Transcript (with my bolds and added images)
Who is still panicking about climate catastrophe?
The Davos crowd? European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen didn’t mention the climate even once in her 2026 annual address—unlike in the past.
U.S. voters? Americans rank climate change at number 28 of 30 problems, and according to the Searchlight Institute, voters in battleground states are prioritizing pocketbook issues over climate.
Canada? Prime Minister Mark Carney once championed radical climate policies but now wants to increase oil production.
The Europeans? After worrying intensely about climate change for a decade, they have other things to worry about: sky-high energy prices, low growth and the war in Ukraine. In their latest ranking, climate hit a new decade low.
How about global warming poster child Greta Thunberg? She has moved on to other causes.
Certainly, not people in poorer countries. They’re primarily concerned about the necessities of life — health, food and education. According to a recent survey of Africans, climate ranks near the bottom of their priorities, at number 31 of 34. That’s behind unemployment, the economy, health, education, poverty, roads, electricity, hunger, and corruption.
Even media outlets that once peddled climate alarm have backed off. According to a Washington Post analysis, 2025 saw the fewest media mentions of climate change in three years.
What led to this global change of mind? How could so many people
be so worried just a few years ago, and care so much less now?
First, everyone has started to realize that there are many other challenges in the world.
After the end of the Cold War, people claimed that climate change was the last big challenge to fix. That was a common idea at Davos and among many global leaders. Now, everyone recognizes that climate change is just one of many issues: wars, budget deficits, immigration pressures, declining educational achievements, artificial intelligence, and demographic changes are just a few.
Second, you can only cry wolf so many times.
How many “the end is nigh” predictions over the last 50 years?
One peer-reviewed study counted at least 78 specific claims, like when King Charles insisted that the world only had 18 months left to fix climate change. That was in 2019. So, that statement was wrong. And every statement by every well-known climate alarmist that has been resolved by 2026 turned out to be wrong. Not to mention when Al Gore told us in 2008 we only had 10 years left.
Third, climate policies are incredibly expensive and do little.
The world has spent more than 16 trillion dollars to curb climate change, and governments are looking to spend hundreds of trillions more in the future.
A Science study of 1,500 climate policies in 41 countries across the last two decades showed that only 4% worked. In total, they cut less than a quarter of one percent of total emissions. If a private company had this kind of record, they’d be out of business.
Fourth, the alarmist claims are often blatantly misleading. When you’re told that sea level rise could force 187 million people to move, that claim unrealistically assumes nobody will do anything to address the problem for a century. But when people adapt — for example, by building levies — that number goes down 99.8%.
The Dutch solution to floods: live with water, don’t fight it. The same thing applies to climate change.
We’re constantly told more people will die from heat waves. But nobody ever reveals that the cold kills many more. Right now, warming temperatures actually save lives. And of course, when there’s cheap and reliable power, more people can afford air conditioning. As the US warmed in the 20th century, heat deaths declined significantly, exactly for that reason.
Climate economists have consistently shown that by the end of the century, climate change will cost 2-3% of global GDP. It is a real problem, but nowhere near Armageddon.
In fact, as the UN expects the average person to be 450% richer in 2100, climate change simply means it is going to feel like we’re ‘only’ 435% richer than now. That’s still a much better world — just not quite as good as it could have been.
We still need to fix climate change, but we can do so smarter. Don’t pour trillions into policies that don’t move the needle, but billions into green energy R&D. This will help develop cheap green energy alternatives that can eventually outcompete fossil fuels on price.
Ending the climate panic means our kids won’t be needlessly scared, and neither will we. Being frightened without reason doesn’t lead to smart policies.
Rather, we can start focusing more on the many other pressing problems we need to fix now. Putting the climate panic behind us makes that possible.
I’m Bjorn Lomborg, president of the Copenhagen Consensus, visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, and author of False Alarm, for Prager University.
Activists hoping the opinion from the ICJ’s judges will have far-reaching legal consequences in the fight against climate change Image: Peter Dejong/AP Photo/picture alliance
The biased Advisory Opinion came down from ICJ a year ago. At the time I posted of how narrow-minded was the decision process. For example, this from perplexity.ai:
Question: How did the ICJ address scientists disputing IPCC reports like Clintel in its climate advice?
Answer: The International Court of Justice (ICJ), in its advisory proceedings on climate change, did not address or give consideration to scientists or groups—such as Clintel—who dispute the findings of the IPCC. Instead, the ICJ relied heavily and explicitly on the IPCC as the authoritative source on climate science throughout the process.
Key points from the available evidence:
The ICJ held a private meeting with IPCC scientists just before hearings began, reflecting the Court’s view of the IPCC as the “scientific pillar” of the climate change regime1.
This meeting was not part of the formal, public hearings and did not include scientists who dissent from the IPCC—states and organizations participating in the advisory proceedings had no opportunity to question or respond to IPCC scientists1.
The process was criticized for lacking transparency and procedural fairness precisely because it favored a single scientific perspective (the IPCC’s), with no indication that alternative scientific viewpoints were admitted or reviewed1.
The UN General Assembly’s request for the advisory opinion itself referenced the “utmost concern [for] the scientific consensus expressed” in the IPCC reports, reinforcing the Court’s mandate to treat the IPCC’s findings as the foundation for its analysis13.
Available commentaries and summaries of the ICJ process do not mention any engagement with scientists or organizations disputing IPCC conclusions, nor do they report that groups like Clintel were referenced or invited as experts13.
While the ICJ has, in rare past cases, consulted technical experts informally, in this climate case it only announced consultation with IPCC figures, reinforcing the exclusion of dissident scientific voices19.
In summary, the ICJ’s approach gave exclusive scientific authority to the IPCC and provided no forum, reference, or weight to scientists disputing its reports, such as those from Clintel13. The Court did not discuss or acknowledge the existence of such scientific disagreement in its process, instead treating the IPCC’s consensus as fact. This approach has been criticized for its lack of transparency and its failure to incorporate procedural safeguards for alternative scientific views19.
Neverthless, the ICJ AO prompted headlines like these:
Top UN court says countries can sue each other over climate change, BBC
Legal experts say International Court of Justice ruling provides ‘a clear blueprint to hold major emitters accountable’ The Independent
Opened the door for countries to sue each other over impacts of climate change, phys.org
Nations Can Sue Each Other Over Climate Inaction Under International Law, Daily Guardian
Etc., Etc. Etc.
Now on May 20, 2026 the UN General Assembly passed a resolution affirming the ICJ and suggesting implementation.
UN General Assembly ADOPTS resolution welcoming the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on the obligations of States in respect of climate change
RESULT
In favor: 141
Against: 8
Abstain: 28
Activists gloss over the fact that neither the ICJ Opinion nor the UN Resolution are binding, even though it’s expected for them to be referenced in all the climate warfare going on now, and soon to explode. Thus it is important to look into the vote and the implications from those who opposed, abstained, or were absent
The table below lists the Authors, those Against, Abstained, Absent and Notables Voting for:
| Authors (62) | Against (8) | Abstained (28) | Absent (15) | For (79 + 62) |
| Andorra | Belarus | Algeria | Azerbaijan | Notables |
| Angola | Iran | Argentina | Benin | Australia |
| Antigua and Barbuda | Israel | Bahrain | Bolivia | Austria |
| Armenia | Liberia | Brunei | Central African rep | Belgium |
| Bahamas (The) | Russia | Czechia | Dem Rep Korea | Brazil |
| Bhutan | Saudi Arabia | Quatorial NG | Dominica | Canada |
| Bosnia and Herzegovina | United States | Eritrea | Eswatini | China |
| Bulgaria | Yemen | Ethiopia | Kiribati | Denmark |
| Burkina Faso | Gambie | Madagascar | Egypt | |
| Cabo Verde | India | Nicaragua | Hungary | |
| Chile | Iraq | Serbia | Indonesia | |
| Colombia | Kazakhstan | Trinidad Tobago | Ireland | |
| Congo | Kuwait | Turkmenistan | Italy | |
| Costa Rica | Lesotho | Uzbekistan | Japan | |
| Croatia | Libya | Venezuela | Malaysia | |
| Cyprus | Namibia | Mexico | ||
| Czechia | Nigeria | New Zealand | ||
| Djibouti | Oman | Norway | ||
| Dominican Republic | Pakistan | Poland | ||
| Ecuador | Paraguay | Singapore | ||
| Equatorial Guinea | Qatar | Sri Lanka | ||
| Fiji | South Africa | Somalia | ||
| Finland | Sudan | Sweden | ||
| France | Syria | Thailand | ||
| Georgia | Tunisia | Uganda | ||
| Germany | Turkiye | UAE | ||
| Greece | Tanzania | UK | ||
| Guatemala | Zimbabwe | Viet Nam | ||
| Honduras | ||||
| Jordan | ||||
| Kenya | ||||
| Latvia | ||||
| Lebanon | ||||
| Luxembourg | ||||
| Maldives | ||||
| Mali | ||||
| Malta | ||||
| Marshall Islands | ||||
| Micronesia Fed States | ||||
| Monaco | ||||
| Montenegro | ||||
| Morocco | ||||
| Netherlands | ||||
| Nigeria | ||||
| North Macedonia | ||||
| Palau | ||||
| Panama | ||||
| Peru | ||||
| Portugal | ||||
| Qatar | ||||
| Republic of Korea | ||||
| Romania | ||||
| Samoa | ||||
| Senegal | ||||
| Slovakia | ||||
| Slovenia | ||||
| Spain | ||||
| Switzerland | ||||
| Togo | ||||
| Ukraine | ||||
| Uruguay | ||||
| Vanuatu |
Those who voted against or abstained are likely to refuse recognizing the authority of ICJ and UN in this matter. In addition some of those absent are also “makers” of hydrocarbon fuels and will oppose the many nations wanting to be “takers” benefiting from the legal circus coming to town. Many of the Notables voting for are likely to be defendants in this lawfare, especially if they were stupid enough to legislate emissions reduction targets.
Background Post
Kite and Key explain how and why US and Canada electricity is on the brink of blacking out when needed. For those prefering to read, below is a transcript with my bolds and some added images.
Five seconds. That’s about how long you’ve been watching this video. And in 2025, it was also the amount of time it took for 60 percent of the electricity supply in Spain … to vanish from the country’s grid. Which led to 10 hours of darkness — in parts of four countries. It’s a nightmarish scenario — and there’s a good chance that it’s coming to America soon.
Electricity. It’s the backbone of our entire world.
Your house. Your town. Your … excessive enthusiasm for Christmas. We build our lives around the assumption that when we flip a switch, it’ll be there for whatever we need — whether it’s controlling the climate in our homes, refrigerating our food, or just making sure the neighbors can see you’ve portrayed Santa committing a class B felony.
