Tag: New York Times (NYT)

Legacy Media Weep as Trump Axes Biden’s Fuel Economy Diktat

On Saturday, President Trump announced that he had approved new vehicle fuel economy standards, and on Monday the Transportation Department made the final rule official. Within hours, the legacy media covered the rollback of Biden’s vehicle mandates with shrill criticisms. The New York Times told readers that the administration was gutting a signature federal effort to speed the shift to electric vehicles.

Start with an irony that the NYT buries in its own reporting. The paper conceded that Congress had already scrapped the fines for automakers that miss the mileage targets, leaving Monday’s rollback more symbolic than substantive. That penalty repeal, part of last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill, is what mattered.

A satirical illustration depicting a protest scene with dramatic expressions of fear and despair from various characters in response to a fuel economy mandate being axed. Prominent figures in the image include a smiling man resembling a political figure holding signs with fuel economy statistics, while the background features newspapers and messages about climate change and car affordability.
AI generated by ChatGPT

From Tilak´s Substack

By Tilak Doshi

An electric vehicle (EV) charging station with a silver pickup truck parked at one of the charging spots, marked 'EV CHARGING ONLY'. The area is surrounded by greenery in a parking lot.

On Saturday, President Trump announced that he had approved new vehicle fuel economy standards, and on Monday the Transportation Department made the final rule official. Within hours, the legacy media covered the rollback of Biden’s vehicle mandates with shrill criticisms. The New York Times told readers that the administration was gutting a signature federal effort to speed the shift to electric vehicles. Politico judged the revision “one more nail in the coffin” for Biden-era EV policy. Bloomberg’s headline announced that the US “guts” auto mileage rules, while the Washington Post ran its own story under the banner “Analysts are doubtful”, reporting that “experts” scoffed at the administration’s claim of a $1,300 cut in new-car prices.

The final rule requires a fleetwide average of 34.9 miles per gallon by model year 2031, in place of the roughly 50 mpg demanded by Biden’s standards. To the assembled commentariat, this is climate vandalism, a betrayal of drivers and a gift to Beijing. Every one of these claims is false or badly misleading. And the missing context – what the Biden mandates cost, who paid, and what they actually bought – is the story the legacy press coverage never reveals.

A funeral for a rule already dead

Start with an irony that the NYT buries in its own reporting. The paper conceded that Congress had already scrapped the fines for automakers that miss the mileage targets, leaving Monday’s rollback more symbolic than substantive. That penalty repeal, part of last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill, is what mattered. Politico’s own expert, Joshua Linn of the University of Maryland, explained that without penalties CAFE (corporate average fuel economy) had become little more than a polite request: Detroit is asked nicely to add technology, with no consequence for declining. Neither outlet drew the obvious conclusion. If the standards were toothless, the handwringing over their formal retirement is theatre. If they still bit, they were a mandate – precisely what the Times insists Trump falsely accuses Biden of imposing. The coverage wants it both ways.

As for the Post’s doubtful analysts, Stephanie Brinley of Mobility Global and Jessica Caldwell of Edmunds argue that savings will not reach buyers when the average new vehicle already costs around $50,000, and that any saving would first be absorbed by tariffs. In fact, NHTSA itself cautions that its estimated $1,289 reduction in average vehicle cost by model year 2031 materialises only if manufacturers pass it on. But whether a cost saving shows up at the dealership is irrelevant to what the vehicle efficiency mandates cost in the first place, and who paid.

The hidden tax on every showroom floor

The answer is not hard to find, though it requires reading beyond the Beltway press. The Heritage Foundation’s Diana Furchtgott-Roth and Andrew Weiss showed that Biden-level CAFE targets exceeded what gasoline-powered cars can plausibly achieve, converting fuel economy regulation into a backdoor EV mandate. The Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Marlo Lewis argues that this ran afoul of the statute’s own limits.

To comply, legacy manufacturers had to raise the EV share of their fleets, selling the extra EVs at a loss, and then recoup the loss by charging more for gasoline models or by buying regulatory credits from Tesla – a compliance tax according to the Competitive Enterprise Institute. The gasoline-car buyer subsidised the EV buyer, one sticker price at a time.

The Texas Public Policy Foundation and the American Energy Institute quantified this cross-subsidy in 2025. On its estimates, each model-year 2023 EV imposes between $94,121 and $152,695 in hidden 10-year social costs, borne by gasoline-car buyers, taxpayers and electricity ratepayers, while CAFE, EPA greenhouse-gas and state ZEV credits can be worth $46,000 to $115,000 per EV to the manufacturer.

The academic literature points the same way. UC San Diego’s Mark Jacobsen, cited in a January public comment by the American Consumer Institute, finds CAFE three to four times costlier than an equivalent gas tax, with each additional mile per gallon costing consumers $11.2 billion in the first year and $24.1 billion after 10. Cato Institute’s Peter Van Doren puts CAFE’s cost at no less than six times that of a carbon tax, and the Mackinac Center cites Jacobsen’s figure of $222 per ton of CO2 abated. CEI reckons the reset spares buyers about $900 on the average new car. These studies measure different things, but they converge on one conclusion: the mandate was expensive, and the expense was hidden.

The bill came due in Detroit. Ford took a $19.5 billion write-down in December as it cancelled EV programmes, including the electric F-150 Lightning, and GM followed in January with a $6 billion charge. These are the balance sheets of firms that built what regulators demanded rather than what buyers wanted. The Times frets that the rollback may encourage bigger pickups and SUVs, yet Van Doren’s point is that footprint-based standards already penalise small, cheap cars and subsidise big trucks and SUVs.

CAFE doesn’t set one mileage target for every car. The target for each vehicle depends on its ‘footprint’, which is approximately the area between its four wheels. The larger the footprint, the lower (easier) the mpg target. A small hatchback must hit a demanding number, while a full-size pickup gets a lenient one.

Reuters reports that under the Trump rollback, lifetime fuel costs rise by more than $1,600 per vehicle higher through 2050 than under the Biden rules. The Biden rules added roughly $1,289 efficiency technology costs to a car’s price in exchange for that $1,600 in fuel savings. But if a buyer could recoup $1,600 at the pump for $1,289 of technology, why would a mandate be needed in the first place?

Non sequiturs and the China bogeyman

Critics offer three further objections. The first is that tariffs and dearer fuel – gasoline at $4.48 a gallon since the US-Israeli attacks on Iran began in February – will swamp any regulatory saving. True, and irrelevant. Tariffs and Gulf-driven pump prices exist whether or not CAFE mandates are loosened. Keeping the mandate would not abolish them; it would merely stack another cost on top. To argue that because one burden is heavy, one should insist on carrying a second, is a non sequitur.

A second criticism in the mainstream media coverage is that the rest of the world is ‘racing toward EVs’ and America will be left behind. Dan Becker of the Center for Biological Diversity warns that Detroit is being told it may be competed into oblivion by Chinese EV exports. But the evidence suggests that EV sales are disappointing everywhere outside China.

