuous consumption. A tele-wedding, after all, is far more “climate friendly” for the religious.
The co-owner of GB News, a British TV channel accused of broadcasting climate change denial, has donated £28m to influential Church of England institutions that support climate action.
The co-owner of GB News, a British TV channel accused of broadcasting climate change denial, has donated £28m to influential Church of England institutions that support climate action.
This raises “serious questions”, say Christian leaders, given that Sir Paul Marshall’s views on the climate crisis and those frequently broadcast on the TV channel are “in direct opposition” to the Church of England, which believes that “responding to the climate crisis is an essential part of our responsibility to safeguard God’s creation and achieve a just world”.
Marshall, a hedge fund manager and Christian who said recently that the UK had been infected by “climate derangement syndrome”, gave at least £13m to Holy Trinity Brompton (HTB) church and the Church Revitalisation Trust (CRT) via his Sequoia Trust between 2018 and 2025, according to Guardian analysis of accounts filed with the Charity Commission.
HTB is the largest church in the Church of England, with a congregation of about 4,000, and is home to the evangelical Alpha Course, which has reached 37 million people in more than 175 countries, according to Alpha International. Marshall has been a member of the congregation since 1997.
The CRT, also known as the Re-vitalise Trust, is run from HTB, and has established more than 100 evangelical churches around the UK. Marshall is also a director of CRT.
Some critics of Marshall’s views fear that the money could influence the church institutions’ attitudes towards the climate crisis.
Rev Dr Darrell Hannah, the chair of Operation Noah, a leading UK Christian climate charity, said: “As the climate crisis intensifies, we’re increasingly concerned that a fellow Christian – one with more money and power than virtually any other Christian in the UK – continues to share problematic and highly influential views on the most important issue of our time. This cannot go unchallenged.” Operation Noah was instrumental in getting nearly every UK denomination to divest from fossil fuels.
“Marshall’s views are in direct opposition to those of the Church of England,” Hannah said. “Given his outsized influence on our country – and in light of his problematic views on the most significant moral and practical challenge of our time – serious questions need to be asked about Sir Paul Marshall’s donations to faith groups, and specifically to the Church of England.”
The Church of England has a routemap for all parts of the church to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2030 and has divested its multibillion-pound endowment and pension funds from fossil fuels.
GB News broadcast 953 attacks on climate science and climate action around the 2024 general election, according to a report. The channel has been accused of broadcasting climate change denial, including descriptions of global heating as “the climate scam” and suggestions the government was going to introduce “enforced veganism”.
Marshall, who has a net worth of £950m, said recently that efforts to cut planet-heating emissions were “impoverishing people”. Marshall also owns the Spectator magazine and UnHerd website and has given large donations to schools and the London School of Economics.
Why is it that the left are so keen on clamping down on free speech?
Much of what Sir Paul Marshall says is certainly worth debating, if nothing else. His reference to “efforts to cut planet-heating emissions were “impoverishing people“, for example.
As for the Church’s claim that “responding to the climate crisis is an essential part of our responsibility to safeguard God’s creation and achieve a just world”, where is their evidence that eliminating fossil fuels will make the world “more just”. Almost certainly, the reverse is true – fossil fuels have made the whole of the world, rich and poor, much better off than ever before. What is “just” about returning the population of Africa to the dark ages?
Anybody who claims they know God’s thoughts and beliefs is a charlatan.
The Guardian headline refers to “Christian leaders”. In fact, Operation Noah is nothing of the sort, it is just a small charity (their own description”), and do not reflect the policies and beliefs of the C of E.
They are just another climate lobby group, set up in 2004 “in response to the (so-called) climate crisis”.
New York State’s fiscal year runs from April 1 to March 31, and thus there is a mandate that the budget for each year must be approved before April Fool’s Day. This year they blew right by that deadline. But today, 8+ weeks late, it appears that a new budget has been enacted for what they call “fiscal year” 2027, that is, April 1, 2026 to March 31, 2027.
New York State’s fiscal year runs from April 1 to March 31, and thus there is a mandate that the budget for each year must be approved before April Fool’s Day. This year they blew right by that deadline. But today, 8+ weeks late, it appears that a new budget has been enacted for what they call “fiscal year” 2027, that is, April 1, 2026, to March 31, 2027.
Among several contentious issues that held up enactment of this year’s budget, probably the most contentious involved the provisions relating to energy and “climate.” Our climate law, the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act of 2019 (CLCPA) had imposed absurd deadlines for eliminating fossil fuels from the energy system. Seven years in, Kathy Hochul, our lightweight Governor, had finally mustered just enough brain cells to recognize that disaster was approaching. But she faces big legislative majorities of her own Democratic Party committed to “climate action.” And of the members constituting those majorities, most are not moderates open to pragmatism, but rather progressive activists committed to total climate purity. How to get out of this trap?