And, when you consider the history, you can see just how quickly we’ve gotten used to this. When Thomas Edison opened America’s first commercial power plant in 1882, it served 59 customers in lower Manhattan.ii By the time another 40 years or so had passed, America’s electricity consumption looked like this:iii
By 1929, the U.S. was generating more power than the rest of the world combined.iv And in the century since, our appetite has only grown. In 2025, the government’s Energy Information Administration reported that the country consumed 14 times more electricity than it had in 1950.v
All of which sounds like a standard story of progress: As the decades pass, and technology evolves, things that once seemed miraculous become so commonplace that we can take them for granted.
But here’s the thing: We should definitely not be taking them for granted. Because the days of assuming we know what’s going to happen when we flip the switch … may be coming to an end.
In 2023, members of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission — the government body that regulates electricity transmission — appeared before a Senate committee with a series of dire warnings.
One of them testified that “We face unprecedented challenges to the reliability of our nation’s electric system.”vi
Another said that “The United States is heading for a very catastrophic situation in terms of reliability.”vii
And then he added “This problem is coming. It’s coming quickly. The red lights are flashing.”viii
And while we don’t like to editorialize here at Kite & Key … that sounds bad.
The data shows that these concerns aren’t exaggerated.
In 2026, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation — the body charged with making sure that the power grid is dependable — warned that nearly half of America’s population was going to be at high risk of rolling blackouts in the next few years.ix
In fact, by the end of the decade every single region of the U.S. and Canada is projected to be at least elevated risk … with the single exception of the Canadian province of Saskatchewanx — which makes sense because Saskatchewan literally has more cows than people.xi
So, if there’s a blackout there … well, you know what happened.
But all of this leads to an obvious question: How does this happen? It’s been almost 150 years since Thomas Edison got the ball rolling and somehow we’re getting worse at this? What’s going on here?
To unravel this mystery, go back to those officials testifying before Congress.
One of them summed up the problem in four words: “The math doesn’t work.”xii
Here’s what he meant by that: In many cases we’re actually losing power — as in, we’ll have less of it in a few years than we do now.
Take, for example, the PJM Interconnection, the country’s largest power grid operator, which serves 65 million customersxiii in 13 states.xiv
In 2023, PJM issued a report estimating that it might lose about 40 gigawatts of electricity — more than 20 percent of its capacity — by the year 2030, thanks to power plant retirements.xv
Which isn’t the end of the world, right? You just bring on new power sources! Which is what they’re doing!
Here’s the problem: The high-end estimate of those new sources … is a little over 30 gigawatts.
In other words, they’re replacing 40 … with 30.
Also known as: “The math doesn’t work.”
And similar situations are happening all over the country.
Why? Well to understand that, we have to understand how the economics of electricity works.
And you might be thinking “But, Kite & Key, that sounds excruciatingly boring.” And it is, dear viewer!
Or at least it would be if you hadn’t chosen the one channel that understands it’s so boring that you have to explain it with the assistance of adorable puppies dressed as economists.
Here’s the way this all goes down: In any given part of the country, you might have lots of potential sources of electricity — natural gas, solar, coal, wind, nuclear. And at any given moment all those sources are selling power at different prices.
Now, the decision as to which one to use is not made by you, the customer. It’s made by the people responsible for coordinating the system, who take bids from electricity producers — sometimes as often as every five minutes — and buy whatever options are cheapest at the time until they’ve got enough power to meet demand. None of which seems crazy — adequate energy at low prices is pretty much what everyone wants.
But here’s where this gets complicated: In some cases … cheap electricity comes with unintended consequences.
Here’s what we mean.
Not all energy sources are created equal.
Map of Diminishing Capacity Values for Major RTOs (Regional Transmission Operators)
Some of them like nuclear and most coal plants are what’s referred to as “baseload power” — they can essentially run all the time.
Others like natural gas plants are “dispatchable,” meaning you can quickly turn them on or off depending on demand.
Then there are sources like wind and solar which are “intermittent” — in other words, you only get power from them when the weather is cooperating.xvi
And this is where the problem creeps in.
In 2024, the government reported that wind, on average, only produces energy about 1/3 of the time.xvii For solar, it was less than 1/4 of the time.xviii By contrast natural gas was around 60 percent and nuclear was at 90 percent.xix
But when wind and solar are working they can be incredibly cheap. In fact, because they’re heavily subsidized by the government, their prices can actually go negative — they can pay the grid to take their powerxx — and still stay in business.
Needless to say, all the other electricity producers … can’t do that.
Which makes them less profitable.
Which leads an increasing number of them to close.
Which leads to a world where we’re increasingly dependent on
electricity sources that literally don’t produce any energy most of the time.
Those 40 gigawatts PJM may lose? Almost all coal or natural gas. The up to 30 gigawatts that will partially replace it? Mostly wind and solar.xxi
Which is the kind of thing that leads otherwise boring bureaucrats from places like the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to yell “the red lights are flashing!” at members of Congress.
Because by privileging the energy sources that work the best some of the time
… we’re gutting the energy sources that work the best all of the time
— the ones that actually determine whether you’ll have power.
There’s no doubt that wind and solar are going to be important parts of America’s energy future. But imagining that they can carry the burden of the entire system today is risking disaster.
When wind and solar can’t produce, we rely on sources like nuclear, natural gas, and even coal to keep the lights on.xxii But if we cut out that part of the equation — if we don’t build to ensure resiliency — we’re placing our standard of living on a knife’s edge. And if we get that balance even slightly wrong, well…
A recent interview exposes how centrist politics and climate obsession corrupt energy investments, in this case to the detriment of Canada. PM Carney is running a charade which will not bode well for Canada, according to this interview of Energy industry expert David Knight Legg by National Post’s Rob Brackenridge. Excerpts from the transcript are below with my bolds and added images. First a reminder of where PM Carney is coming from:
Greetings, folks, I’m Rob Brackenridge for National Post and NP Comment. Alberta has now officially submitted a proposal to the federal government Major Projects Office for a new pipeline to the West Coast. Presumably, that will be fast-tracked by the federal government. We’re expecting that designation of this being in the national interest from the Prime Minister by October. But is all of this enough to really get Canada to where it needs to be, to really fully embrace the opportunity that presents itself and to be that destination for investment and be a global energy superpower?
Well, someone who’s been watching all of this very closely is David Knight Legg. He is a director and an advisor to a number of energy, financial and tech firms, a former principal advisor to Alberta’s premier, former CEO at Invest Alberta Corporation. David, so great to have you with us here. Great to be here, Rob. Great to see you again. Likewise.
It’s been an interesting couple of days. Clearly, the current premier of Alberta has put a lot of work into this, and is trying to pull, I think, the federal government in a much different direction from where it’s been over the past decade. How significant is this milestone, do you think, first of all?
Well, Rob, you know, it’s always hard when you sit outside something as complicated as a negotiation between Ottawa and Alberta, which has skeptics in both their bases, as I’m sure you know. And I had a good conversation with Jason Nixon (Alberta Minister of Finance) last night about it, met the premier briefly. I think it’s really important and I think that it’s not perfect. These deals often aren’t.
But I think one of the testaments to how important it is, is how close it came to being derailed in a variety of ways, just as a little bit of the backstory. And I think that, you know, you sometimes have to take the win that you’ve got. Actually there are a lot of things I’d be critical about. I don’t think it goes far enough.
And I think we have a fundamental problem in a regulatory regime,
which means that governments have to get this involved
in getting basic infrastructure built.
In other countries, you don’t need governments announcing these things. You don’t need a most favored nation status for a project. You have very simple, clean regulations, low taxes, and you allow people to build as long as they meet basic criteria. And I think it’s the absence of that that has become more apparent to more people because of the MOU.
So I think one of the benefits of the MOU has been that it has started a conversation that’s been needed for a long time in Canada over just how hard it’s become to build anything here without official government sanction. And I think that’s a conversation that’s going to continue to persist as this project works its way forward. Yeah, even just the existence of the the major projects office, the Building Canada Act, I mean, it’s a recognition that we have all of this red tape in the way and we create this separate track to try to bypass it. But it just kind of leaves everything else still in place. Right.
So in a way, it’s an acknowledgement that we have that problem, but it doesn’t really address it at the same time. That’s a great that’s a great point. In fact, I think that’s a great way to put it. And that’s actually a conversation that really needs a national conversation that needs to happen.
If you have to create an entirely separate bureaucracy to avoid your current bureaucracy, it might be time to reform your current bureaucracy rather than set up a new set of channels and processes that ultimately are privileging things that still require the government to lean in. And it creates a greenhouse for favoritism and, you know, trying to get the attention of the government to trying to do things rather than a level playing field where anybody can come in and innovate and create. And I think as a nation, we’ve got to do better than this.
You know, it just it looks like 1970s style industrial policy rather than a fair, free, open, entrepreneur led marketplace of ideas and and opportunities. And you have to believe that there are really creative ways of thinking about things that would be initiated across Canada right now if the regulations were simple, the taxes were lower and the process was clear. We’re seeing under this prime minister a little bit of slow dismantling of a lot of the Trudeau legacy, which is maybe long overdue and perhaps needs to be expedited to some degree.
But what does it tell us about then the missed opportunity of the last decade and and all of the cost, all that was wasted as we sort of lived and endured under those policies? You know, Rob, I think one of the things that’s really interesting is Mark Carney was the heart of a lot of those policies. And, you know, half of me believes, you know, that’s what makes him the perfect guy to dismantle them because nobody else is going to be as credible with that liberal base as he would be at turning back some of the environmental overreach that’s restricted the ability to build in Canada. On the other hand, I think that there’s this temptation within this Carney government to maintain control over economic development in a way that means that they constantly have their hand on the wheel.
They’re constantly fidgeting with what they can release. And this is problematic because you will never have government sanctioned projects move as fast as projects that are originating in the private sector and originating with people that are, you know, have to make a bottom line work. So I think, you know, the dismantling of the Trudeau era is so important for the country to move forward, but that’s not sufficient. It’s essential, but it’s not enough to actually start to get the economy rolling again. And you saw this in this really odd condo deal that that happened and a lot of these things where there’s a constant attempt to use government money. We don’t have it.
You know, they’re borrowing it to expand the bureaucracy and also to expand the government reach into things like housing, energy. You know, these are sectors that in most countries are managed without the government having to intervene. Yeah.