In March 2024, CNBC published a widely cited article entitled ‘EV euphoria is dead. Automakers are scaling back or delaying their electric vehicle plans’. The outlet’s automotive industry reporter Michael Wayland wrote:

For years, the automotive industry has been in a state of EV euphoria. Automakers trotted out optimistic sales forecasts for electric models and announced ambitious targets for EV growth… Now the hype is dwindling, and companies are again cheering consumer choice. Automakers from Ford Motor and General Motors to Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, Jaguar Land Rover and Aston Martin are scaling back or delaying their electric vehicle plans.

NPR reported that EVs have held 5-6% of new US car sales into 2026, and even the second quarter ‘rebound’ left sales down 20.5% on a year earlier. Detroit is not failing for want of a mandate, it is writing off billions on EVs that it cannot sell.

I wrote in these pages last year on the false promise of EVs. The EV story is overwhelmingly a China-focused one. Europe bought 1.6 million more electric cars in in the first half of 2025 relative to the same period last year, or 27% more. North Americans bought only 0.7 million more, or 3%. The ‘rest of the world’ bought 0.6 million more EVs or 36% from a very small base. China alone accounted for 4.4 million new EV units, logging a growth of 33%. To call what is essentially a China-dominated story a global EV success story is a sleight of hand.

News reports in China are opaque and dominated by CCP interests, like so much else of life in that country. There have been reports of vast ‘graveyards’ of unsold EVs in various cities. A Bloomberg article in 2023 reported that “a subsidy-fuelled boom helped build China into an electric-car giant but left weed-infested lots across the nation brimming with unwanted battery-powered cars”.

The third criticism of the Trump CAFE rollback is that this is ceding EV and battery leadership to China. That also rests on a false premise. Chinese dominance is built on coal-fired power and on control of the dirty, energy-intensive global upstream supply chain of mining, refining and processing of rare earths and minerals. Western consumers who believe their EVs are ‘clean’ never see the dirty secrets of EVs. China commissioned 78 gigawatts of new coal power in 2025, the most in a decade, and accounting for four-fifths of all coal capacity brought online worldwide, while developers submitted a record 161 gigawatts of new or reactivated proposals. Celebrating China’s EV penetration while ignoring its coal build-out is like admiring the showroom and ignoring the boiler room out of sight behind.

Tailpipes, power stations and philosopher kings

The final refuge is pollution and climate. The NYT reminds readers that transportation is the country’s largest source of greenhouse gases, and the Sierra Club, which has promised to challenge the rule in court, says families will be handed the bill at the pump and with their health. But cutting tailpipe emissions is not cutting emissions. It relocates them to power stations, mines and smelters, out of sight of the showroom. And on the pollutants that actually damage health, the internal combustion engine has an extraordinary record that the coverage never mentions. The EPA says new cars, SUVs and pickups are roughly 99% cleaner than 1970 models for hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and particulates, and that total emissions of the six principal air pollutants fell 79% between 1970 and 2024 even as vehicle miles travelled rose 195%.

Table showing percent change in emissions of various pollutants from 1980 to 2024, including Carbon Monoxide, Lead, Nitrogen Oxides, Volatile Organic Compounds, Direct PM10, Direct PM2.5, and Sulfur Dioxide, with specific values for comparisons to 1990, 2000, and 2010.
Source: https://www.epa.gov/air-trends/air-quality-national-summary

Fuel economy mandates were never about those pollutants. They were about carbon dioxide, which is not a pollutant at all. As the physicist William Happer of the CO2 Coalition has testified, the real pollutants are fly ash, carbon monoxide, oxides of sulphur and nitrogen, heavy metals and volatile organic compounds, while CO2 and water vapour, the dominant products of combustion, are not among them.

The larger context is the belief that bureaucrats know better than households how to spend money on energy. In Plato’s Republic the philosopher king rules and the plebs obey; if energy efficiency were the bargain its promoters claim, we would not need experts at the IEA, the EPA or McKinsey to tell us so. Households and businesses, and motorists for that matter, do not need to be told how to save money that energy efficiency would bring. One Mercatus study found that much efficiency policy analysis assumes people never make sound choices. Mandated standards are the philosopher king’s favourite tool precisely because, unlike explicit subsidies, they conceal their costs, which land first on manufacturers and reach consumers untraced. If buyers are poorly informed, the remedy is better information, not a mandate.

The Sierra Club will see Trump in court, and the litigation will be dutifully chronicled. But the real news of the week is not that Washington retired a rule it had already defanged. It is that a mandate born of the 1975 oil embargo has been recognised, at last, as an expensive way of making people buy what they were reluctant to buy. In the same fortnight that New York hosted its annual climate circus, the American car buyer got something rarer than another pledge: a little of his own freedom back.

The strangulation of the regulatory state is to be welcomed, and one should never mourn the end of intrusive mandates – for motorists as for others – designed by bureaucrats and know-it-all philosopher kings. As Friedrich von Hayek taught us many years ago, “the curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design”.

This article was first published in the Daily Sceptic https://dailysceptic.org/2026/10/01/legacy-media-weep-as-trump-axes-bidens-fuel-economy-diktat/

Dr Tilak K. Doshi is the Daily Sceptic‘s Energy Editor. He is an economist, a member of the CO₂ Coalition and a former contributor to Forbes. Follow him on Substack and X.

New York Times Publishes a Balanced Climate/Energy Article

“Many states and businesses are backing off ambitious climate targets, and Democrats are less vocal nowadays about climate change. Tech companies are using more natural gas to meet exploding demand for data centers. The International Energy Agency, after some browbeating by Mr. Wright, is revising up its projections for how long fossil fuels will stick around.” – New York Times

A desolate scene featuring rusty wind turbines partially submerged in water, under a dark, cloudy sky.

From Master Resource

By Robert Bradley Jr. 

“Many states and businesses are backing off ambitious climate targets, and Democrats are less vocal nowadays about climate change. Tech companies are using more natural gas to meet exploding demand for data centers. The International Energy Agency, after some browbeating by Mr. Wright, is revising up its projections for how long fossil fuels will stick around.” – New York Times (below)

Brad Plumer, a “a Times reporter who covers technology and policy efforts to address global warming,” recently explained (September 23, 2026) the “energy dominance” position of the Trump Administration. “The Former Fracking Executive Selling Trump’s ‘Energy Dominance’ Vision” began with the subtitle: “Energy Secretary Chris Wright is pitching a future of fossil fuel abundance. It’s not always an easy sell while war drags on and oil prices surge.

A fair article like this would have incensed the late Joe “head exploding” Romm. But the bully is gone, so others of less stature are left to fuss (see the reader comment below).

The Article

Quotations from the Plumer article follow:

“… Energy Secretary Chris Wright brought a sunny message to Houston last week at a gathering of energy ministers from the G20 nations. The Trump administration, he said, was ushering in an era of energy abundance by expanding oil and gas supplies in places like Alaska and Venezuela.”

