Victor Davis Hanson writes about the latest setbacks for climate alarmists.
For decades, the monolithic and sacrosanct international climate change hierarchy went unquestioned.
Western nations in particular spent trillions of dollars over the past half-century to subsidize expensive but erratic wind and solar energy while demonizing carbon fuels as toxic threats to the planet.
Like Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion dogma, climate change orthodoxy was embedded into every aspect of Western culture, from the corporate boardroom to the university campus.
Question whether man-made global warming was truly responsible for increased temperatures rather than natural, often centuries-long cycles of heating and cooling of the planet, and one was labeled a climate crank.
Everything from declining fertility to forest fires was ridiculously attributed to climate change.
But the causes of both demographic crises and charred landscapes were more likely the result of new affluent lifestyles that saw child-rearing as too expensive and time-consuming, and misguided forest policies or underfunded firefighting.
Yet reality has caught up with the near-religious climate change cult.
One, the left-wing tech billionaires—exemplified by former climate change zealot Bill Gates—have become apostates of the green movement. Now they do not warn of a planet threatened by too much man-made heat but rather by too little man-made kilowattage.
They believe artificial intelligence will prove as transformative as the Industrial Revolution. But to win the AI revolution will require vast increases in electricity production, of up to a staggering 100 gigawatts a year of additional capacity.
Such enormous demand—to build the equivalent of a hundred huge power plants per year—is far beyond the ability of “renewables” alone.
Instead, the only solution is an “all of the above” strategy of building more nuclear, natural gas, clean-coal, wind, and solar generation plants.
Two, ascendant China’s massive arms buildup and its bullying Belt and Road imperialism have finally put international “climate accords” into question.