And it’s interesting because you mentioned the economy, and obviously that’s an impetus. I know there’s provincial federal dynamics. There’s the energy side of things, but there’s just, you know, when you look at the economic challenges Canada is facing right now and how lethargic our economy has been, the global headwinds we’re facing, the trade uncertainty with the United States. If we’ve got economic advantages, if we’ve got strength, I mean, now’s the time to exploit those advantages. Is there a dawning realization, just with everything that we’re facing now, that we have all of this in front of us? I think so.
I think it started with a paper by Stephen Miran who went on to be the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers for the US president back in November 24, when he said the United States should embark on this. This is what the president ended up adopting as formal policy, should embark on a process of integrating its national interests in energy security, military security, and trade security. And immediately they went for Panama. They’re doing deals around the Straits of Malacca. They’re, of course, active in the Straits of Hormuz with Iran, Greenland. They immediately went to taking Venezuelan oil over. I don’t think there’s been enough coverage of that, and that’s one of the things that led to the article that I wrote, which is when the Americans took over the Venezuelan energy supply, the Chinese lost 550,000 barrels of heavy crude, which is chemically identical to what we produce. It opens up an opportunity for us to have a $15 billion a year trade with the Chinese government just on that one replacement supply chain alone. And the idea that we had Northern Gateway effectively blueprinted already, that that’s a 565,000 barrel pipeline that could easily get there.
When you look at why Northern Gateway was ultimately cancelled, it’s a series of just self-imposed rules that have nothing to do with ultimately helping the environment, even though they’re dressed up that way. When you double-click on those rules, they do nothing for the environment, and in some ways they just sort of imagine that Canada can’t do things. We look at a tanker ban and we think the whole world is moving this stuff by tank. Are we the only country incapable of operating shipping and ports in environmentally sensitive areas? We don’t back ourselves enough to figure out that we could still do it as Canadians if they can do it in 50 other countries.
So there’s a lot that I think happened during that Trudeau era that we’re going to have to answer for. And I think we’re starting at least to have the right conversations. And yesterday’s announcement was an important step towards, I think, government saying we need this pipeline. I still dislike the fact they’re putting themselves in the position of being the ones to back it and treating pipelines more like airports or something. That is maybe being realistic about what you do if you do have a kind of very statist government environment. But it would be better if we could go back to a being a nation where free market entrepreneurialism didn’t require a constant government sanction. Yeah, there’s that.
I mean, I think one of the positives here, I mean, with Trans Mountain, we faced a real backlog when it came to the capacity pipeline capacity. Right. So with this, I think there’s the investment, the spinoff that comes with increasing production to fill this pipe and to fill some of the other projects like South Bow or like the Enbridge Mainline expansion, that the expansion, the growth of production is where we could really see a lot of that investment in the economic spinoffs.
How much does that tie into this? Do you think? Look, I think it’s super important. These are supply demand cycles. And the demand side, when you look at Asia, is unprecedented. You know, and so I think that’s a really the point you’re making is critical. I think you could double or we could get to 10 million barrels. Ultimately, there would be no problem in terms of egress and demand.
Almost all the issues related to the investability of that process are tied to issues like whether or not pathways and CCUS (Carbon Capture) is really the most important thing in the world. Or is it more important than some of these commitments to actually produce and supply and ship? And I think that it’s not. You know, our lesson from a lot of the environmental and to the Prime Minister’s credit, he came out and said $200 billion in 10 years of environmental activism from Ottawa produced absolutely nothing of note. It certainly didn’t change the emissions profile of the country in any significant way. In many ways, it harmed the ability for Canada to play a role in reducing global emissions by shipping a lot more of our gas to offset the coal-fired Chinese grid. And so in so many ways, I think there’s been a decade of strategic irrelevance, but also a decade of real economic decline.
And I think this Prime Minister is faced with needing to get over what’s happened in the trade arena. And I think they’re sort of turning a light past the fact that the Americans have said we’re going to do a deal with the Mexicans and not with the Canadians. You know, we’re going to put you guys on this annual review process. Now, a lot of people are saying that’s fine. I don’t think that’s fine. I think that’s an absolute failure to effectively negotiate the past 18 months. And that is starting to put in. I think the Prime Minister is smart enough to know deep down this is a real problem for the country and for him. And when you look at Canada, the Canadian balance sheet of exports, you know that energy is the only place where you’re going to get an immediate return economically on an investment.
So I think he’s still trying to juggle that kind of absolute realism about what works economically with his desire that there still be kind of a signaling effect, at least to his base, that they’re going to take care of the environment. But I’m just not sure when you look at, you know, sitting on the board of an energy company, you look at the costs related to all of these sort of exogenous environmental commitments that Canada is kind of inventing with the hope that it signals environmental commitments. But they’re not really making that big a difference to the planet. And they’re adding extraordinary costs. And they’re often being managed by government bureaucracies that don’t move at the speed of business or commercial interests. So I think it’s an important step.
It’s raising some important conversations. But I think the answers to some of those questions, those conversations are raising are going to take us further down the path of a much more liberalized economy when it comes to energy and hopefully a smaller government, a government that can live within its means federally and provincially. Yeah, I guess that’s the takeaway here, right? I mean, you know, it’s fine to say that this is a positive achievement. This is a project that is worthwhile, but to avoid maybe patting ourselves on the back too much and recognize some of these broader challenges we face, what do you think should be the next step here? Rather than just say, see this major projects office, this approach is working to have more meaningful conversation about taxes, about regulation, about just the whole picture. Is that really where the conversation ought to be going?
Yeah, look, I think you’re doing it right now, Rob. I think that this kind of conversation that you’re initiating is really important because I think that the baseline is that we want this nation to succeed. We want Alberta to succeed. We want Canada to succeed. We know that, and I think we’ve been sort of avoiding the fact that we’ve allowed the economy to decline and we’ve become very, very dependent on the United States as a result of that.
I mean, one of the great ironies of the past decade is that by refusing to build these things that would have taken our energy to Asia and to Europe, we’ve created a much deeper dependency on the U.S. markets in every way and across every category. And that dependency is now starting to really hurt us. And I think Ontario is an especially tough, tough place when it comes to this.
But I think the first step here is to start to lay out the way forward. And one of the obvious things to do is look at other nations and say, how are they creating these things in a way that’s actually getting things done? You look at a place, I’ve been spending some time in the United Arab Emirates, which is home to both Abu Dhabi and Dubai. And they just decided in the middle of this war that the Straits of Hormuz were not secure enough.
And so they’re going to build a pipeline. They’re going to have that pipeline done in under a year. And that’s going to move 1.8 million barrels of oil. And when you hear that, you sort of think, makes sense. But then you think, imagine if Canada said, we’re going to build a pipeline, 1.8 million, we’re going to have it done in a year. And we’re going to get this stuff to China as a result of what happened in Venezuela.
Here’s the burning question for me. Why not? Why can’t we be that nation? Half the people building these infrastructure projects in the UAE are coming from Canada, because we’re the best in the world at these things. But those experts can’t build those things in Canada at that speed, because they’re beholden to a series of rules that are often rooted in what used to feel like benign green commitments.
But now we just realize these are constraints that are doing nothing for the planet. And they’re significantly slowing down our ability to actually build the kind of economic stability and security and growth we need.
And I really like the framing that you gave about this event. Yes, this step is good. But before we start celebrating, let’s consider where does this actually go next? Are we still talking about a five to 10 year build process? Is that real? Why can they build something in a year in the UAE that carries almost twice the amount of oil as what we can build? And if there’s geographic or geological reasons why, that’s fine. But I don’t think that’s the case.
I think a lot of it is that we’ve just grown used to and accustomed to operating in a manner that is second rate. And it doesn’t keep up with the speed of business. And it certainly doesn’t keep up with what’s happening globally in the world of energy security and energy supply.
The news from a climatist perspective is reported in the LinkedIn article World Bank and IMF Retreat from Climate Finance Under US Pressure. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.
In a significant shift in global financial priorities, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) appear to be scaling back their commitments to climate finance in 2026, likely influenced by pressure from the United States. This development, reported in mid-2025, has sparked concerns among environmental advocates, developing nations, and the business community about its potential to disrupt the global transition to a sustainable economy. Climate finance, which funds projects aimed at mitigating and adapting to climate change, is critical for supporting renewable energy, sustainable infrastructure, and climate resilience initiatives. [ Note: The United States is the largest shareholder of the World Bank, controlling about 16% of voting power. This allows the U.S. to single-handedly block any decision that requires a supermajority, such as extending or replacing the climate financing targets.]
Excerpts from Secretary Bessent IMFC-DC Statement in italics with my bolds and added images.
In recent years, the IMF has suffered from mission creep. Its work has too often extended into areas such as international development, climate change, gender, and social issues, which are disconnected from the institution’s core mandate. To restore its relevance and impact, the Fund must drop these extraneous items and focus on the critical economic work at hand.
As part of the ongoing Comprehensive Surveillance Review (CSR), the IMF is taking important steps to better calibrate the scope of its surveillance and reverse these concerning trends. Through the ongoing Review of Program Design and Conditionality, we expect the IMF to reemphasize a culture focused on achieving successful program outcomes rather than prioritizing inputs, such as the volume of financing provided.
In a more constrained external financing environment, the IMF should promote domestic revenue mobilization, better governance, and policies that support durable, private sector-led growth. Moreover, the IMF, together with the World Bank, must continue its efforts to improve debt data reporting, help build debt management capacity for borrowing countries, restore momentum in debt-restructuring processes, and advance progress under the Common Framework.
The World Bank must maintain focus on its core mission of reducing poverty and increasing economic growth. This means:
♦ Promoting a stronger development agenda focused on country self-reliance by directing resources to the countries most in need for foundational investments that increase productivity and growth and graduating countries from Bank support;
♦ Delivering access to all technologies which can provide abundant, reliable, and affordable energy;
♦ Promoting prudent macroeconomic management and the rule-of-law; and improving development outcomes by proactively seeking to expand competition in procurement.
♦ Striving for greater efficiency, discipline, and accountability so that every dollar delivers more impact.
The Bank must do more to advance developing country access to abundant, affordable, and reliable energy to support economic growth and poverty reduction. Energy abundance sparks economic abundance, and the World Bank should support an all-of-the-above approach to energy technologies—including fossil fuels such as gas, oil, and coal, rather than restrict borrower choice. We call on the Bank to further expand its support for affordable, reliable energy by removing constraints on its support for natural gas and increasing the number of gas projects in the pipeline. We continue to welcome the Bank’s removal of the prohibition on financing nuclear power generation last year. We further welcome the Bank’s leadership in a working group on nuclear energy development with other multilateral development banks. Financing that delivers energy abundance will provide a strong boost to growth, which will also support debt sustainability.