“Mr. Wright acknowledged some tension, though he insisted it was temporary. ‘Everyone’s frustrated with higher energy prices,” he said of the mood at the meeting. “But I’ve not met one person who’s comfortable with a nuclear-armed Iran. So everyone gets what we’re doing and this is a critically important mission. It creates dislocations in the short term. But the only answer to short-term dislocations is the energy abundance agenda.’”

“Whereas Mr. Trump speaks bluntly about energy — chanting ‘drill, baby, drill,’ calling wind turbines ugly, or claiming that global warming is a hoax — Mr. Wright gives his arguments an intellectual gloss. He cites figures on how solar panels underperform during winter storms. Or he argues that global warming is not as big a problem as energy poverty, which he says can only be alleviated with more oil, gas and coal, even if that means more planet-heating greenhouse gas emissions.”

“Administration allies say that has made Mr. Wright invaluable. ‘He has been one of the most consequential picks for energy secretary I’ve seen,’ said Thomas J. Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, a research group that promotes fossil fuels. ‘He’s very experienced, brings a lot of substance, and he articulates President Trump’s vision clearly.’”

“… since taking office, [Wright] he has been more combative, deriding wind and solar power as a ‘parasite’ on the grid, blasting Democratic-led states for environmental policies that have shut down coal and gas plants, and accusing Europe of being in thrall to a ‘climate cult’ that is crippling economic growth.”

“… Ben Dietderich, an Energy Department spokesman, said in a statement: ‘Secretary Wright doesn’t have preferred energy sources. He just believes in being honest about math and energy security. Unfortunately, many in the climate lobby don’t like that. The Department is proud to have ended energy subtraction policies that lead to higher prices, less energy security and human impoverishment.’”

“[Wright] argued that people in developing countries still lacked enough energy to enjoy a decent standard of living and that renewables couldn’t replace oil, gas and coal to provide that power.”

“’At the height of this era when everyone was saying energy policy should just be about climate, Chris Wright was one of the few C.E.O.s that ran oil and gas firms who clearly and vocally spoke out,’ said Arjun Murti, a partner at the energy research firm Veriten.

Mr. Wright also had a flair for the dramatic. He once drank fracking fluid on video to show it was safe. In 2021, he rented billboards around Denver to heckle The North Face after the company declined to work with an oil firm.

“Mr. Wright quickly transformed the department. Out were programs to develop novel technologies to fight climate change, like green hydrogen or low-emissions steel. Instead, federal funds went to help utilities finance gas plants, nuclear reactors and transmission lines or upgrade older coal plants, which officials say are essential for meeting rising electricity demand. Mr. Wright also lifted a Biden-era pause on expanding exports of liquefied natural gas, now the nation’s fastest-growing export, and has pressured Europe to ease rules on methane, a potent greenhouse gas, saying they could hurt U.S. exports.”

“’He brought a whole new attitude to the agency,” said Scott Segal, an energy lobbyist at Bracewell. ‘It’s all about how do we produce enough energy to support A.I. and economic growth.’”

“Mr. Wright, who often criticizes wind and solar for not running at all hours, has cut renewable energy programs and renamed the National Renewable Energy Laboratory as the National Laboratory of the Rockies. While experts agree that the variability of wind and solar poses real challenges, many say it goes too far to call the sources ‘worthless.’ Texas gets roughly one-third of its power from renewables and has kept costs low.”

“Mr. Wright’s supporters say he has helped steer the country away from what they saw as the Biden administration’s unrealistic plans to rapidly phase out fossil fuels. Some say the debate is shifting in his direction. Many states and businesses are backing off ambitious climate targets, and Democrats are less vocal nowadays about climate change. Tech companies are using more natural gas to meet exploding demand for data centers. The International Energy Agency, after some browbeating by Mr. Wright, is revising up its projections for how long fossil fuels will stick around.”

“’There’s been a real shift in how investors and others now talk about energy,’ said Travis Fisher, a director of energy and environmental studies at the libertarian Cato Institute who worked with Mr. Wright to organize the agency’s climate report. ‘Climate has become a lot less salient.’”

“Mr. Wright, for his part, says fossil fuels are too useful to recede anytime soon. ‘We will never, ever come remotely close to running out of hydrocarbons, which means you need better technology and innovations to eventually eat into their market share,’ Mr. Wright said at a Cato event in May. He said he was excited about recent breakthroughs in areas like fusion. But, he added, “the biggest innovations the rest of my lifetime in energy are almost certainly going to be in oil, gas, and coal, because they are what matter.’”

Romm-like Complaint

A comment from ‘bl in Rochester’ was featured in the Times comment section. “It’s appalling to give wright an unchallenged forum to spew out his denialist propaganda,” he began. “Covering [Chris Wright’s] speech as here, or his ‘interview’ at the climate forum, does just that.” Continuing:

He’s conducting a full out war on renewable energy sources and technology using false reasoning, no rigorous scientific argumentation, and manipulative, cherry picking economic analyses that only “answer” the irrelevant questions he chooses to ask to justify his policy choices. This is socially destructive, and will be suicidal if not stopped in the near term.

He offers no coherent reply to the increasing climate instability. He carelessly dismisses the data, and provides vapid bromides to the evident dangers with fantastical assertions while ignoring the very real costs that will be incurred. Still he remains unchallenged in public.

He chooses the present with no concern for the future. That is not leadership. It is profit protection for one energy industry.

This is doubly damaging because all sorts of roadblocks have been imposed to block renewables. He therefore condemns generations to suffer horribly from such unhinged policy insanity.

The fact that no immediate follow up rebuttal by a climatologist is allowed makes this demagoguery even more vile and sickening. Indeed his “interview” with this paper was with a journalist not a scientist, and produced a predictable, unchallenged stream of idiocy without addressing at all the reality of climate change incurred damage,

And so the debate continues….

EVs: Just a Government Play

“Currently, in many car markets, an electric car is more expensive to purchase upfront than a comparable gasoline- or diesel-powered model, which tends to be the biggest consideration for most consumers.” (New York Times, August 18, 2026, below)

A theatrical depiction criticizing government involvement in electric vehicles (EVs), featuring a puppet-like illustration of a government official controlling an EV with strings. Surrounding text highlights skepticism about EV affordability, charging infrastructure, and consumer benefits, while emphasizing themes of government mandates and financial implications.

From Master Resource

By Robert Bradley Jr.

“Currently, in many car markets, an electric car is more expensive to purchase upfront than a comparable gasoline- or diesel-powered model, which tends to be the biggest consideration for most consumers.” (New York Times, August 18, 2026, below)

The statistic of increasing global sales of electric vehicles (EVs) is often cited as if consumers in an open, free market prefer EVs to internal combustion engines. A careful reading of a recent New York Times article, “The Gulf Oil Shock Is Pushing E.V. Sales to New Heights Globally” (August 18, 2026), supports the counter-thesis that EV sales are driven by special government favor. Here-today-gone-tomorrow EV subsidies (as in the U.S.) raise the question of sustainability. From a government-neutral, consumer-first perspective, EVs are not sustainable.

