By Robert Bradley Jr.
“Climate policy is decidedly unfashionable in 2025 — among Democrats…. Climate is out, affordability is in.” – Debra Kahn, Politico (below)
Debra Kahn, “editor of POLITICO’s California Climate newsletter and author of Currents, a reported column on the conversations, conflicts and characters animating the energy, environment and climate debates,” corrected the eco-narrative recently. While the climate campaigners are busy trying to sell politically correct renewables (wind and solar) as cheaper, she uncorked a Truth Bomb.
In “What Trump’s Victory Taught Democrats About Climate Change,” Politico Magazine (October 16, 2025), she wrote:
The party isn’t embracing climate change denialism like many in the GOP, nor is it endorsing the Trump administration’s attacks on clean energy. But as Democrats continue groping for a way forward after their 2024 defeat, they’ve clearly decided they need to change how they talk about climate and energy issues. And in some cases, it goes beyond rhetoric to the actual policies they’re promoting. The bottom line for Democrats: Climate is out, affordability is in.
Ouch! To begin with, she notes, climate change is not a major concern of voters.
“It’s an issue that I think we need to continue to engage on and speak out on and work to legislate on, but it’s not a top three issue right now,” Sen. Chris Coons, the Democratic co-chair of the Senate’s bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus, told me….
It’s a muddled message.
“Sometimes our messaging in the Democratic Party — not great,” Sherrill said in a March interview. “For years we’ve said, ‘We need to move into clean power.’ And there’s almost been this understanding, ‘It’s going to cost you an arm and a leg, but if you’re a good person, you’ll do it.’ So now that we’re actually in that place that we promised — it was going to be cheaper than any other source of power — people are skeptical.”
The climate message is also diluted.
David Hill, executive vice president of the energy program at the Bipartisan Policy Center, noted that when electricity supplies were ample, there was less of a need to focus on reliability and affordability when talking climate. Now, those are the public’s key concerns and so climate advocates are facing “some pretty severe pushback,” even as there’s only so much they can do.
Climate alarm and government enablement of inferior energies are losing—coming and going. The narrative is busted, too. The climate complex is in a messaging crisis. Gilad Regev has stated:
Maybe the problem isn’t climate denial. Maybe it’s climate messaging. We’ve been attempting to scare or shame people into caring, and it’s not effective. Is it time to completely rethink how we talk about climate and sustainability? We’ve spent years trying to influence people through fear, data, and moral urgency. The results? Mixed.
I have elsewhere suggested a new message:
Sum the arguments and … it is time for free market energy policies to replace crony capitalism and the termite aspirations of the Climate Industrial Complex. To all climate alarmists and forced energy transformationists, check your premises for mid-course correction. Climate anxiety not.
_____________________________________________________________________
In other words:
“We’ve spent years telling lies.”
Are you scared? Are you Scared?? “Well you should be, you’re Scare Tactics!!!”
And should read “through fear, data MANIPULATION and FAKE moral urgency.”
In the ficton where LCOE is an accurate description of power costs, wind and solar are indeed the cheapest alternative. And Moore’s Law applies to all technology, not just microchips. Greenhouse gasses are the only significant influence on climate.
And that stripper really loves you.
LCOE stands for Levelized Cost of Energy,
Yes, a cost calculated on incorrect assumptions. Like that the different sources have the same usefulness and value of their output.
Should be Lysenkoist Con on Energy
It was used in the UK in the 1960s when generation was coal, oil, gas and nuclear.
A levelised cost comparison could easily be made because the considerations for each were the same, and they were all independent, continuous output and dispatchable: cost of construction, service life, total lifetime output, operating costs. This would give a cost per MWh for each.
It actually was used to determine which was least cost to provide additional supply, not one to replace another.
Wind and solar cannot be compared with fossil fuel or nuclear generation as they do not have identical characteristics, and are reliant on external support (and cost) to provide back-up and subsidy because of intermittency, They also need additional grid infrastructure to bring them on-line.
If they had been looking at the polls for the last couple of decades, despite the lack of polling credibility, they would have seen CC at the bottom of the list … again and again. Everyone wants to save the world until it hits their pocketbook.