Focusing on the Bank’s core mission also means abandoning its distortionary 45% climate finance target, which impedes market efficiency, distorts incentives, and undermines efforts to reduce poverty and spur economic growth. We welcome the coming expiration of the Climate Change Action Plan, and upon its long-overdue expiration, expect the Bank to immediately shift its myopic focus on climate and financing volumes to one that emphasizes high-quality, durable projects rather than shaping and selecting projects to chase arbitrary financing targets that do little to lift people out of poverty. The Bank should turn its attention to whether its investments and the countries they support are resilient to a multitude of shocks, rather than to meeting nonsensical arbitrary targets.
As public institutions, the World Bank and IMF can most clearly demonstrate accountability to their shareholders by ensuring that a sharper focus on their respective core missions is also reflected by restrained budgets. In service of this goal, we are pleased that both institutions have proposed flat real administrative budget growth for the upcoming fiscal year alongside streamlining efforts that will help reverse the mission creep of recent years.
More than eight decades after their creation at Bretton Woods, we must ensure that the international financial institutions remain true to their mandates and fit for purpose. Streamlining policy priorities will allow both the World Bank and IMF to focus limited public resources on effectively fulfilling their core mandates while nimbly responding to crises. The United States will continue to work with Management and staff, as well as other shareholders, to advance these priorities.
Members of the European Parliament attend a session to vote on legislation to cut import duties for U.S. products in Brussels, March 26, 2026. (Yves Herman/Reuters)
Even as Democratic activists in the U.S. cool to the cause of climate alarmism, environmentalism maintains its political and economic grip on policymakers on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Years into a cost-of-living crisis, why is the European Union still so green?
It may be easy to dismiss this as a case of fanaticism: Sure, American progressives may perhaps not have been truly sincere when they proclaimed their faith in the upcoming apocalypse and the gospel of Greta Thunberg, but maybe her fellow Swedes — and other Europeans — are true believers?
While “sincere” environment activists may be a more common breed in Europe, that does not explain the actions of policymakers and civil servants — technocrats who know for a fact that the “climate transition” was sold to voters by giving disproportionate publicity to worst-case scenarios, rather than the more likely, less catastrophic, and less headline-grabbing scenarios outlined by the likes of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Instead, one must first understand that the EU is a slow-moving beast. The legislative process is complicated and sluggish, with 27 countries and an often-equal number of different viewpoints all struggling to be heard. The rules of the union mean that a third of the countries are able to veto most legislation, and in some cases, unanimity is required. Passing the European Green Deal in the first place required truly draconian efforts of political willpower and coordination, and reversing or altering the deal would hardly be any easier.
Making matters worse, the EU has driven past every conceivable off-ramp, events that would have allowed it to change course while saving face. Mere months after the European Green Deal was unveiled, the Covid-19 pandemic went on to turn the world upside down. Mass unemployment and government borrowing followed. At this point, the EU could have cited the pandemic as an excuse as to why climate goals had to be postponed, and some money earmarked for green projects instead used towards health-care or furlough programs.
The next “off-ramp” was the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. With Europe suddenly needing to provide aid to Ukraine and rearm itself, policymakers could have made the case that the original timeline of the Green Deal was no longer feasible. Shortly thereafter, inflation would hit double digits in many EU member states, once again providing an excellent “excuse” to cancel a Green Deal that was negotiated in the bygone Zero Interest-Rate Policy (ZIRP) era, and whose ambitious goals assumed that this era would never end.
Now, policymakers are truly stuck with a project that virtually ensures the EU won’t see much of the global, energy-intensive AI boom, as prohibitive electricity prices cause data centers and tech firms to choose other locations. As slow and complicated as the legislative process in the EU is, that alone cannot explain why none of the off-ramps were taken.
It is also, as it so often is in politics, about power. Environmentalism is a convenient ideology for those who wish to transfer power to the state, as it provides justification for the state’s expansion. In Europe, however, environmentalism is chiefly not used to transfer power from the voters to the state, but from the states to the European Union. For a supranational organization whose founding treaty infamously states that it is to strive to be an “ever-closer union,” hardly any excuse for centralization is ever passed by.
It may be easy to dismiss this as a case of fanaticism: Sure, American progressives may perhaps not have been truly sincere when they proclaimed their faith in the upcoming apocalypse and the gospel of Greta Thunberg, but maybe her fellow Swedes — and other Europeans — are true believers?
While “sincere” environment activists may be a more common breed in Europe, that does not explain the actions of policymakers and civil servants — technocrats who know for a fact that the “climate transition” was sold to voters by giving disproportionate publicity to worst-case scenarios, rather than the more likely, less catastrophic, and less headline-grabbing scenarios outlined by the likes of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Instead, one must first understand that the EU is a slow-moving beast. The legislative process is complicated and sluggish, with 27 countries and an often-equal number of different viewpoints all struggling to be heard. The rules of the union mean that a third of the countries are able to veto most legislation, and in some cases, unanimity is required. Passing the European Green Deal in the first place required truly draconian efforts of political willpower and coordination, and reversing or altering the deal would hardly be any easier.
Making matters worse, the EU has driven past every conceivable off-ramp, events that would have allowed it to change course while saving face. Mere months after the European Green Deal was unveiled, the Covid-19 pandemic went on to turn the world upside down. Mass unemployment and government borrowing followed. At this point, the EU could have cited the pandemic as an excuse as to why climate goals had to be postponed, and some money earmarked for green projects instead used towards health-care or furlough programs.
The next “off-ramp” was the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. With Europe suddenly needing to provide aid to Ukraine and rearm itself, policymakers could have made the case that the original timeline of the Green Deal was no longer feasible. Shortly thereafter, inflation would hit double digits in many EU member states, once again providing an excellent “excuse” to cancel a Green Deal that was negotiated in the bygone Zero Interest-Rate Policy (ZIRP) era, and whose ambitious goals assumed that this era would never end.
Now, policymakers are truly stuck with a project that virtually ensures the EU won’t see much of the global, energy-intensive AI boom, as prohibitive electricity prices cause data centers and tech firms to choose other locations. As slow and complicated as the legislative process in the EU is, that alone cannot explain why none of the off-ramps were taken.
It is also, as it so often is in politics, about power. Environmentalism is a convenient ideology for those who wish to transfer power to the state, as it provides justification for the state’s expansion. In Europe, however, environmentalism is chiefly not used to transfer power from the voters to the state, but from the states to the European Union. For a supranational organization whose founding treaty infamously states that it is to strive to be an “ever-closer union,” hardly any excuse for centralization is ever passed by.
It may be easy to dismiss this as a case of fanaticism: Sure, American progressives may perhaps not have been truly sincere when they proclaimed their faith in the upcoming apocalypse and the gospel of Greta Thunberg, but maybe her fellow Swedes — and other Europeans — are true believers?
While “sincere” environment activists may be a more common breed in Europe, that does not explain the actions of policymakers and civil servants — technocrats who know for a fact that the “climate transition” was sold to voters by giving disproportionate publicity to worst-case scenarios, rather than the more likely, less catastrophic, and less headline-grabbing scenarios outlined by the likes of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Instead, one must first understand that the EU is a slow-moving beast. The legislative process is complicated and sluggish, with 27 countries and an often-equal number of different viewpoints all struggling to be heard. The rules of the union mean that a third of the countries are able to veto most legislation, and in some cases, unanimity is required. Passing the European Green Deal in the first place required truly draconian efforts of political willpower and coordination, and reversing or altering the deal would hardly be any easier.
Making matters worse, the EU has driven past every conceivable off-ramp, events that would have allowed it to change course while saving face. Mere months after the European Green Deal was unveiled, the Covid-19 pandemic went on to turn the world upside down. Mass unemployment and government borrowing followed. At this point, the EU could have cited the pandemic as an excuse as to why climate goals had to be postponed, and some money earmarked for green projects instead used towards health-care or furlough programs.
The next “off-ramp” was the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. With Europe suddenly needing to provide aid to Ukraine and rearm itself, policymakers could have made the case that the original timeline of the Green Deal was no longer feasible. Shortly thereafter, inflation would hit double digits in many EU member states, once again providing an excellent “excuse” to cancel a Green Deal that was negotiated in the bygone Zero Interest-Rate Policy (ZIRP) era, and whose ambitious goals assumed that this era would never end.
Now, policymakers are truly stuck with a project that virtually ensures the EU won’t see much of the global, energy-intensive AI boom, as prohibitive electricity prices cause data centers and tech firms to choose other locations. As slow and complicated as the legislative process in the EU is, that alone cannot explain why none of the off-ramps were taken.
The video player is currently playing an ad.
It is also, as it so often is in politics, about power. Environmentalism is a convenient ideology for those who wish to transfer power to the state, as it provides justification for the state’s expansion. In Europe, however, environmentalism is chiefly not used to transfer power from the voters to the state, but from the states to the European Union. For a supranational organization whose founding treaty infamously states that it is to strive to be an “ever-closer union,” hardly any excuse for centralization is ever passed by.
It may be easy to dismiss this as a case of fanaticism: Sure, American progressives may perhaps not have been truly sincere when they proclaimed their faith in the upcoming apocalypse and the gospel of Greta Thunberg, but maybe her fellow Swedes — and other Europeans — are true believers?
While “sincere” environment activists may be a more common breed in Europe, that does not explain the actions of policymakers and civil servants — technocrats who know for a fact that the “climate transition” was sold to voters by giving disproportionate publicity to worst-case scenarios, rather than the more likely, less catastrophic, and less headline-grabbing scenarios outlined by the likes of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Instead, one must first understand that the EU is a slow-moving beast. The legislative process is complicated and sluggish, with 27 countries and an often-equal number of different viewpoints all struggling to be heard. The rules of the union mean that a third of the countries are able to veto most legislation, and in some cases, unanimity is required. Passing the European Green Deal in the first place required truly draconian efforts of political willpower and coordination, and reversing or altering the deal would hardly be any easier.
Making matters worse, the EU has driven past every conceivable off-ramp, events that would have allowed it to change course while saving face. Mere months after the European Green Deal was unveiled, the Covid-19 pandemic went on to turn the world upside down. Mass unemployment and government borrowing followed. At this point, the EU could have cited the pandemic as an excuse as to why climate goals had to be postponed, and some money earmarked for green projects instead used towards health-care or furlough programs.
The next “off-ramp” was the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. With Europe suddenly needing to provide aid to Ukraine and rearm itself, policymakers could have made the case that the original timeline of the Green Deal was no longer feasible. Shortly thereafter, inflation would hit double digits in many EU member states, once again providing an excellent “excuse” to cancel a Green Deal that was negotiated in the bygone Zero Interest-Rate Policy (ZIRP) era, and whose ambitious goals assumed that this era would never end.