“Electric car sales are on track to hit record highs this year,” begin Mira Rojanasakul and Brad Plumer, “with 29 percent of all new cars purchased around the world expected to be either purely battery-powered models or plug-in hybrids,” versus four percent in 2020. Continuing:

What makes the surge in electric car sales especially striking is that E.V. purchases have actually declined this year in both China and the United States, the world’s two largest automobile markets. In China, which accounts for roughly half of all E.V. sales worldwide, a weakening economy and reduction in government subsidies led to a drop in overall purchases this year…. China still has roughly as many electric vehicles on the road as the rest of the world combined, a trend that has noticeably curtailed the nation’s oil use.”

China is losing money on its “green” buildout, solar and EVs, the authors could have added. Continuing:

The United States also saw a dip in sales this spring after Republicans in Congress phased out a $7,500 tax credit for electric cars last year. The Biden administration had pushed to expand the credit to help fight climate change, since electric vehicles produce fewer emissions than their gasoline- or diesel-powered counterparts.”

Yes, like the rooftop solar industry, the domestic EV industry has all but crashed with the reduction of special government favor. Expect the same if the ITC and PTC tax credits expire as they are set to do at the end of next year.

The “good news” of EVs is government subsidies and mandates in other countries of the world. The authors state:

More than a dozen governments have also announced new policies to encourage electric vehicle adoption since the conflict began, as countries have sought to curb their imports of expensive oil. Ireland and the Netherlands introduced programs to encourage drivers to trade in their older combustion-engine vehicles for electric models. Chile provided incentives for buses and taxis to go electric. Spain extended electric vehicle tax credits for consumers. China has set new goals to electrify its trucks.

Back to reality:

Currently, in many car markets, an electric car is more expensive to purchase upfront than a comparable gasoline- or diesel-powered model, which tends to be the biggest consideration for most consumers.

California EVs a Government Play

An unsigned editorial in the Wall Street Journal last year, “Newsom Tells a Tesla Truth,” made the same point for California. “Speaking at a Clinton Global Initiative event last week,” the editorial began,

Mr. Newsom boasted that “there is no Elon Musk, there’s no Tesla without California’s regulatory framework, period, full stop. It wouldn’t exist.” …. Newsom is right that California’s EV mandate and subsidies gave Tesla a financial spark. Sacramento dangled thousands of state dollars in subsidies for the affluent to buy Teslas. The state also awarded Tesla a sales-tax exemption worth hundreds of millions of dollars in return for making cars in the state.

More valuable have been the regulatory credits that Tesla has received and sold to other auto makers to comply with the state’s EV mandate. Tesla didn’t turn an annual profit until 2020—17 years after its launch and sales of regulatory credits gave it cash to expand. Last year Tesla made $2.8 billion from credit sales, accounting for more than a third of its profit.

The editorial continued:

California’s EV mandate is effectively an income transfer from auto makers that produce mostly gas-powered cars to Tesla, which accounted for roughly half of the state’s sales last year. If Mr. Newsom is angry that state regulation has padded Tesla’s profits, he could let the $1.4 trillion company sink or swim on its own without mandates or subsidies.

Conclusion

Consumers support electric transport with golf carts and, increasingly, bikes. Electrification in place of oil-firing is also increasingly prevalent with lawn mowers, leaf blowers, and other micro-applications. But not for cars (outside of subsidies), and more so for trucks, ships, trains, and planes.

With government neutral, “deep decarbonization” dies on the vine. The major retreat of U.S. automakers after losses estimated at $50 billion, led by Stellantis (Chrysler, Dodge, Ram, et al.) and Ford, was a monumental mistake. So much for Net Zero on the transportation front.

Follow Science, New York Times, Coral’s Are Doing Well Amid Modest Climate Change

The New York Times (NYT) ran a story claiming climate change is threatening the survival of the world’s coral reefs. This is false. New coral colonies, adapted to warmer waters are being found with regularity and the largest coral reef in the world, Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, as set records for growth and extent in recent years, confounding climate model predictions of decline.

From ClimateRealism

By H. Sterling Burnett

The New York Times (NYT) ran a story claiming climate change is threatening the survival of the world’s coral reefs. This is false. New coral colonies, adapted to warmer waters are being found with regularity and the largest coral reef in the world, Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, as set records for growth and extent in recent years, confounding climate model predictions of decline.

In the story, “The World’s Coral Reefs Are Running Out of Time to Recover, Research Finds,” climate reporter, Quinn Glabicki, writes, “[c]oral reefs around the world, struggling as climate change drives more frequent and more intense marine heat waves, are running out of time for recovery, according to a sweeping new report on the state of the world’s corals published on Monday.

“The comprehensive global assessment … found that the world’s coral reefs had declined by 9.5 percent in the period from 2020 to 2024, compared with 1980 to 2009,” Glabicki continued. “The largest single-year coral decline on record, which affected 87 percent of reefs worldwide, occurred in 2024.”

Glabicki and the NYT’s fact checkers should have exercised a modicum of journalistic curiosity instead of reporting this study as if it were the final authoritative word on the state of the world’s corals. The 2023 through 2024 decline the story reported on represented one bad year of bleaching, but even the underlying report admits that bleaching does not per se equal coral death. Of the 8.9 percent of coral bleached, 6 percent had recovered in just one year, and based on past bleaching events, more coral might recover over time, resulting in possibly no net loss in coral during the sever 2023 to 2024 event. In fact, science hasn’t tracked coral extent for long, and hasn’t mapped all coral reefs, and types of coral, in existence.

Corals first developed on Earth during an explosion of life during the Cambrian period more than 540 million years ago when. At that time global temperatures, including ocean temperatures were warmer than today, and carbon dioxide concentrations were 10 to 30 times higher.

In fact, as discussed in Climate at a Glance: Coral Reefs, coral thrive in warm water, not cold water. As a result, the recent modest warming has allowed coral to expand their range poleward, while still thriving near the equator and the tropics.

Evidence, that is coral responses to past bleaching events tied to warming, also clearly shows that coral bleaching is not tantamount to coral death. Subsequent to previous strong El Niño induced recent bleaching events at the GBR, the coral reef repeatedly set new records for coral extent. That’s right, the coral not only recovered, but the coral colonies also seemingly adapted and expanded. This fact has been discussed in a number of previous Climate Realism posts, here, here, and here, for example.

In fact, warming seas are hardly the only and perhaps are not even the primary cause of bleaching. As discussed at Climate Realism, here and here, for example, inappropriate commercial fishing, terrestrial run-off and pollution from farms and urban development along the coasts, sedimentation, chemicals in some sun screens, and periods of rapidly cooling waters have all been linked to bleaching events and declines in local coral populations.