Just goes to prove that ‘climate change’ was never anything but a weapon to be wielded by the Left in its quest to obtain political domination. It will still have a place in their arsenal along with race, gender, etc., but as the article says, they have a new toy called ‘affordability’, which I presume just means a vastly expanded welfare state in which costs will be hidden until the socialist trap is finally sprung.
a former head of the UNIPCC stated that the real goal of the climate movement is the destruction of capitalism – all just a bunch of communists trying to obtain world domination – just wait till they find out that CO2 doesn’t have any impact on the climate and in fact more of it is good for the earth and its inhabitants
The purpose of the IPCC is to provide the UN a justification for the distribution of donor funds, via the UNFCCC and the UN COP, from the rich countries to the poor countries to help them cope with the alleged harmful effects from the use fossil fuels such as global warming and climate change. At COP29 in Baku, the poor countries came clamoring not for billions but trillions of funds. They left the conference empty handed with no pledges of funds from the rich countries.
The real purpose is for the UN to establish an independent world wide taxing authority so that they have a revenue stream that is not accountable to anyone. Witnessing the recent attempt to levy fees on international shipping.
And for making lots of money.
Yes, probably one of the disadvantages of using climate change as a weapon is that it involves throwing ‘lots of money’ at some of the useful idiots to obtain their assistance. Fortunately for the Left, most of it was our money, not theirs. Sort of what Lenin said about buying rope from the capitalists, etc.
Mr. Rip Van Winkle… I must regretfully inform you that it’s not 1930s. Or even 1960s.
Whoa, Nellie. There’s some epic back-pedaling going in. Hook that up to a generator, and then you’ve got some bona fide “green” energy!
Evan AI got the image somewhat correct. Gas Stations have large overhangs so people can refuel in the pouring rains and still remain somewhat dry (provided the rains aren’t wind blown) while most all, if not all, recharging areas aren’t covered placing the EV owners at weather’s beck and call while they plug in
Gas station overhangs as protection from the elements make sense given that it only takes a few minutes to re-fuel, and that the fine print on the pump prohibits the ‘operator’ from leaving the scene, as well as from exiting or entering the vehicle, while fuel is being ‘dispensed’. Needless to say, given the significantly longer time required to charge an EV, it’s highly likely that the ‘operator’ will feel the need to bugger-off somewhere so as not to waste a significant portions of his/her day.
Perhaps they should buy Gas/Diesel powered instead!
Ah, water and electricity-right up there with my favorite things…NOT!
Paraphrasing a movie line…”Water and electricity, NOT GOOD BEDFELLOWS.”
It is also wise to not get any rainwater in your tank while refuelling, especially with diesels.
Well when delusion hits the leftards…or in other words: when they themselves have to foot the bill for the shit they voted for… karma, justice, sarcasm??? 🤪
They will dodge like nobody’s business , then blame everybody else.
She wrote: The party isn’t embracing climate change denialism
That was quite enough for me.
There is certainly no denialism on my part, I simply refuse to believe a narrative that has been spun from utterly meaningless models. Constructs for a political purpose and end. The climate changes. Duh. Man is at best a very minor bit-part player – one could argue that ‘non-denialists’ aka believers have gross delusions of grandeur, lashings of arrogance, and hubris in great abundance.
Raquel… call my therapist, would you….
And after decades of wasted effort and trillions of dollars you would think they’d have noticed that it’s all made no measurable difference in the climate by now.
Kinda like this? 🤪😅😅
There is no bad idea that you couldn’t get up and running or?
“The bottom line for Democrats: Climate is out, affordability is in.”
Nope- that’s just preparing for the next election. They don’t believe that but they know they’re out if they keep whining about the climate.
Actions speak louder than words. Their actions say they are still fully committed to the Net Zero fantasy regardless of how much it costs or how much damage it does to the power grid and to the rural landscape.
And they will continue to us LCOE to prove that renewables are affordable – the heck with my electric bills.
No, that’s simply «Benford’s Law is out».
Yet again, the climate change advocates belief that their lack of total success is owing to poor messaging. Nope. We get the message, and it smells like rubbish.
Rubbish is not quite the word I would use….
Rubbish is quite valuable. I live in Burnaby, BC and the local incinerator burn 250,000 tons of rubbish every year and generates electricity for the local grid.
Slightly OT.