Now, policymakers are truly stuck with a project that virtually ensures the EU won’t see much of the global, energy-intensive AI boom, as prohibitive electricity prices cause data centers and tech firms to choose other locations. As slow and complicated as the legislative process in the EU is, that alone cannot explain why none of the off-ramps were taken.
The video player is currently playing an ad.
It is also, as it so often is in politics, about power. Environmentalism is a convenient ideology for those who wish to transfer power to the state, as it provides justification for the state’s expansion. In Europe, however, environmentalism is chiefly not used to transfer power from the voters to the state, but from the states to the European Union. For a supranational organization whose founding treaty infamously states that it is to strive to be an “ever-closer union,” hardly any excuse for centralization is ever passed by.
It may be easy to dismiss this as a case of fanaticism: Sure, American progressives may perhaps not have been truly sincere when they proclaimed their faith in the upcoming apocalypse and the gospel of Greta Thunberg, but maybe her fellow Swedes — and other Europeans — are true believers?
While “sincere” environment activists may be a more common breed in Europe, that does not explain the actions of policymakers and civil servants — technocrats who know for a fact that the “climate transition” was sold to voters by giving disproportionate publicity to worst-case scenarios, rather than the more likely, less catastrophic, and less headline-grabbing scenarios outlined by the likes of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Instead, one must first understand that the EU is a slow-moving beast. The legislative process is complicated and sluggish, with 27 countries and an often-equal number of different viewpoints all struggling to be heard. The rules of the union mean that a third of the countries are able to veto most legislation, and in some cases, unanimity is required. Passing the European Green Deal in the first place required truly draconian efforts of political willpower and coordination, and reversing or altering the deal would hardly be any easier.
Making matters worse, the EU has driven past every conceivable off-ramp, events that would have allowed it to change course while saving face. Mere months after the European Green Deal was unveiled, the Covid-19 pandemic went on to turn the world upside down. Mass unemployment and government borrowing followed. At this point, the EU could have cited the pandemic as an excuse as to why climate goals had to be postponed, and some money earmarked for green projects instead used towards health-care or furlough programs.
The next “off-ramp” was the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. With Europe suddenly needing to provide aid to Ukraine and rearm itself, policymakers could have made the case that the original timeline of the Green Deal was no longer feasible. Shortly thereafter, inflation would hit double digits in many EU member states, once again providing an excellent “excuse” to cancel a Green Deal that was negotiated in the bygone Zero Interest-Rate Policy (ZIRP) era, and whose ambitious goals assumed that this era would never end.
Now, policymakers are truly stuck with a project that virtually ensures the EU won’t see much of the global, energy-intensive AI boom, as prohibitive electricity prices cause data centers and tech firms to choose other locations. As slow and complicated as the legislative process in the EU is, that alone cannot explain why none of the off-ramps were taken.
The video player is currently playing an ad.
It is also, as it so often is in politics, about power. Environmentalism is a convenient ideology for those who wish to transfer power to the state, as it provides justification for the state’s expansion. In Europe, however, environmentalism is chiefly not used to transfer power from the voters to the state, but from the states to the European Union. For a supranational organization whose founding treaty infamously states that it is to strive to be an “ever-closer union,” hardly any excuse for centralization is ever passed by.
It may be easy to dismiss this as a case of fanaticism: Sure, American progressives may perhaps not have been truly sincere when they proclaimed their faith in the upcoming apocalypse and the gospel of Greta Thunberg, but maybe her fellow Swedes — and other Europeans — are true believers?
While “sincere” environment activists may be a more common breed in Europe, that does not explain the actions of policymakers and civil servants — technocrats who know for a fact that the “climate transition” was sold to voters by giving disproportionate publicity to worst-case scenarios, rather than the more likely, less catastrophic, and less headline-grabbing scenarios outlined by the likes of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Instead, one must first understand that the EU is a slow-moving beast. The legislative process is complicated and sluggish, with 27 countries and an often-equal number of different viewpoints all struggling to be heard. The rules of the union mean that a third of the countries are able to veto most legislation, and in some cases, unanimity is required. Passing the European Green Deal in the first place required truly draconian efforts of political willpower and coordination, and reversing or altering the deal would hardly be any easier.
Making matters worse, the EU has driven past every conceivable off-ramp, events that would have allowed it to change course while saving face. Mere months after the European Green Deal was unveiled, the Covid-19 pandemic went on to turn the world upside down. Mass unemployment and government borrowing followed. At this point, the EU could have cited the pandemic as an excuse as to why climate goals had to be postponed, and some money earmarked for green projects instead used towards health-care or furlough programs.
The next “off-ramp” was the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. With Europe suddenly needing to provide aid to Ukraine and rearm itself, policymakers could have made the case that the original timeline of the Green Deal was no longer feasible. Shortly thereafter, inflation would hit double digits in many EU member states, once again providing an excellent “excuse” to cancel a Green Deal that was negotiated in the bygone Zero Interest-Rate Policy (ZIRP) era, and whose ambitious goals assumed that this era would never end.
Now, policymakers are truly stuck with a project that virtually ensures the EU won’t see much of the global, energy-intensive AI boom, as prohibitive electricity prices cause data centers and tech firms to choose other locations. As slow and complicated as the legislative process in the EU is, that alone cannot explain why none of the off-ramps were taken.
The video player is currently playing an ad.
It is also, as it so often is in politics, about power. Environmentalism is a convenient ideology for those who wish to transfer power to the state, as it provides justification for the state’s expansion. In Europe, however, environmentalism is chiefly not used to transfer power from the voters to the state, but from the states to the European Union. For a supranational organization whose founding treaty infamously states that it is to strive to be an “ever-closer union,” hardly any excuse for centralization is ever passed by.
It may be easy to dismiss this as a case of fanaticism: Sure, American progressives may perhaps not have been truly sincere when they proclaimed their faith in the upcoming apocalypse and the gospel of Greta Thunberg, but maybe her fellow Swedes — and other Europeans — are true believers?
While “sincere” environment activists may be a more common breed in Europe, that does not explain the actions of policymakers and civil servants — technocrats who know for a fact that the “climate transition” was sold to voters by giving disproportionate publicity to worst-case scenarios, rather than the more likely, less catastrophic, and less headline-grabbing scenarios outlined by the likes of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
It may be easy to dismiss this as a case of fanaticism: Sure, American progressives may perhaps not have been truly sincere when they proclaimed their faith in the upcoming apocalypse and the gospel of Greta Thunberg, but maybe her fellow Swedes — and other Europeans — are true believers?
While “sincere” environment activists may be a more common breed in Europe, that does not explain the actions of policymakers and civil servants — technocrats who know for a fact that the “climate transition” was sold to voters by giving disproportionate publicity to worst-case scenarios, rather than the more likely, less catastrophic, and less headline-grabbing scenarios outlined by the likes of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Polish coal miners protest against liquidation of Polish coal mines.
Instead, one must first understand that the EU is a slow-moving beast. The legislative process is complicated and sluggish, with 27 countries and an often-equal number of different viewpoints all struggling to be heard. The rules of the union mean that a third of the countries are able to veto most legislation, and in some cases, unanimity is required. Passing the European Green Deal in the first place required truly draconian efforts of political willpower and coordination, and reversing or altering the deal would hardly be any easier.
Making matters worse, the EU has driven past every conceivable off-ramp, events that would have allowed it to change course while saving face. Mere months after the European Green Deal was unveiled, the Covid-19 pandemic went on to turn the world upside down. Mass unemployment and government borrowing followed. At this point, the EU could have cited the pandemic as an excuse as to why climate goals had to be postponed, and some money earmarked for green projects instead used towards health-care or furlough programs.
Making matters worse, the EU has driven past every conceivable off-ramp, events that would have allowed it to change course while saving face. Mere months after the European Green Deal was unveiled, the Covid-19 pandemic went on to turn the world upside down. Mass unemployment and government borrowing followed. At this point, the EU could have cited the pandemic as an excuse as to why climate goals had to be postponed, and some money earmarked for green projects instead used towards health-care or furlough programs.
The next “off-ramp” was the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. With Europe suddenly needing to provide aid to Ukraine and rearm itself, policymakers could have made the case that the original timeline of the Green Deal was no longer feasible. Shortly thereafter, inflation would hit double digits in many EU member states, once again providing an excellent “excuse” to cancel a Green Deal that was negotiated in the bygone Zero Interest-Rate Policy (ZIRP) era, and whose ambitious goals assumed that this era would never end.
Now, policymakers are truly stuck with a project that virtually ensures the EU won’t see much of the global, energy-intensive AI boom, as prohibitive electricity prices cause data centers and tech firms to choose other locations. As slow and complicated as the legislative process in the EU is, that alone cannot explain why none of the off-ramps were taken.
Making matters worse, the EU has driven past every conceivable off-ramp, events that would have allowed it to change course while saving face. Mere months after the European Green Deal was unveiled, the Covid-19 pandemic went on to turn the world upside down. Mass unemployment and government borrowing followed. At this point, the EU could have cited the pandemic as an excuse as to why climate goals had to be postponed, and some money earmarked for green projects instead used towards health-care or furlough programs.
The next “off-ramp” was the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. With Europe suddenly needing to provide aid to Ukraine and rearm itself, policymakers could have made the case that the original timeline of the Green Deal was no longer feasible. Shortly thereafter, inflation would hit double digits in many EU member states, once again providing an excellent “excuse” to cancel a Green Deal that was negotiated in the bygone Zero Interest-Rate Policy (ZIRP) era, and whose ambitious goals assumed that this era would never end.
Now, policymakers are truly stuck with a project that virtually ensures the EU won’t see much of the global, energy-intensive AI boom, as prohibitive electricity prices cause data centers and tech firms to choose other locations. As slow and complicated as the legislative process in the EU is, that alone cannot explain why none of the off-ramps were taken.
The next “off-ramp” was the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. With Europe suddenly needing to provide aid to Ukraine and rearm itself, policymakers could have made the case that the original timeline of the Green Deal was no longer feasible. Shortly thereafter, inflation would hit double digits in many EU member states, once again providing an excellent “excuse” to cancel a Green Deal that was negotiated in the bygone Zero Interest-Rate Policy (ZIRP) era, and whose ambitious goals assumed that this era would never end.
Now, policymakers are truly stuck with a project that virtually ensures the EU won’t see much of the global, energy-intensive AI boom, as prohibitive electricity prices cause data centers and tech firms to choose other locations. As slow and complicated as the legislative process in the EU is, that alone cannot explain why none of the off-ramps were taken.