In recent years massive new and growing coral reefs have been discovered in places previously believed to be inhospitable to coral colonization. In a story titled “This huge coral reef has only just been discovered, and it’s undamaged by climate change,” CBC reported on the discovery of reef, deeper than most, suggesting there may be more unknown large reefs in oceans. CBC wrote:

Scientists have discovered a pristine, three-kilometre-long reef of giant rose-shaped corals off the coast of Tahiti, in waters of the southern Pacific Ocean thought to be deep enough to protect it from the bleaching effects of the warming ocean.

…

The reef off Tahiti lies in the “twilight zone” 30 to 120 metres below the surface where there is still enough light for coral to grow and reproduce. The discovery off Tahiti’s shores suggests there may be many more unknown large reefs in our oceans, given that only about 20 per cent of the entire seabed is mapped, according to UNESCO scientists.

“It also raises questions about how coral reefs become more resilient to climate change,” UNESCO’s head of marine policy, Julian Barbiere, told Reuters.

And that’s just one recent coral discovery. In 2022, research reported in a Phys.org story titled “Half a trillion corals: World-first coral count prompts rethink of extinction risks,” found that number of corals in the Pacific Ocean alone exceed half a trillion with likely trillions more globally.

The scientists involved in the research say the sheer number of corals and coral species means the risk of extinction due to climate change is vastly lower than previously claimed.

“In the Pacific, we estimate there are roughly half a trillion corals,’ said the study lead author, Dr. Andy Dietzel from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University,” writes Phys.org. “This is about the same number of trees in the Amazon, or birds in the world.

“The findings suggest that while a local loss of coral can be devastating to coral reefs, the global extinction risk of most coral species is lower than previously estimated,” Deitzel continued.

It is unclear if the trillions of corals and newly discovered reefs disclosed in those two recent discoveries were included in the sampling conducted by the authors of the report discussed by NYT, but it is doubtful. The study purports to examine long-known, long-term coral reef systems. Throwing the newly discovered trillions of corals in a study that was already ongoing at the time of discovery would have necessarily resulted in disclosing an increase in coral, not the decrease reported.

In fact, just two weeks before the NYT went on its coral decline hype, the Guardian, a well-known liberal paper which covers climate change extensively and alarmingly, ran a story, titled, “The Great Barrier Reef isn’t dead yet. According to News Corp that makes climate science a ‘pseudo-religion,’” discussing both a news story and a commentary published in The Australian. The news report and the commentary discuss the fact that extensive surveys of the world’s largest coral reef, The Great Barrier Reef (GBR), reveal that coral cover has rebounded to near-record levels across all regions following a recent mass bleaching event, with research and data indicating that coral reef system maintains resilience and is able to bounce back from disturbance.

Twenty-twenty six’s good news about the GBR followed closely on three straight years of record setting extent of the GBR. (see the figure, below).

The GBR’s success is due to the ability of the corals which make it up to adapt and evolve in the face of various environmental perturbations. It is not just that coral are bouncing back, it is that the newly formed/recovered coral are evolving rapidly to adapt and flourish in warmer temperatures. There is no reason that what’s happening on the Great Barrier Reef, shouldn’t also be happening in coral colonies across the globe, with newly formed corals showing plasticity and flexible responses in response to warming waters.

Even if it were the case that corals were undergoing decline, which is debatable, a decline caused primarily by warming oceans, also open to scientific debate, it is unclear whether anthropogenic warming is the cause. In fact the authors of the report underlying the NYT story assume human caused climate change is responsible for recent ocean warming, but not only is this connection not proven, other possible factors were ignored. The study reports on coral conditions, with the authors doing little or no original research into the cause of the present coral conditions they monitored. Yet other forcing factors, such as more sunlight reaching the sea surface as shipping emissions have been reduced or natural factors like the ongoing El Nino, discussed recently here and here, are also at play in ocean warming but have nothing to do with greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, recent bleaching events have coincided with recent strong El Ninos.

In the end, Glabicki and the New York Times went off half-cocked, reporting on a single study’s findings about coral reef conditions without checking them against other sources of data and research on coral. This makes for a scary story that advances the narrative that humans are causing catastrophic climate change, but doesn’t honestly report on the status of coral reefs and the various factors that affect them. Get back to reporting, New York Times, not advocating for progressive causes like ending fossil fuel use to battle a purported climate crisis.

Wrong, New York Times, Nepal’s Tragedy Wasn’t Caused by Climate Change

The New York Times (NYT), in its article “Climate Change Raises Risk of Disasters Like Nepal Floods,” claims that climate change increased the risk of the catastrophic glacier collapse and flooding in Nepal by thawing permafrost and destabilizing the mountainside. This is false.

From ClimateRealism

By Anthony Watts

The New York Times (NYT), in its article “Climate Change Raises Risk of Disasters Like Nepal Floods,” claims that climate change increased the risk of the catastrophic glacier collapse and flooding in Nepal by thawing permafrost and destabilizing the mountainside. This is false. The best evidence suggests the disaster was primarily the result of a complex cascade of geological failures and human infrastructure vulnerabilities, not proof of a climate crisis.

The scenes from Nepal are heartbreaking. Entire communities were devastated as millions of tons of rock, ice, mud, and water thundered down the Langtang Lirung valley. Hundreds are dead or missing, roads and bridges have been swept away, and the landscape has been permanently altered.

When disasters of this magnitude occur, journalists should resist the temptation to immediately assign blame before the evidence is fully understood.

The NYT did exactly the opposite.

Even within its own reporting, the paper admits scientists are “still determining the exact cause” of the catastrophe and that research could take months. Despite this acknowledgement, the NYT nevertheless frames the disaster as another consequence of climate change from the headline onward. That is not reporting. It is climate crisis narrative promotion.

“Climate change is heating up the Himalayas and supercharging the risk of disasters like the deadly flash flooding in Nepal and Tibet,” says the NYT, which quotes one researcher saying, “‘There’s a very straight link between climate change and these types of disasters.’”

Yet just a few paragraphs later the article quotes Newcastle University geomorphologist Stuart Dunning, “I don’t think we can simply say this is a result of climate change.”

That caution should have been the headline. Instead, it was buried.

Dr. Roger Pielke Jr.’s analysis of the event, “What Actually Caused the Nepal Disaster,” reaches a much more measured conclusion. The immediate trigger appears to have been an enormous bedrock collapse beneath the glacier, which destabilized the overlying ice and produced a massive rock-ice avalanche. The resulting debris flow raced downstream at extraordinary speed. That is fundamentally a geological process, not an atmospheric or climate-related one. More importantly, much of the destruction was amplified by human decisions completely unrelated to climate.

Roads, bridges, hydropower facilities, and communities had been constructed directly within vulnerable river valleys and debris-flow pathways, areas where floods have hit in the past. Infrastructure occupied locations long known to be exposed to landslides and flash floods in one of the most geologically active mountain ranges on Earth. Those choices dramatically increased the disaster’s consequences.