Hochul adopted a strategy of seeking minimum possible modifications of of the CLCPA, affecting only the most immediate impending deadlines of the Act. The apparent goal is to provide a couple of years of breathing room, sufficient (they hope) to get Hochul safely re-elected later this year.
But then what? It looks like they have traded a very brief reprieve for what will very likely be an even worse subsequent disaster.
First, let’s review the problematical CLCPA provisions. The CLCPA had three near-term deadlines that had become obviously impossible. Those were: (1) a 2024 deadline for promulgating regulations, particularly for what they called a “cap and invest” program, to implement the Act; (2) a 2030 deadline to reduce statewide “greenhouse gas” emissions by 40% from 1990 levels; and (3) a 2030 deadline to get 70% of electricity from “renewables.”
So where was the State with respect to these CLCPA statutory mandates?
The State had completely blown off the 2024 deadline for the “cap and invest” regs. As a result, environmental groups had sued, and a state court had ordered that the State issue the regulations as required, as painful as that may be. However, the judge had stayed his injunction in order to give the legislature time to act.
As to the mandate of 40% reduction of GHG emissions from 1990 levels by 2030, the State “Climate Act Dashboard” admits that the reduction so far has been only 14% (data only through 2023, but not much has changed since). Most of that has been a consequence of switching power plants from burning coal to natural gas. There are no more coal power plants to switch. The prospect of major further reductions in GHG emissions between now and 2030 is nil.
As to renewable electricity generation, the Climate Act Dashboard states that 32% of the goal of 70% or electricity from renewables has been achieved, and another 30% of the goal is supposedly “in the pipeline.” Most of the 32% already achieved consists of Niagara Falls, which existed way before the CLCPA came along in 2019. They don’t give details of what the “in the pipeline” projects are, or of whether they are anything more than pipe dreams. They clearly will get nowhere close to the supposedly mandatory “70% of electricity from renewables” goal by 2030.
The 2024 deadline for promulgating “cap and trade” regulations gets moved from 2024 to 2028.
The mandate for 40% reduction in GHG emissions in 2030 is eliminated. In its stead, we get non-binding target of a 60% reduction in GHG emissions by 2040.
From what I can tell, the “70% of electricity from renewables” mandate remains in place.
Comments:
(1) The “cap and trade” regulations will be no more feasible in 2028 than they are today. The only difference will be that Hochul will not be up for re-election that year. They will have two options, which will be to blow off the deadline as they did the last time, or extend it again.
(2) The idea that GHG emissions will be reduced 60% by 2040 is even more absurd than the prior idea that emissions would be reduced 40% by 2030. Given that it is no longer a mandate, and has been moved from four years out to fourteen, nobody will even bother to pay attention to this one for at least a decade.
(3) The “70% of electricity from renewables by 2030” mandate will be missed by a mile. But there is no one to hold accountable. Utilities? They are not in the business of generating the power any more. The people who do generate the power are independent operators who run one or a few power plants or wind farms or whatever, but have no responsibility for the overall generation mix. The people who are supposedly responsible for the generation mix are an alphabet soup of brainless state agencies (NYSERDA, NYISO, CAC, etc.) with no skin in the game. The whole idea of holding such bureaucracies accountable is antithetical to their very nature.
But meanwhile, as time will continue its march, New York’s energy situation will continue to worsen:
The provisions of the CLCPA and New York’s environmental laws that currently make it impossible to build new natural gas power plants, or repower old ones to new technology, will remain in place. The natural gas fleet will continue to age, and some plants will retire.
The termination of federal subsidies plus restrictions on offshore wind mean that little wind or solar generation will be built either.
New York City’s Local Law 97, mandating conversion to electric heat for most large buildings, remains in place. Where is the electricity going to come from? Nobody knows.
And then there is RGGI, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. New York is a member, along with all the other states along the Atlantic Coast from Maine to Virginia (except Pennsylvania). There are limited allowances for GHG emissions from power plants, and the amount of those allowances is scheduled to decrease by approximately 10% per year every year through 2033. The very idea is to force many of the natural gas power plants to close, and to force the price of electricity from the remaining ones to skyrocket. As of now this remains in place. If you think this scheme is so ridiculous that no state could possibly be part of it, remember that Virginia just re-joined a couple of months ago.
Here is some related advice from the State of New York: if you should ever find yourself in a car hurtling toward a brick wall at 100 mph, your best strategy is to close your eyes and pretend it is not happening.
