Climate Cult’s Dissolution

The climate agenda’s fall from grace this past year has been stunning, in speed, scale and scope. ⁽¹⁾

The house of cards built on computer and manipulated emotions is collapsing under the weight of a stubborn, inconvenient reality. The ‘climate emergency’ exists only in the frantic press releases of a movement that knows its time is up. ⁽²⁾

Driving the news: President Trump announced that he’s withdrawing from the world’s flagship climate treaty that’s been in place for more than 30 years, making the US the only country not to be part of it.

The last year has seen an epic reversal that spread quickly from governments to boardrooms to pop culture. ⁽¹⁾

• Trump has aggressively and comprehensively dismissed climate change as a problem.
• Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney, once one of the world’s most vocal climate advocates, is now repealing his country’s climate policies.
• Bill Gates circulated a memo criticizing the climate movement while shifting much of his money and focus back to public health, just four years after publishing “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.”
• Ford pulled back sharply from its EV ambitions, becoming a case study in the risks of betting on whipsawing government policies.
• Outside of North America, former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair also issued a memo questioning the political and economic wisdom of pursuing net zero policies as designed.
• Europe scaled back its gasoline car ban and softened climate disclosure rules, a retreat the New York Times captured with a telling headline: “Europe Begins to Tiptoe Away From Key Climate Policies.”
• The International Energy Agency quietly restored a more conservative base energy scenario that it had dropped in 2020.
• Global venture capital investments in climate and clean tech deals have dropped nearly 50% since their high of 2021. ⁽¹⁾

For decades, activists have anchored their case in dramatic warnings about species extinction, melting ice caps and the end of polar life, failing ecosystems and vanishing biodiversity. ⁽²⁾

Yet, some of the world’s largest nations have actually expended their forest area significantly, even as alarmists predicted ecological disaster. Between 2015 and 2025, China added approximately 4 million acres of forest. In the same period, Russia gained more than 2 million acres and India gained nearly a half million. The list goes on. Turkey added almost 300,000 acres. Australia, France, South Africa, and Canada all posted significant increases.

Perhaps the starkest example of failing predictions is the so-called extinction of species. For 20 years, images of healthy polar bears on melting summer ice were used to manipulate emotions. Yet, reports from 2025 show that bear populations are stable and even booming compared to the 1950s. Bears have not declined in numbers over the past 10 to 15 years, and populations demonstrate resilience even as summer sea ice oscillates. ⁽²⁾

A 2025 landmark study of data from nearly 2 million species found that extinction rates have not accelerated. Instead, they peaked over a century ago and have been in decline since the early 1900s. The great die-off turned out to be a phantom. The study reveals that past extinctions were largely driven by invasive species on isolated islands, not by the ‘climate crisis’ or the effects of modern- civilization. ⁽³⁾

Global agricultural performance demolishes another cornerstone of environmental pessimism. Famine failed to materialize as farmers across the globe brought in record harvests. Crop yields have increased substantially, enabling farms to feed more people while using less land. ⁽⁴⁾

Satellite data from the last four decades confirm a significant increase in vegetation over as much as half the globe. During this period, atmospheric CO2 increased from about 350 parts per million (ppm) to more than 400 ppm, mostly from burning of fossil fuel. It is a gift arriving on cue to meet a continuous increase in population and demand for food. ⁽⁵⁾

The Washington Post published an article titled, “The real reason billion-dollar disasters like Hurricane Helene are growing more common” which accurately explained that billion-dollar disasters are not getting more common because storms are getting more extreme or common, but rather that economic and population trends have changed. Almost universally, data show that storms like hurricanes and tornadoes are not becoming more frequent or extreme. Nor are instances of flooding or periods of drought. Over time, migration to hazard-prone areas has increased, putting more people and property in harm’s way. ⁽⁶⁾

Why does this matter? Because it proves that the core premise of the anti-fossil fuel movement is false. Industrial society is not destroying earth. The data show the opposite. As nations get richer and more industrialized, they gain the capacity to protect ecosystems, expand forests and sustain more people.

Voters across the world are waking up. Recent elections in Europe and the Americas have ushered in new governments that are openly hostile to the net zero agenda. They were elected on mandates to restore energy sanity, lower prices, and reject the shackles of globalist climate treaties. ⁽²⁾

Europe’s Shell and Aker BP and Canada’s Enbridge have withdrawn from the Science Based Targets Initiative to establish ‘science-based emissions reductions.’ This was a retreat from what is described as a credible, science-based net zero framework because there was neither credibility nor science. It was a political suicide pact. The energy giants looked at the cliff’s edge and refused to jump.

British multinational BP, having abandoned its promise to go ‘Beyond Petroleum’ has raised its oil and gas spending and softened its renewable targets. ⁽⁷⁾

Organizations associated with climate alarmism have recently found themselves engulfed in turmoil. Bill Gates has recanted earlier predictions of gloom and doom. But the Father of Climate Panic, Al Gore, remains steadfast, if increasingly marginalized. ⁽⁸⁾

The Sierra Club has morphed into a catch-all for a myriad of social causes, and by 2022 had exhausted its finances and splintered its coalition. By August 2025, the number of Sierra club ‘champions’, a group that included dues paying members as well as supporters who had donated, signed petitions or participated in events, was down about 60 percent from its high in 2019.

Also falling on hard times is 350.org, which first gained notoriety for its successful efforts to block the Keystone XL oil pipeline during the Obama administration. At present, this group has temporarily suspended programming in the US and other countries amid funding woes. ⁽⁸⁾

Final Words

The signs are all around us. The climate cult is losing its grip on our politics and culture. The UN’s climate conference COP30 in Brazil, was a flop that even alarmist cheerleaders in the legacy media could not ignore. A major paper justifying radical climate action was just retracted

Published by the International Energy Agency (IEA), the “World Energy Outlook 2025” reads like an obituary for the fantasy of global decarbonization, acknowledging the undeniable truth that nations prioritizing prosperity must unapologetically embrace coal, oil, and natural gas. The IEA concedes that demand for oil and natural gas will continue to grow well beyond 2035 and may not peak until 2050. ⁽¹⁰⁾

References

1.Amy Harder, “The world’s great climate collapse,” axios.com, January 13, 2026

2.Vijay Jayaraj, “Climate alarmism’s credibility sinks under weight of ecological evidence,” wattsupwiththat.com, January 13, 2026

3.Daniel Stolte, “Extinction rates have slowed across many plant and animal groups, study shows,”, news.arizona.edu, October 22, 2025

4.Hannah Ritchie et al, “Crop yields,” ourworldindata.org, accessed January14, 2026

5.Vijay Jayaraj, “The Christmas gift that grinches can’t abide,” cornwallalliance.org, December 11, 2025

6.Linnea Lueken, “Washington Post concedes climate change not making disaster worse,” principia-scientific.com, November 1, 2024

7.Vijay Jayaraj, “Energy transition meltdown could mean global bifurcation,” cornwallalliance.org, January 5, 2026

8.Gary Abernathy, “Climate groups falter, Bill Gates recalibrates, but Al Gore soldiers on,” realclearenergy.org, December 5, 2025

9.Charles Rotter, “Live at 1 pm ET: good news: climate cult in decline—the climate realism show #184,” wattsupwiththat.com, December 5, 2025

10.Vijay Jayaraj, “IEA publishes climate change era’s obituary,” americanthinker.com, November 25, 2025

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