In other words, the event was catastrophicly worse than it might otherwise have been had people and governments not placed expensive infrastructure and growing populations directly in the path of natural mountain hazards. That is a very different conclusion than “climate change caused it.”

Ironically, the NYT itself provides historical context that weakens its central narrative. The article acknowledges that glacier failures have occurred dozens of times in the China- Nepal border region since 1900.

That matters far more than their click- bait headline.

Since these events occurred repeatedly for well over a century, long before human greenhouse gas emissions rose, this event cannot automatically be linked to modern greenhouse gas emissions and human induced climate change. Mountain glaciers fail for many reasons, including gravity, unstable rock formations, earthquakes, heavy snowfall, freeze-thaw cycles, and natural slope failure.

The Himalayas are among the youngest and most tectonically active mountain systems on Earth, caused by when the Indian Plate slammed into the Eurasian landmass. Landslides are not unusual there. Neither are rock, snow, and ice avalanches. The NYT also acknowledges that scientists initially suspected a glacial lake outburst flood before satellite observations showed no overflowing lake was involved.

That illustrates an important lesson: early assumptions after disasters are often wrong.

Unfortunately, that lesson was not applied to the climate narrative. Instead of waiting for investigators to complete their work, many media outlets including NPR, the New York Times, the Associated Press immediately declared the disaster another example of climate change. Once again, the conclusion came before the evidence.

There is another glaring omission. The article briefly notes that Nepal’s warning systems were not designed to detect this type of rapidly developing debris flow. That is a practical issue policymakers can actually address and should.

Improved geological monitoring, better hazard mapping, stronger infrastructure design, and avoiding construction in known debris-flow channels will save lives regardless of future climate conditions. Those are the real solutions. Ending fossil fuel use will not mitigate or prevent future avalanches, but it would hamper recovery efforts and infrastructure improvements.

The tragedy in Nepal deserves careful scientific investigation, not instant political messaging. Good journalism follows the evidence wherever it leads. In this case, the evidence points first to geology and human exposure to natural hazards, not to climate change. The New York Times should have let science finish its work before declaring the verdict. Sadly, the “publish first, ask questions later” method seems to be the norm these days when it comes to climate change related news.

Adapt, Europe (stop whining)

Mitigation has failed, and no policy change, however radical, can affect global or regional climate for decades, if ever.

So, why didn’t the alarmist community push for A/C and other appliances to cool the air during the summer peak?

From Watts Up With That?

By Robert Bradley Jr.

“Crank up the cooling.” (WSJ, below)

It is adaptation time. Mitigation has failed, and no policy change, however radical, can affect global or regional climate for decades, if ever. As stated in a recent article in the New York Times:

Climate change means that the issue is most likely here to stay. Across Europe, “we think the summers are hot now,” said Joan Ballester Claramunt, a research professor at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health who focuses on climate change and health. “The future that we’re seeing, it could be much worse.”

So, why didn’t the alarmist community push for A/C and other appliances to cool the air during the summer peak? They warned about ‘hothouse Earth’ but did nothing about it.

Did climate mitigation policy work against adaptation directly and indirectly? Yes and yes. That is a major problem. In the name of social justice, climate campaigners are invited to replace wasteful, losing climate mitigation policies with here-and-now adaptation for the summer peak. For basic human needs. And now.

Alex Epstein has identified “climate mastery” as a feature of the modern energy sector (dense energies, only two centuries old). The EU/UK can do today what was done by, for example, Houstonians a century ago: adapt and thrive.

A Wall Street Journal editorial, “The Economic Case for European AC,” was noteworthy.

[Europe’s] green disavowal of air conditioning comes at an economic cost. As the mercury rises, business productivity suffers along with the workforce.

Europe was a set-up for heat waves:

Many European offices and apartment buildings were designed to retain heat, and air-conditioning penetration averages 19%, compared with some 90% in the U.S., according to a report this year by Allianz Research, an arm of the insurance company. One result: Even “indoor workers are not insulated” from the misery.

Policy implications?

Europe will face economic costs related to warming“even if ambitious climate mitigation goals are met,” says a report last year from Assessing Climate Change Risk in Europe, a European Union-funded research effort. But the continent can reduce the harm by better adapting. That study found broader AC adoption could have annual economic benefits of €40 to €60 billion ($46 billion to $69 billion) by 2050. An“important co-benefit” would be fewer heat-related fatalities. Crank up the cooling.

Can You See The Climate Scare Slowly Fading Away?

We come to the key role of the New York Times for the Left, which is to mold and convey the official talking points to the team’s candidates and influencers. How about sharing some instruction on how to quietly back away from the Green New Deal?

From The Manhattan Contrarian

By Francis Menton

I have often noted that the climate scam and the associated forced energy transition would of necessity go away at some point because the proposals being advocated to “save the planet” could never possibly work. But the open question has always been, when that happens, what will it look like? Would all the big enviro groups like the Environmental Defense Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club all go on national TV one night and admit that the whole thing was a fake scare from the beginning? In the real world, that’s not how these things happen. People who have staked out absurd positions somehow need to save face. So there would have to be some sort of gradual process of backing down.

And thus we come to the key role of the New York Times for the Left, which is to mold and convey the official talking points to the team’s candidates and influencers. How about sharing some instruction on how to quietly back away from the Green New Deal?

Today on page A-12 of the print edition there is a piece with the headline “Democrats Once Vowed to Stop Oil and Gas. Now They’re Not So Sure.” The subheadline is “As the midterm elections approach, many leading Democrats are rethinking their approach to climate change.” The online version indicates that the piece first appeared there five days ago, June 11. They held it for the print edition until today, and then buried it deeply on page A-12. The casual reader may not get that far, but the person who will see it is the party apparatchik who needs direction from central headquarters. Excerpt:

With voters worried about spiking gas prices and inflation, some [Democratic Party] leaders argue that they should stop trying to throttle oil and gas, which heat the planet when burned. It’s a rejection of the approach taken during the Biden administration, which treated climate change as an existential threat and tried to stop new drilling and pipelines. . . . The result could be a less ambitious climate agenda if the party returns to power in Washington. . . . Now many Democrats argue that the path back to power means abandoning some of their most aggressive stances on climate change.

The piece is filled with useful pointers in how to tone down the catastrophism. Most of that seems to involve an end to vilifying oil and gas, while continuing to promote wind and solar as the “cheapest” ways to produce electricity. (They still haven’t figured out that by the time you include costs of integrating wind and solar into the grid, those things are a far more expensive way to produce electricity than fossil fuels.). Here are some of the pointers:

  • “Rather than pushing green solutions only, many Democrats say they have a better way to bridge the gap: Be the party of yes to all forms of energy. After all, they argue, wind and solar power are often the cheapest forms of electricity and the fastest to deploy. On an even playing field, they say, renewables would beat fossil fuels.”
  • “We shouldn’t be against the domestic oil and gas industry, but we have to be for the energy transition,” said Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic strategist. “Democrats should be running toward that instead of away from it.”
  • Rahm Emanuel, the former congressman, chief of staff to President Barack Obama and mayor of Chicago who is exploring a 2028 White House run, said Democrats need to focus on household budgets, specifically electric and gas bills.“I’m not against talking about climate policy, but you’ve got to talk about it as energy and energy prices,” Mr. Emanuel said, “and you talk about it as it relates to protecting ratepayers.”