And such an excuse was exactly what environmentalism provided: No single EU member can deal with climate change on their own, since none of them contributes to more than 0.7 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. The only way to fight this new threat, Brussels explained, was to do it together, under the benevolent direction of your friendly neighborhood eurocrat. Anyone who did not want to see the Swiss Alps underwater had no choice but to go along with the program.
That the EU as a whole only ever contributed 10 to 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions even before the first moves to transition were taken in the 1990s is the type of “inconvenient truth” voters rarely heard when the Deal was passed.
It is now down to less than 6 percent, yet Europe’s
green frenzy continues virtually unabated.
For the EU, the sunk cost has also been far greater than for America. Long before the European Green Deal, the EU made serious — and costly — efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Whereas American emissions wouldn’t peak until 2007, in the EU, they peaked in 1990, after which they have been on a steady decline. Total U.S. emissions were still more than 20 percent higher in 2024 at the end of Biden’s presidency than they had been in Europe in 1990.
Europeans have felt the pain of climate policies in the form of gas prices that (prior to the Iran war) averaged 2 to 3 times what American car owners paid. Higher electricity prices, tied to the shuttering of oil and coal but also nuclear power plants, have prevented air conditioning from taking off in Europe — ironically, this increases the number of Europeans who will suffer and even die as a result of rising global temperatures.
Already, more than 60,000 Europeans die of heat every summer.
More Europeans die from lack of AC than Americans do from gun violence.
Europeans have gritted their teeth and accepted that sacrifice, along with a large chunk of its traditional manufacturing sector — jobs that they were promised would be replaced by roles in “green” manufacturing and other “climate-friendly” industries the EU anticipated dominating on the world stage. That is not how things have turned out.
Instead, China has ascended as a dominating force in green industries
like solar panels and — worse for the EU — batteries and electric vehicles.
Automobile exports are now dropping fast. From 2008 to 2023, over 2.3 million European manufacturing jobs were lost, compared to “only” around 800,000 in the United States during that time period.
There is also no guarantee that lost manufacturing jobs would return and shuttered factories reopen any time soon even if Brussels were to pump the brakes now, much like how the coal mining jobs have so far failed to return despite Donald Trump’s reversal of Biden’s policies (they also declined under his first term).
However, the “harmless” transition policies proved costlier, and voters turned out to be less invested in the project than the policymakers believed. On paper, most voters did support the idea of climate transition. But supporting an idea is different from actually paying the price at the pump and in the form of higher utility bills. (And let’s not forget those abominable paper straws.)
Lawmakers in the European Parliament agreed today, Nov. 13, 2025, to dramatic cuts to the EU’s sustainability reporting and due diligence laws, including significant reductions in the number of companies to be covered by the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), and the elimination of the obligation for companies to prepare climate transition plans. The vote, was 382 MEPs in favor and 249 opposed,
After all these sacrifices, few governments in the EU could afford to admit that it was all for nothing. Their position is made even more precarious as this would be the second such embarrassment: After the 2015–16 refugee crisis, most governments across Europe took steps toward restricting immigration, effectively conceding that the parties they had (and continue to) labeled “far-right” had been correct about the challenges caused by rising immigration numbers.
To give the same parties another win and concede that —
much like multiculturalism — climate transition too had turned out
to be a better idea on paper than in practice would simply be too much.
Since the 2008 financial crisis, the U.S. economy has outgrown the economies of Western Europe, creating a growing wealth gap. As Europe continues down the path of chasing green dreams instead of greenbacks, this gap is only likely to continue to grow until the day its leaders are finally forced to admit that their policies only ever ensured future generations would inherit not a cooler planet, but a poorer continent.
Peter Murphy observes at Washington Examiner The climate change house of cards is finally collapsing. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.
The prevailing climate change narrative took a big hit in recent days, as scientists who comprise the United Nations’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are backing away from more outlandish climate predictions for the 21st century.
Extreme forecasts of rising temperatures of 4 to 5 degrees, the scientists wrote in the journal Geoscientific Model Development, “have become implausible.” That means predictions of rapidly growing carbon emissions and higher temperatures, supposedly leading to fast-rising sea levels, floods, crop failures, and even human extinction scenarios, are finally being jettisoned.
This long-standing climate change narrative, always a house of cards designed to scare societies into submission, is collapsing — first gradually, now suddenly, to borrow a phrase from Ernest Hemingway.
Turns out even climate scientists on the U.N. dole have a modicum of self-respect such that they can no longer defend such lunatic predictions that were never plausible from the start.
“For the 21st century, this range [of future climate scenarios] will be smaller than assessed before,” they wrote. As a way of saving face, their scaling back of climate change doom comes from “[lower] costs of renewables, the emergence of climate policy, and recent emission trends.”
In fact, these scientists, in long-winded, technical jargon, are eating crow. Do they, or anyone else, really believe a few windmills and solar panels scattered about like a handful of microscopic specks on the planet’s landmass — which itself is only 30% of the globe — affected anything?
These longtime scare tactics from the IPCC and its echo chamber of universities, NGOs, and government bureaucracies certainly had their effect, especially on young people. It reminds me of an encounter 18 months ago while attending the U.N. COP29 Climate Summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, as part of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow delegation.
CFACT President Craig Rucker and I took some time to visit the Old City. At this tourist enclave of Baku, we met three American college students from North Carolina who were also attending the conference. We struck up a conversation about climate change.
There was no arguing or acrimony, just a pleasant back-and-forth. Craig explained to them in his affable but thorough manner that the impact of climate change is emphatically not what the U.N. or the outgoing Biden administration claimed. It’s not an “existential threat,” climate doomsday predictions going back nearly 40 years have never panned out, it’s OK to have children, and so on.
Among the three students, one (the male) was not buying it, a second (female) had an unsure, quizzical expression, while the third (female) had a palpable countenance of relief, like the weight of the world was lifted from her. All three had been bamboozled on climate issues for their entire lives, perhaps starting with Saturday morning cartoons, to hypocritical Hollywood actors, corporate grifters seeking government contracts, and charlatan college professors drinking the same Kool-Aid.
With this latest from these IPCC scientists, the prevailing narrative from all these institutions should be coming unglued, as it can no longer withstand the scientific, planetary, and human realities before us.
The North Pole and Antarctica still have massive ice buildup in their respective winters. The Atlantic Ocean will not subsume Miami or the Obamas third (or fourth?) home on the shoreline of Martha’s Vineyard. New technologies like artificial intelligence and military hardware cannot operate now or ever on wind and solar power. Liquefied natural gas is abundant and spreading widely across the globe, courtesy of growing U.S. exports, and carbon-free (assuming it matters) nuclear energy is slowly but inexorably making a comeback.
The higher price of gas due to America’s war with Iran is also a tell. Americans detest gasoline at $4.50 per gallon, Californians hate it even more at $6-plus. This war has an end date, hopefully sooner rather than later, after which global oil markets will flow and gasoline prices will drop. But climate policies for so-called green energy can only survive and expand in a high-priced world of oil and gas, which is where the climate lobby wants it to stay indefinitely.
Except for the most craven, gullible politicians, most of the remaining elected officials are not going to tolerate — and risk blame for — permanently skyrocketing energy prices from imposing climate change energy policies, knowing their current unpopularity with the public.
Of course, the climate change industrial complex, spearheaded by the IPCC, is not going to disappear nor admit they were peddling climate nonsense. The beat will go on, but their credibility and decades of scaremongering under the false flag of “science” should never again be taken seriously.
Regarding that college student from North Carolina who felt enormous relief that climate change was not a threat to her future, I hope millions more will feel likewise as this colossal lie of climate change Armageddon continues to collapse under its own weight.
As the stool above shows, the climate change package sits on three premises. The first is the science bit, consisting of an unproven claim that observed warming is caused by humans burning fossil fuels. The second part rests on impact studies from billions of research dollars spent uncovering any and all possible negatives from warming. And the third leg is climate policies showing how governments can “fight climate change.”
It is refreshing to see more and more articles by people reasoning about climate change/global warming and expressing rational positions. Increasingly, analysts are unbundling the package and questioning not only the science, but also pointing out positives from CO2 and warming. And as this post shows, essays are challenging the policy proposals advanced by climate activists. David R. Henderson and John H. Cochrane published at WSJ on July 30, 2017 Climate Change Isn’t the End of the World Even if world temperatures rise, the appropriate policy response is still an open question. Complete text below (my Bolds and added images)
Climate change is often misunderstood as a package deal: If global warming is “real,” both sides of the debate seem to assume, the climate lobby’s policy agenda follows inexorably.
It does not. Climate policy advocates need to do a much better job of quantitatively analyzing economic costs and the actual, rather than symbolic, benefits of their policies. Skeptics would also do well to focus more attention on economic and policy analysis.
To arrive at a wise policy response, we first need to consider how much economic damage climate change will do. Current models struggle to come up with economic costs consummate with apocalyptic political rhetoric. Typical costs are well below 10% of gross domestic product in the year 2100 and beyond.
That’s a lot of money—but it’s a lot of years, too. Even 10% less GDP in 100 years corresponds to 0.1 percentage point less annual GDP growth. Climate change therefore does not justify policies that cost more than 0.1 percentage point of growth. If the goal is 10% more GDP in 100 years, pro-growth tax, regulatory and entitlement reforms would be far more effective.
Yes, the costs are not evenly spread. Some places will do better and some will do worse. The American South might be a worse place to grow wheat; Southern Canada might be a better one. In a century, Miami might find itself in approximately the same situation as the Dutch city of Rotterdam today.
Rotterdam–Ninety years thriving behind dikes and dams.
But spread over a century, the costs of moving and adapting are not as imposing as they seem. Rotterdam’s dikes are expensive, but not prohibitively so. Most buildings are rebuilt about every 50 years. If we simply stopped building in flood-prone areas and started building on higher ground, even the costs of moving cities would be bearable. Migration is costly. But much of the world’s population moved from farms to cities in the 20th century. Allowing people to move to better climates in the 21st will be equally possible. Such investments in climate adaptation are small compared with the investments we will regularly make in houses, businesses, infrastructure and education.
And economics is the central question—unlike with other environmental problems such as chemical pollution. Carbon dioxide hurts nobody’s health. It’s good for plants. Climate change need not endanger anyone. If it did—and you do hear such claims—then living in hot Arizona rather than cool Maine, or living with Louisiana’s frequent floods, would be considered a health catastrophe today.
Global warming is not the only risk our society faces. Even if science tells us that climate change is real and man-made, it does not tell us, as President Obama asserted, that climate change is the greatest threat to humanity. Really? Greater than nuclear explosions, a world war, global pandemics, crop failures and civil chaos?