If it is any consolation, the Greenberg Traurig summary of the CLCPA amendments reports that another change in the statute is that the percent of “benefits” of the Act directed to “disadvantaged communities” is to go from 40% to 45%. So at least there’s that.
The claim—that opposition to “climate action” stems primarily from conservatives who personally dislike liberals, rather than substantive disagreements—is a reductive framing often pushed in academic or activist circles. It attempts to pathologize dissent as tribal animosity instead of engaging with policy, economics, science, or risk assessment. Polling and real-world outcomes show a clearer picture: a large, persistent partisan gap exists, but it’s rooted in differing priorities, views on government intervention, economic trade-offs, and skepticism about alarmist framings and specific prescriptions—not mere “dislike.”
“… reducing hostility toward the other side (particularly among conservatives) may facilitate cross-ideological climate coalitions. …”
Climate policy isn’t partisan — research suggests more on the right support it than oppose it
Published: April 29, 2026 2.09am AEST Emily Huddart Professor of Sociology, University of British Columbia Tony Silva Associate Professor of Sociology, University of British Columbia
Climate change has become entangled in partisan politics. In Canada, as in other countries, climate concern and support for climate policy are often coded as left-leaning positions. Meanwhile, climate change skepticism or denial is more likely to be espoused by those on the political right.
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However, we found that having ties to the oil and gas sector did not significantly predict their support for climate policy. Likewise, the degree of conservatism — whether someone identified as centre-right or far-right — didn’t make conservatives less likely to support climate policy either.
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What mattered most was affective polarization.
Negative feelings toward the left and positive feelings toward the right were by far the strongest predictors of climate policy attitudes, and explained the most variation in support.
In simple terms, people on the right who felt the most hostility toward the left, and the most warmth toward the right, were more likely to oppose climate policy.
Conservatives are more likely than liberals to oppose climate policies, resulting in political polarization over climate change. Most research treats this gap as if it reflects two cohesive blocs on opposite sides of an issue. Drawing on original survey data from a probability sample of Canadians (n = 2,503), we find that while liberals are highly uniform in their orientation toward climate policies, conservatives are far more heterogeneous. Further analyses reveal conservatives’ policy positions strongly correlate with their partisan affect—both the extent to which they dislike opposing liberals (negative partisanship) and the extent to which they like fellow conservatives (positive partisanship). These findings highlight the importance of considering variation within, and not just between, political sides. The results additionally suggest that reducing hostility toward the other side (particularly among conservatives) may facilitate cross-ideological climate coalitions.
The study appears to assume conservatives who oppose climate action are irrational. From the first paragraph of the study – “… Climate mitigation policy in democratic nations requires coordination and compromise between political elites, scientific experts, and citizens. Yet sound public policies are often rejected due to partisan or ideological divides. …”
The determination of whether someone was conservative was based on self identification – “… We use “liberal” and “conservative” to denote respondents’ self-placement on a 0–10 ideological scale (0 = extremely liberal/left, 10 = extremely conservative/right), rather than formal party affiliation …”. This introduces some obvious potential biases.
The unsupported assumption that climate policies are “sound”, and by implication that opposition to climate policies is irrational, is the key mistake which led the study authors to an erroneous conclusion.
When I first heard of the climate crisis I was concerned. It was when I heard the absurd proposed solutions – solar panels and wind turbines – and heard and read claims that nuclear power was too dangerous, that I started digging deeper.
If the world was truly on the brink of a climate catastrophe, how could the risk of a few nuclear meltdowns possibly be worse than a global warming mass extinction event?
It didn’t long to discover the truth of the situation. The reality is claims we are in the midst of a global warming crisis are just as irrational as green opposition to nuclear power. The world is in no danger of overheating – our world has been locked in the Late Cenzoic Ice Age for the last 34 million years, an ice age which shows no sign of ending.
Why would awareness of these facts lead to feelings of hostility towards climate activist politicians?
The ongoing affordability crisis in renewable enthusiast regions like Europe more than demonstrates a world with energy systems dominated by wind and solar would be a world locked in a permanent economic great depression, with industries crushed by the cost of unreliable energy, by having to continuously start and stop the engine of society depending on hour by hour changes in the weather. Not the kind of world most people would want to leave to their kids.
The study authors considered none of this. By blindly assuming climate policy proposals are sound, by inferring respondents who opposed climate action did not have rational reasons for that opposition, without bothering to ask what those reasons are, the study authors confused cause and effect. The study authors leapt to the false conclusion that opposition to climate policy is motivated by emotional prejudice against liberals, without considering the possibility those negative feelings are motivated by reason.
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