And if you stop vilifying the oil and gas industries, you can even start taking their money!:

[Recently] in California, . . . Tom Steyer, a champion of fighting global warming, was edged out of this month’s gubernatorial primary by Xavier Becerra. Mr. Becerra, a moderate Democrat, questioned the state’s most stringent climate goals, like ending sales of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035, and received donations from oil and gas companies.

If the Democratic candidates are getting this message, it could be that the climate scare suddenly mostly disappears from the upcoming midterm elections. Wouldn’t that be an incredible change!

On the other hand, so far this is just about messaging. Even if the messaging changes, that does not mean that the goals of the Democrats on taking power will have changed. Certainly, over in the Endangerment Finding litigation, dozens of enviro groups and all the blue states continue to argue that atmospheric CO2 (the product of use of fossil fuels) is a “danger” to human health and welfare. Where Democrats rule, the destructive policies will continue until either there is some sort of catastrophic grid failure or the costs become too wildly excessive to credibly blame on some bogeyman.

Disaster? NYT Op-Ed on Demoting the Climate Pitch

“These are very interesting times–and at the New York Times. The climate writers and editors are daring to ask or allow hard questions about a politically losing narrative. It’s a start.”

From Master Resource

By Robert Bradley Jr.

“These are very interesting times–and at the New York Times. The climate writers and editors are daring to ask or allow hard questions about a politically losing narrative. It’s a start.”

The New York Times op-ed, “Democrats Don’t Have to Campaign on Climate Change Anymore” (May 9, 2026) is yet another marker that the debate is widening over the economic and political feasibility of climate alarm and forced energy transformation. [1] Matthew Huber wrote:

For the past several months, Democratic elites have been debating how much to talk about climate change, if at all — in part because these new candidates have narrowed their focus to energy affordability to win back the working class. It is a striking shift from a few years ago, when many Democratic politicians thought the promise of a Green New Deal would build a coalition based on green jobs and fighting inequality.

So how did the Progressive Left take this (small) dose of reality? New York Times climate opinion editor Eliza Barclay invited comments on social media:

Love to see all of the chatter about Matt Huber’s provocative essay about why Democratic candidates campaigning for the midterms should focus on affordable (and clean) energy rather than the climate crisis.

A hard line was taken by David Fenon:

This headline: Pearl Harbor Bombed. Democrats Shouldn’t Talk About it…. This is a big part of why the public doesn’t make it a top voting issue. This essay is capitulation to catastrophe…. Don’t talk about it, then the public won’t know about it, then you can’t run for office on it and the country won’t act on the emergency. And if a Democrat wins without a public mandate for action, she won’t be able to get legislation passed to deal with the crisis. Suggest you look at Senator Whitehouse’s response. And this kind of essay keeps appearing–urging Democrats to be “moderate” and support fossil fuel production, you know, Moderate Destruction. With respect but now exasperation too.

Scolding (bullying?) Barclay, Jim Bernfield, a communications expert for the alarmist cause, commented:

The author’s historical analysis was at best questionable, his political bona fides weak, and his argument fairly mundane, even for a NYT op-ed. But the clickbait headline — likely your responsibility, Eliza Barclay — was unadulterated garbage. You’re the climate editor, l am going to assume you can do better than this.

Michael Shank was less critical:

A variation on this theme, my piece for POLITICO Europe. Instead of leading with climate, flip the script: Rather than leading with data and promoting health, safety and economic “co-benefits” as bonus add-ons, climate advocates need to flip the script.

I added:

Is a civil war developing on the Left? Also see [here].

These are very interesting times–and at the New York Times. The climate editors and writers are daring to ask or allow hard questions about a politically losing narrative. It’s a start.

——————–

[1] My own op-ed in the Houston Chronicle is a smaller marker of a new era of open debate on the underlying science, economics, and public policy of a once closed mainstream media.

Alarmist Fussing at NYT Climate Reporting

“Great reporting by Lisa Friedman and Maxine Joselow [“Trump Allies Near ‘Total Victory’ in Wiping Out U.S. Climate Regulation,” New York Times (February 9, 2026)] on the long campaign by four hardcore climate deniers to take down the Endangerment Finding,” wrote Jeff Goodell on social media.

From Master Resource

By Robert Bradley Jr.

“… Instead of reporting on this, [Lisa Friedman and Maxine Joselow] present this as a horse race with one side gaining significant ground, and the other on the verge of losing mightily, though they also … [let] statements like ‘hoax’ or ‘green new scam’ go unanswered. It’s not quite yellow journalism but it is not without a heavy amber hue.” – Chris Wilke, Center for Environmental Law & Policy

“Great reporting by Lisa Friedman and Maxine Joselow [“Trump Allies Near ‘Total Victory’ in Wiping Out U.S. Climate Regulation,” New York Times (February 9, 2026)] on the long campaign by four hardcore climate deniers to take down the Endangerment Finding,” wrote Jeff Goodell on social media. The leading author of climate alarmist books and articles continued:

Forget the idea of energy policy based on abundance. This is energy policy based on scorched Earth. And a blatant giveaway to the fossil fuel industry, who will profit while the world burns.

Not so fast! Chris Wilke, executive director at the Center for Environmental Law & Policy, commented:

It’s good, but not great, reporting in my opinion. I respect the research and ability to name names, motivations and history of how we got here. This is very important in that respect. But it fails to discuss the consequences of the deregulatory actions, completely missing the clear trajectory of harm that will intensify as a result of this massive deregulation, as well as the global implications and economic risks.

It also misses the moral bankruptcy, fragility and vulnerability of their arguments. They may still lose this fight in court, especially in light of the finding last month that the Climate Impacts Group was illegally formed from biased people operating on a secret agenda.

Wilke continued:

Instead of reporting on this, the authors present this as a horse race with one side gaining significant ground, and the other on the verge of losing mightily, though they also fail to interview or even get statements from opponents, letting statements like “hoax” or “green new scam” go unanswered. It’s not quite yellow journalism but it is not without a heavy amber hue. They can do better.

Jeff Goodell responded:

This is deadline journalism, Chris. Of course lots more to say, more perspective and context to add, but this is far and away the best reporting I’ve seen today on this breaking news.

Chris Wilke tried, tried to tone it down a bit:

Thanks. I’m glad I saw it, and I’m glad you shared it. I’m also grateful for your writings.