No. Healthy societies do not fall apart over slow, widely predicted, relatively small economic adjustments of the sort painted by climate analysis. Societies do fall apart from war, disease or chaos. Climate policy must compete with other long-term threats for always-scarce resources.
Facing this reality, some advocate that we buy some “insurance.” Sure, they argue, the projected economic cost seems small, but it could turn out to be a lot worse. But the same argument applies to any possible risk. If you buy overpriced insurance against every potential danger, you soon run out of money. You can sensibly insure only when the premium is in line with the risk—which brings us back where we started, to the need for quantifying probabilities, costs, benefits and alternatives. And uncertainty goes both ways. Nobody forecast fracking, or that it would make the U.S. the world’s carbon-reduction leader. Strategic waiting is a rational response to a slow-moving uncertain peril with fast-changing technology.
Global warming is not even the obvious top environmental threat. Dirty water, dirty air and insect-borne diseases are a far greater problem today for most people world-wide. Habitat loss and human predation are a far greater problem for most animals. Elephants won’t make it to see a warmer climate. Ask them how they would prefer to spend $1 trillion—subsidizing high-speed trains or a human-free park the size of Montana.
Then, we need to know what effect proposed policies have and at what cost. Scientific, quantifiable or even vaguely plausible cause-and-effect thinking are missing from much advocacy for policies to reduce carbon emissions. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s “scientific” recommendations, for example, include “reduced gender inequality & marginalization in other forms,” “provisioning of adequate housing,” “cash transfers” and “awareness raising & integrating into education.” Even if some of these are worthy goals, they are not scientifically valid, cost-benefit-tested policies to cool the planet.
Climate policy advocates’ apocalyptic vision demands serious analysis,
and mushy thinking undermines their case.
If carbon emissions pose the greatest threat to humanity, it follows that the costs of nuclear power—waste disposal and the occasional meltdown—might be bearable. It follows that the costs of genetically modified foods and modern pesticides, which can feed us with less land and lower carbon emissions, might be bearable. It follows that if the future of civilization is really at stake, adaptation or geo-engineering should not be unmentionable. And it follows that symbolic, ineffective, political grab-bag policies should be intolerable.
Climate science, impacts and policies also appear as a house of cards.
Mr. Henderson is a research fellow with the Hoover Institution and an economics professor at the Naval Postgraduate School. Mr. Cochrane is a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution and an adjunct scholar of the Cato Institute.
The exhibit above shows the scope and complexity of the analysis. But the bottom line is that 96% of the effort and trillions of $$$ were spent to no avail. It is estimated that on the order of 1.2 Billion tonnes of CO2 were prevented over the last 20 years, with an additional 23 Billion tonnes to be erased by 2030. Any enterprise with that performance would be liquidated. That is an epic failure in fact.
World of Hurt from Climate Policies
Speaking Climate Truth to Policymakers
Climate Policies Failure, the Movie
I received today an email from Dr. Bernd Fleischmann acknowledging my effort to present an english version of his recent presentation. In order to have a more accurate and complete communication he sent me the set of english slides in a pdf embedded below. Along with several additional exhibits, this makes a much more powerful and accessible statement of his points regarding the notion of a Climate Crisis. You can either scroll through the exhibits embedded on this page, or download the pdf file by hitting the download button at the bottom.
I thank Dr. Fleischmann for his research and organized critique of this issue and for speaking truth to the powers that be, many of whom are still entranced by a false narrative.
My post is linked above for reference.
The plans and intentions are exposed in a Clintel article From the Polycrisis to a World Government. Climate Alarmism is part of a much bigger agenda driven by the UN, says Swedish scientist, author, and musician Jacob Nordangård. What is the real plan behind all this? The Swiss news outlet Transition News spoke with Nordangård. Excerpts below with my bolds and added images.
Transition News: Some believe that the recent crises and the associated profiteering are pure coincidence and that capitalism simply works this way: one thing leads to another, no one is planning a world government. However, in your book “The Digital World Control”, which has just been published in an updated and expanded German and English edition, you clearly demonstrate that some are following a specific plan, with the United Nations at its center. On what sources do you base your research?
Nordangård: I use original sources from the United Nations and all those organizations that prepared the UN’s Pact for the Future. This means, my research is primarily based on the statements of these institutions themselves. I also consult other sources, for example, the World Economic Forum (WEF), which has entered into a partnership with the United Nations.
The official signing of the agreement took place in June 2019, attended by former WEF CEO Klaus Schwab, then-WEF President Børge Brende, UN Secretary-General António Guterres, and UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed. However, the UN and the WEF had already been cooperating prior to this. Mohammed, for example, served on the board of the Young Global Leaders program. This means that the United Nations and the WEF had been closely linked for about a decade before the official partnership.
When I wrote the Swedish edition of this book, I was focused on the UN’s Our Common Agenda. It was only with the release of the Epstein files that I realized how Epstein was deeply involved with some of the key figures of this UN agenda, such as Brende. Jeffrey Epstein was a member of the Trilateral Commission, which was established by David Rockefeller in 1973. Rockefeller brought Epstein into this group and also into the Council on Foreign Relations, another important think tank that primarily shapes American foreign policy.
Currently, the focus is primarily on sex trafficking and the minors involved. But Epstein was important for connecting people. For example, he befriended Brende, the former president of the World Economic Forum, and they discussed how the WEF could take on the role of the United Nations. He was therefore a key figure in these influential networks.
The modern concept of scientific dictatorship can be traced back to H. G. Wells. But Julian Huxley, a friend of Wells, and the Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin also held similar views on technological change and a technological society, a kind of techno-utopia.
The twelve proposals of the United Nations contained in Our Common Agenda was published in 2021 to establish commitments for implementing the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These commitments include, among other things: leave no one behind, build trust, and listen to young people. It all sounds quite reasonable. What does this have to do with a scientific dictatorship or a techno-utopia?
Such plans are always packaged in fine words. But we need to see the plans behind these well chosen words. Let’s take the slogan “Leave no one behind” and look at what the UN’s Our Common Agenda and Pact for the Future actually intend:
It’s about the digitization of more or less everything on this planet,
everything that can be recorded and monitored.
It is a perfectly ordered and controlled system. No one is to be left behind, as everyone must be part of the system. As a precaution, everyone is monitored.
And when “we” say they want to listen to people, according to “our shared agenda”, it’s about learning what people do and think. Not about giving citizens a real say. “We” have a vision and a pact for the future. And “our” plans are to be implemented, so “we” want to know how people react.
Pseudoscience as Religion
But everything is based on “their” science. I consider this to be pseudoscience. It’s not real science, but a political vision sold as science. I taught and researched at the university for many years—science means questioning everything in order to constantly improve. But here, “science”, which is largely based on model calculations and computer simulations, is being instrumentalized as a religion: If people follow “our” path, it leads to paradise; if not, it leads to hell. “We” must therefore convince people to choose the path “we” discuss at the United Nations. “We” have this one great goal.
Our Common Agenda and The Pact for the Future are
based on behavioral design and behavioral science.
This behaviorism is used to steer people in the right direction. This corresponds to totalitarian thinking. It is not a particularly empathetic way of dealing with people, but rather turns them into objects that can be programmed to better conform to the visions of those behind these plans.
And when they say: “We want to listen to young people and work with them,” it basically means that young people are to be steered in a certain direction.
Young people can’t simply express their opinions freely. They are asked: “What do you think of climate policy? Should it be stricter or more lenient?” “I don’t believe in it” is not an acceptable answer. These “facts” must not be questioned. Questionnaires and focus groups serve only to justify the implemented measures.
Why is there such a focus on the year 2030? Because these 15-year plans exist. From 2000 onwards, there was this test run with the Millennium Development Goals until 2015 – few have heard of it or remember it – and the goals were not met. But this time, for the year 2030, everything has gained enormous importance and has been used for propaganda purposes since 2015. However, I suspect that the United Nations will no longer be able to successfully implement the Sustainable Development Goals as they are presented to the public by 2030.
So there will be new goals for 2045 – a crucial milestone. In future scenarios, the project is described as The Great Transition – the aim is to establish a world government by the UN’s 100th anniversary. The period leading up to it is a transitional phase, and we are currently in the first stage of this transformation. 2030 is simply a pivotal year on the path to achieving this goal.
Cyber-biological Systems
How does artificial intelligence (AI) contribute to implementing this one world government? I believe the elites of this world view AI as a perfect system because they previously relied on other people to carry out their orders – that is why totalitarian systems can never last in the long run.
If they use this AI-driven system instead, no one stands in the elites’ way: no one can destroy it from within. They can set rules and regulations and tell the autonomous AI system, the world’s control system, what they want to achieve, and it will be implemented.
From where does this idea that humanity could unite with machines and the financial system actually stem? This too is an old idea and closely linked to transhumanism. Eugenics, with its aim of changing and improving humanity, is part of this. Transhumanism has taken this to a new level by using technology to modify us, integrate us into the system, and digitize us.
This development took place at the beginning of the computer age, especially from the 1990s onward. Like many others, I simply considered it the pipe dreams of a few tech enthusiasts at the time. But now it’s ubiquitous and serves as the foundation of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. These transhumanist ideas found particularly fertile ground at the World Economic Forum.
And in 2019, the United Nations and the WEF entered into this very partnership, enabling the World Economic Forum to support the UN in implementing the 2030 Agenda. This is being achieved using the technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, more precisely, cyber-biological systems. In this process, humans, machines, and the financial system are merging. This is a crucial aspect, as it leads to a complete transformation of the old, dying system. We will, therefore, integrate ourselves into the financial system.
From the WEF to an UN 2.0
In 2020, the member states of the United Nations adopted a resolution calling on Secretary-General Guterres to produce a document addressing the following question: How can we create a better, more effective UN that can respond to crises such as a pandemic?
Negotiations then took place, and eleven strategy papers were published. Parts of these were incorporated and supplemented in Our Common Agenda. This agenda is rather concise and only describes the desired goals. In addition, there were policy briefs that are considerably more comprehensive, discussing all topics in detail and developing concrete proposals for achieving the desired goals.
The member states then met to discuss these recommendations and thus develop a document that would serve as a Pact for the Future. There were therefore three successive phases. All states were required to agree to the UN’s Pact for the Future in advance in order to implement it more efficiently.
In 2024 the pact was agreed upon by all member states and adopted by the United Nations and the member states. Russia has stated that it will not implement all points. They intend to follow the points they consider sensible, particularly the digitalization agenda.