The National Weather Service was predicting rain for this past Wednesday in Southern California, as reported on the weather forecast on the radio. It was a bit cloudy in the morning, but sunny by noon. (Yet another great forecast.) Later in the day, the weather forecaster explained the unfulfilled prediction by stating that the front had gone to the North of us. He stated that “weather fronts don’t pay attention to the computer programs”. ! Finally, an MSM outlet that just may be realizing waht a farce this all is.
“waht” is typo and should be “what”. If you spot a typo or want add more info to your comment after posting it, move the mouse pointer to the right hand corner of the comment box. There will appear a small gear wheel. Click on it and the instruction “Mange Comment” appears. Click on it and the instruction “Edit” appears. Click on it and you comment is displayed in gray text. After making corrections to the comment, click on “Save”
You have a five minute window for making corrections after posting a comment.
They always seem to think the rejection of their lunacy is about “messaging” or “communication.”
NO.
Their stupid ideas, including that a warmer climate compared to the Little Ice Age is a “crisis,” AND that it is driven by humanity’s pittance of CO2 emissions, AND their non-solutions to the imaginary “problem” that wouldn’t do a damn thing about it EVEN IF IT WAS REAL, are being rejected BECAUSE THEY ARE IDIOTIC.
May they lose every election from now until they COMPLETELY ABANDON their moronic climate crusade.
Until someone in authority says staight out that science has proved conclusively that CO2 has lttle or no effect on temperature or climate and that is reported on all worldwide MSM outlets we are going to get lots of papers like this which will be ignored by MSM and therefor most of the general population.
I just became a Climate Denier.
Climate is an abstract concept based on human’s perception and thinking on the average weather. The average weather on the planet cannot even be measured accurately. It is not a thing that exists in reality on the planet.
Weather exists and it is whatever it is at the present time. Yesterday’s and tomorrow’s weather do not exist at this time.
You aren’t a Climate Denier, you are a Climate Realist.
You should go to Wikipedia a read about the Köppen Climate Classification System. Wladimer Köppen (1846-1940) and his colleague Rudolf Geiger
(1894-1981) were meteorologist and the original climate scientists.
The old use of the word Climate was seen in relation to the location of an area. So you’d have a ‘sea climate’ and a ‘land climate’, meaning it influenced the weather on a local level. THE climate is a very loose word meaning the rough differences in temperature, precipitation etc mostly spanning thousands/ millions of years. Nowadays it is used as a period of minimum 30-60 years and the measured changes with ‘measured’ to a large degree supplanted by models. Personally i think THE Climate should be seen in the old way. But money talks (or better said: swears).
You know we’ve reached peak propaganda when the Catholic Pope blesses a chunk of ice in the name of climate change. It’s all downhill now for the propaganda. Thankfully.
One charity-registered religion colluding with / promoting another charity-registered religion?
Where are the official corporate practices authorities when they’re needed?
Blessing ice (not meant for a drink), reminds me of Fonzie (1977 Happy Days episode) jumping over a shark. See the Wiki entry for the idiom “jumping the shark“.
Was Harris the consultant and writer for these muddled comments by Sherrill?
It would be far more direct and truthful to just say due diligence has been banned.
Poor Climate Caterwaulers! They just can’t accept that they’ve lost. They are in denial about it. COP30 will be their Last Hurrah. They need to understand that you can only get away with lying for so long. Truth always wins out, eventually.
Yet another win. These guys will continue to struggle and rightly so. They lied to us about CO2, it can’t cause CAGW. They lied to us about wind and solar, they are expensive and can’t sustain the grid or a modern society. They lied to us saying we are climate change deniers, we are CAGW deniers. We know better than most that the climate always changes. They lied to us about accelerating sea level rise. They lied to us about stronger more frequent severe weather. They lied to us about record breaking heat waves. They used crappy weather stations and even stations that don’t exist to try and frighten us into compliance. I am happy to see them backtracking but there is no reason to lie to us while they are doing it. We have already seen how useless lying is in the end.
As George noted on Seinfeld it’s not a lie if you believe it’s true. Conceit and stupidity has taken the enemies of reason most of the rest of the way.
Ah yes… the fault of the message, not its content which nobody believes anymore.
It is the current obsession of the Left to explain why populations everywhere are moving to the Right, our policies are great, we just aren’t explaining them correctly.
Cultural, social, economic self-ruination is a tough sell, it has to be admitted, needing careful messaging.