This article however is another glaring example of how the Overton window has shifted as a result of extreme policies. Having climate deniers write a scientific report on climate change, and then to see the administration basing a far-reaching policy decision on climate just one week after that? Shameful, and transparently biased. That is the real story here: the why, not just the who, the what and the how, though that is all good to know.

A follow up article is indeed warranted to respond to the glaring omissions in this case. If that’s in the works, I’d happily postpone or withdraw my criticism. 😎

A Balint Katona joined in, adding a bit of weirdness.

Fair conclusion. I would add, that this should not come as a surprise. All the mass media platform are geared towards news that sell, sensations and creating tension. It is bs, nyt is shite. Instead of sharing relevant information that people can use to make life-affirming decisions, you are left with unnecessary stress.

And Lisa Friedman herself commented!

Thank you Jeff! And I agree with you too, Chris. It’s hard to do everything in one story. We have written at length about the consequences of this and other climate deregulations and will continue to do so. But this piece was an attempt to pull back the curtain and show the players who kept this issue alive even when a lot of corporate actors decided the endangerment finding was no longer worth fighting.
In any case, Ty for reading!!

Credit Trump with a sea change in the whole climate/energy issue. The Progressive Left is playing defense. And nerves are fraying in the face of pragmatism and the mere appearance of two-sided reporting given the changed political mainstream.

Cuba Hits Net Zero First—And the Lights Go Out. Victory?

Widespread blackouts, humanitarian challenges, and reliance on emergency measures like increased solar panel installations (with Chinese assistance adding ~1,000 MW of solar recently).

Intensified US sanctions and executive actions (under the Trump administration) blocking oil shipments from countries like Venezuela and Mexico.

Resulting near-collapse of oil imports (e.g., reports of zero oil imports in January 2026 for the first time in a decade).

Cuba is facing an acute fuel and electricity shortage, exacerbated by:

Widespread blackouts, humanitarian challenges, and reliance on emergency measures like increased solar panel installations (with Chinese assistance adding ~1,000 MW of solar recently).

Intensified US sanctions and executive actions (under the Trump administration) blocking oil shipments from countries like Venezuela and Mexico.

Resulting near-collapse of oil imports (e.g., reports of zero oil imports in January 2026 for the first time in a decade).

This has drastically reduced fossil fuel use (especially imported oil for power generation and transport), pushing the country’s energy consumption and emissions toward very low levels—essentially “net zero” by forced deprivation rather than deliberate, prosperous transition.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Cuba Becomes The First Country To Reach Net Zero. Shouldn’t We Be Celebrating?

From The Manhattan Contrarian

 By Francis Menton

There it was on the front page of Saturday’s New York Times: with a small assist from the United States, the island nation of Cuba has almost entirely ended the use of fossil fuels. Finally, we have the first country in the world to achieve the climate movement’s Holy Grail and nirvana — Net Zero! Or at least a very close approximation. This should be cause for a huge celebration.

You would think that the Times, which has been demanding the elimination of fossil fuels for at least a couple of decades, would be leading the celebrations. But weirdly, now that Cuba has finally shown the way, the Times chooses to put a completely different spin on the achievement. The headline and subheadline are (print edition): “U.S. Choking Oil Deliveries To Cuba Ports; Military Action Brings a Nation to Its Knees.”

The piece reports that the Trump administration is helping Cuba to achieve Net Zero by preventing oil tankers from landing there. Somehow in this piece, that is spun as a bad thing. It has brought Cuba “to its knees.”

The funny thing is that here in the U.S., it was just over a year ago that we had President Biden and an administration full of zealous environmentalists who were using every governmental power at their disposal to force Americans to stop using fossil fuels. By Executive Order 14057 of December 8, 2021, Biden had directed all federal agencies to pursue an aggressive “all of government” operation to achieve “net zero” on an accelerated schedule. Goals number 1 and 2 from that EO are “100 percent carbon pollution-free electricity on a net annual basis by 2030,” and “100 percent zero-emission vehicle acquisitions by 2035.” In 2023, the Department of Transportation released a “Blueprint” for eliminating all carbon emissions from the transportation sector. In 2024 EPA released a plan to eliminate fossil fuels from electricity generation. Similar initiatives were everywhere in the government.

Did the Times ever suggest that government forcing an end to the use of fossil fuels was “bringing America to its knees”? Or even that forcing the end of fossil fuels was any sort of a problem? If they ever suggested anything like that, I never saw it. What I saw instead was that the Times was the biggest cheerleader for the use of government coercion to suppress the use of fossil fuels, at least if the use was by Americans.

And yet, if you believe yesterday’s article, the banishment of fossil fuels, which was to be such a boon to the United States, is somehow a problem in Cuba. From the Times article:

In Cuba, people are struggling with frequent blackouts, shortages of gasoline and cooking gas and dwindling supplies of diesel that power the nation’s water pumps. Trash is piling up, food prices are soaring, schools are canceling classes and hospitals are suspending surgeries.

Here is a picture from the Times of the “garbage piling up”:

What am I missing? Since when are fuels like oil, gasoline, natural gas, and diesel any longer necessary, or even useful or economic, for providing energy to the people? The Times for years has been pounding a relentless drumbeat emphasizing that wind and solar are now the cheapest ways to produce energy, and all sane people are flocking to them as the best sources. For example, from August 17, 2023:

As the planet registers the highest temperatures on record, rising in some places to levels incompatible with human life, governments around the world are pouring trillions of dollars into clean energy to cut the carbon pollution that is broiling the planet. The cost of generating electricity from the sun and wind is falling fast and in many areas is now cheaper than gas, oil or coal. Private investment is flooding into companies that are jockeying for advantage in emerging green industries.

In other words, to eliminate use of fossil fuels all Cuba would have to do would be to slap up a few wind turbines and solar panels, and then it could run its economy on the abundant renewable electricity without need for any of those icky fossil fuels. And saving money too! Cuba actually has a bunch of wind farms. Why doesn’t it just crank them up to provide the power formerly supplied by the fossil fuels?

It seems like the people who are writing these pieces for the Times don’t read their own newspaper.

Meanwhile, let me be the first to congratulate the people of Cuba on being the first to achieve Net Zero.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Cuba’s renewable energy efforts have accelerated significantly in recent years, driven by a long-standing goal to reduce dependence on imported fossil fuels, improve energy efficiency, and build resilience amid chronic shortages and external pressures like U.S. sanctions. These efforts are part of the country’s National Energy Transition Strategy (published in September 2024) and its updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement, submitted in early 2025.Key Targets and Commitments

  • Cuba aims to increase renewables to 24% of electricity generation by 2030 (original goal from earlier plans).
  • More recent commitments target 26% of total energy supply from renewables by 2035.
  • Long-term vision: Achieve full electricity generation from national resources (renewables + domestic oil) by mid-century, with ambitions for near-total renewable electricity eventually.
  • Installed renewable capacity has grown rapidly, especially in solar, with a focus on photovoltaic (PV) parks.