A multipolar system with regions is now being prepared. An organization called the Stimson Center has been significantly involved in drafting the recommendations for the UN Pact on the Future and repeatedly emphasizes this future world order with regions.
The geostrategist Zbigniew Brzezinski co-founded the Trilateral Commission with David Rockefeller and served for a time as Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor. In his book “The Grand Chessboard”, he developed proposals for how the American empire should function. His goal was to prepare for and shape a new world in which the United States would no longer be the dominant force, but rather the UN would assume this role: The world’s regions would cooperate under the umbrella of the United Nations—a modernized, effective organization capable of operating efficiently on a global scale and no longer merely an informal circle.
We only need to look back three decades to see that much has already been achieved – people are very adaptable. Here in Sweden, cash is hardly used anymore. Thirty years ago, everyone paid in cash; card payments were uncommon. The so-called pandemic or even wars serve to change systems without much fanfare because people are thinking about other things.
Wars are also being fought locally, like here in Sweden, in my hometown: We have bombings, shootings, and crime. At the same time, this agenda is being implemented: Surveillance cameras have been permitted in public streets for two years now, and they are now installed everywhere.
Two sides of the same coin.
Trump and the Polycrisis of the Superclass
In this context, what purpose do crises such as Covid-19, the energy and food crisis – the polycrisis – serve? These crises serve as a trigger. Because in 2024 something very important was not achieved with the UN’s Pact for the Future: the creation of a so-called emergency platform. Instead, we now find ourselves in this permanent crisis situation, which shows the world that we are unprepared and unable to solve these problems.
These events were considered necessary to introduce
new political measures and gain public approval.
And also the actions of US President Donald Trump are creating even more problems. This, too, is about gaining approval for the new world system in order to push through the emergency platform and a UN 2.0. The current multi-crisis will ultimately help those who developed these plans for modernizing the United Nations to obtain the necessary approval for their implementation.
I call him “Wreck-It Trump” because he’s razing the old structure to the ground. He’s destroying the existing system. The United Nations isn’t functioning as it should, and he’s paving the way for something new. Trump is the perfect candidate for it. Nothing will be left of the old system.
And when he’s finished and his time is up, they can simply take over with this new system. Everyone will then say: “Finally, reason prevails. A new system that will make the world safer again.” It’s not about reforms. It’s about power.
Who are these few who want to control the lives of billions of people? They belong to the superclass, as David Rothkopf calls them in his book. These are oligarchs who control the global financial world and the economy. They can be found, for example, in the World Economic Forum and in philanthropic organizations. I wrote about one of these families, and I show how the climate protection agenda came about and what lies behind it.
Here in Sweden, a family named Wallenberg is very powerful. Like the Rockefellers, they belong to the Bilderberg Group and the Trilateral Commission. These are extremely influential networks that shaped the old order and now want to gain control of the new one.
They also bring in people from other regions, such as multi-billionaires from India, South Africa, China, and Japan. This elite seems to think they are the chosen ones. Those who have the potential to be successful, to reach the highest positions of power, and to run successful companies consider themselves better than others.
The superclass comprises several thousand individuals worldwide. And among them, of course, there are hierarchies. Some are higher up. But who really knows who’s at the top?
One of the key players driving this agenda is Johan Rockström, who advised Greta Thunberg. Who is this man? Johan Rockström is an agronomist. He was selected by Bert Bolin for a position at the Stockholm Environment Institute. Bolin, in turn, was the first chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and Rockström succeeded him. He is a key figure in climate policy and now heads the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) outside Berlin.
Previously, Rockström headed the Stockholm Resilience Centre. This center was founded with the goal of developing a system for “planetary boundaries”. This explanatory model is crucial for the worldview of the elites and their control system. Rockström and his network of scientists use it to define what we as human beings are even capable of doing on this planet.
He speaks regularly at the World Economic Forum. Furthermore, he is connected to several highly influential networks that advise not only the wealthy and powerful, but also governments worldwide. These include the Climate Governance Commission (CGC), which recommended, even before the 2024 Summit on the Future of Europe, that the UN General Assembly declare a climate emergency because humanity is exceeding planetary boundaries – of which there are nine.
The emergency platform is intended to serve as a means
of implementing the super-class’ plans worldwide.
Rockström belongs to the elite group of scientists who define our limits and determine how many resources we are allowed to use or what we can eat. He is also a member of the organization EAT which advocates for a transformation of the global food system.
This man is very influential, but he’s just one player. Before him, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber headed the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). He advised Angela Merkel, the European Commission, and even the Pope on climate issues. People like Rockström or Schellnhuber work on this topic until they retire, and then there’s a successor. They certainly play an important role in achieving the goals, but the real power brokers are the philanthropists, the super-rich.
What is Sweden’s role when it comes to creating a world government? Sweden acts, in a sense, as a mouthpiece for these influential forces, including the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Bilderberg Group. My home country assumed this role quite early, in the 1950s, and expanded it in the context of climate research and environmental protection.
Sweden hosted the first UN Conference on the Human Environment in 1972, and numerous key players driving this agenda originate from there. However, they are more or less merely proxies for these influential networks. As previously mentioned, the Wallenberg family largely holds the reins in Sweden and controls many large companies; they are very closely connected to the super-class. They have always had influence over the Swedish government—regardless of whether the Social Democrats or the Moderates are in power.
Furthermore, according to futurologist Graham Molitor, innovations are implemented particularly quickly in Sweden. We seem to simply adopt new technologies without questioning them because we are so progressive .
On the other hand, the Green Party in Sweden achieves about six percent of the vote. But that doesn’t matter. Because, if you look more closely at the climate and environmental agenda, you’ll find that it’s not genuine green policy, but rather digital policy. It doesn’t matter whether the country is governed by right or left leaning parties. When it comes to this global agenda, everyone agrees. The Greens are only the activist arm.
I have examined how these environmental organizations are financed and organized by elite networks to popularize these activists and their actions – ultimately, it’s about controlling the entire population, every single individual. That’s why we need these opposition parties and movements.
I also have a history with the Greens; I experienced all of this firsthand. Therefore, it was quite a shock for me when my research revealed that oil barons like the Rockefellers were behind the environmental movement. They were involved in developing precisely the kind of policies that we as Greens supported.
Via Berlin and Kyiv to Technocracy
What purpose does the climate agenda serve, if oil companies exploit this narrative? The Rockefellers and their philanthropists clearly dictate what “we” want to achieve. The climate agenda originated at a meeting with eugenicists in the 1950s. In 1952, John D. Rockefeller III and Detlev Bronk, then head of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), met to discuss a population control plan. This led to the formation of the Population Council. Roger Revelle also attended the same meeting.
In the 1950s, Revelle made global warming a central concern and an important area of research. He also played a crucial role as an advisor to US President Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s. At that time, there was a project called the Special Studies Project with support from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, in turn, was managed by the sons or grandsons of John D. Rockefeller. We have David and John D. III, and Lawrence and Winthrop. These brothers received money from the Standard Oil Corporation – oil money – and considered how they wanted to change the world. They came to the conclusion that science was a good way to transform society, given the scientific collaborations between countries. They themselves had established these collaborations, for example, through the Rockefeller Foundation, by providing funding to universities around the world.
The basic idea was that such problems cannot be solved by any one nation alone. They must be solved, more or less, by an international body. So, on the one hand, we have population control, and on the other hand, the idea of a kind of world authority that has to assume control. The other scientific problems were pandemics and the associated global health problems.
Diseases were recognized as a global lever as early as the 1950s. Everything happens quite openly. Why do so few people engage with this topic? Questioning these things comes at a price. After I uncovered these networks, it was very difficult to keep my job as a university lecturer.
When I defended my doctoral thesis – “Ordo ab Chao: The Political History of Biofuels in the European Union. Actors, Networks and Strategies” – in 2012, my opponent said right at the beginning: “You know, my institution has just received funding from the Rockefeller Foundation.” The chairman of the Club of Rome also tried to prevent my dissertation from being accepted at all.
But what surprised me most was this: I came from the environmental movement myself, but when I tried to warn my fellow activists that these oil companies were involved, some of them got really angry. The more we talked about sustainable development, the more cars and technologies were introduced. Nobody wanted to question that. Universities and environmental organizations alike receive funding from these foundations. In the end, it’s all about the money.
But I continued working as a lecturer after that, first for a few years at Linköping University and then at Stockholm University. But it became increasingly difficult. Because many, especially junior researchers, discovered that I don’t really subscribe to the climate dogma. And that makes you less trustworthy. We don’t want to tolerate such a “climate denier” at “our” institution.
Apparently, it was just one student who googled me and found out I had written a critical paper on climate change; he probably complained to the head of the institute. For me, this was no longer a pleasant working environment.
But after I wrote the book “The Global Coup-Etat” in the first year of the “pandemic” it became unbearable. Mainstream medicine and the Covid-19 mandates could not be criticized. That was morally unacceptable. The fraudulent scheme was more or less evident by March 2020.
In April 2019, I published my book about the Rockefeller family, describing how their plans for the world were to be achieved through the Fourth Industrial Revolution. While researching climate change, I also came across information related to the health sector. So, it was quite easy for me to put these pieces of the puzzle together.
The mainstream media reacted to my publication about the coup by simply considering it extremist at the time. Sweden was, of course, the better place to live during the “pandemic.” But the media stated, “anyone who doubts that is an idiot.” Alternative media outlets reported on my book, which was published in December 2020, and it quickly sold out.
In 2024, the WEF opened the Global Government Technology Center in Berlin. The goal is to build new systems for governance. These will not be controlled by humans, but by an agent AI. Stanley Milgram coined the term “agentic state” – a state in which someone simply follows the wishes and instructions of the authorities.
A white paper from the Global Government Technology Center bears precisely this title: “The Agentic State”. The agentic AI will be the authoritative body, issuing commands and carrying everything out efficiently, and is intended for use in the UN emergency response platform – without humans who could say: “No, I won’t do that.”
Another Global Government Technology Center is located in Kyiv, where these systems can be tested – this is easier to accomplish in a country at war. That’s why many WEF representatives are working with Ukraine.
How should humanity best respond to this technocratic threat? This attempt by the superclass to rebuild the Babylonian Tower will fail. As soon as the last piece of the puzzle is in place, everything will begin to crumble and collapse. Those building this system use lies and every possible manipulation technique to bring people under their total control. And while the truth lags behind, it is catching up. People see through this. The truth will come to light and wash everything away. So they are trying an impossible undertaking.
At the same time, I think such projects are inevitable. There have always been, and always will be, people who strive for power. When this tower collapses, someone will try to rebuild it. But perhaps we have some time in between to better prepare the world for these psychopaths.
