RealClear Politics recently posted an article titled “Was Climate Change the Greatest Financial Scam in History?” in which Stephen Moore argues that the trillions of dollars spent on climate action have had no effect in stopping climate change but has slowed development and poverty reduction. Moore is right. Not only has the spending resulted in no change in the rate of warming or reductions in the increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide, but the money was spent in a way that made life worse for people around the globe.
Moore references the climate spending estimate recently calculated by Bjorn Lomborg, which comes out to at least $16 trillion over the past 30 years.
“And for what?” asks Moore, “not a single life has been or will be saved by this shameful and colossal misallocation of human resources.
“The war on safe and abundant fossil fuels has cost countless lives in poor countries and made those countries poorer by blocking affordable energy,” Moore continued.
This is absolutely true.
Fossil fuels are cheaper, more reliable, and more energy dense than renewable energy sources. Mainstream media outlets regularly claim that renewables like wind and solar are cheaper because their “fuel” –the wind and sunlight—are free. That’s true but largely irrelevant. The collection of that energy is not free, not even close. The most commonly referenced metric for the cost of different energy sources is the Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE). However, the LCOE measurement ignores many of the major costs that are unique to intermittent resources like wind and solar. These include special subsidies only they receive via renewables credits, the cost of backing the power up for when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine, massive overbuilding, and transmission costs to remote areas.
As discussed in many Climate Realism posts, including here, here, and here, when the full costs are accounted for, wind and solar are consistently some of the most expensive energy sources. For instance, when full system costs are included, natural gas comes out at $40 per megawatt-hour, while solar, often touted as the least expensive renewable, actually tops the chart at $413 per megawatt-hour. (See graphic below)
Markets and communities did not pick wind and solar, and would not have, were it not for massive incentives, restrictions on historic energy sources, and various state mandates. Subsidies keep the renewables industry afloat in the West. The media, which should know better, claim that fossil fuels receive massive federal subsidies, but the opposite is true. Green energy receives much, much more. (See figure below)
Under president Biden, despite accounting for only 21 percent of domestic electricity production, wind and solar received the largest share of direct and indirect subsidies, approximately 46 percent on their own. As a comparison, nuclear produces 18 percent of U.S. electricity and only receives a measly 1.5 percent of available federal subsidies. Fossil fuels make up about 60 percent of electricity production and receive 13 percent of subsidies, most of which came in the form of business tax deductions that are available to all businesses, not direct payments.
Poorer nations have been prevented from developing their own resources and electrical grids in the name of climate, in part due to private banks following the lead of government-backed international development banks and refusing to finance projects that are deemed “dirty” or those that have a carbon footprint.
And yet, as Moore points out, “the temperature of the planet has not been altered by one-tenth of a degree.”
Correct, and what’s more, carbon dioxide has not slowed in increasing its concentration in the atmosphere. (See figure below)
Moore correctly points out that the trillions of dollars spent could have been better used elsewhere, like in aiding those aforementioned developing nations with real energy investment and infrastructure plans to help further harden against natural weather disasters. There is indeed a massive opportunity cost involved, and the cost is now truly sunk.
If more of the mainstream media had been willing to ask the right questions and lean in on realism instead of green washing, trillions could have been saved from this financial scam. RealClear Politics does a great service by publishing harsh but honest articles like Moore’s; other outlets should do the same.
From the article: “Fossil fuels make up about 60 percent of electricity production and receive 13 percent of subsidies, most of which came in the form of business tax deductions that are available to all businesses, not direct payments.”
So, the fossil fuel industry is not receiving taxpayer subsidies.
Getting a subsidy means the government pays you money.
Getting a tax break means you pay the government less money than you would without the tax break.
Do you see the difference?
Yes, and it’s meaningless quibble. The government decides how much money to rake in first, then decides who to rake over the coals to get it. Tax breaks are just another form of shifting the tax burden to others — raise other people’s taxes to decrease taxes for the favored.
If you could show that tax breaks actually reduce overall taxes, you’d have a good argument. But that never happens.
No, it is not a meaningless quibble.
Subsidies and grants are basically bribes to make you do something you wouldn’t if it required all your own money.
Yes, and subsides and grants are paid for by other taxpayers. The government gets what it wants and fools suckers like you into thinking you made out.
At least Warren Buffet is honest about it. (Paraphrasing) “The only reason it makes sense to build wind farms is to get the government tax credits that can be used to reduce taxable income at OTHER Berkshire businesses.”
You need to go take some economics classes.
Your “tax breaks” are deductions for expenses. Things like labor, depreciation, reserve depletions. Kinda like you get to deduct property taxes medical, loan interest, and losses.
Do you want to give those up too?
The government “gives” tax breaks by taxing others more. It’s a zero sum game, and the government always wins.
You have no idea what you’re talking about. Zero sum game? Get a clue.
All that needs to happen now is to bring on Charles Mackay’ s observation at warp speed –
“Men, it will be well seen, go mad in crowds … and come to their senses slowly one at a time”
(we here are all exempted of course, we all saw through AL Gore’s bullshit from the get-go)
Think of those trillions as welfare for the incompetent who would otherwise be in insane asylums needing expensive psychiatric treatment, or housed in expensive homeless shelters, or locked up in prisons costing $40K/year.
Incompetent is the last thing that comes to mind. Unethical, corrupt, grifters, scammers, a bunch of names immediately comes to mind, but not incompetent. They achieved what they set out to do.
Yes. Line their own pockets based on a narrative built on a mountain of lies, deceit, deception, corruption, etc.
Given what we now know from people like Desiree Fixler and from the Epstein Files, is there not enough evidence for an International RICO case?
It is not just the money wasted – it is what economists call “opportunity cost” – all that money could have been spent on building roads, schools, hospitals etc.
… and safe, clean, reliable nuclear power plants.
…and wells, and water distribution systems. Hundreds of millions of people have no ready access to clean, safe to drink, water.
I worry about the slightly-smarter-than-average non-geniuses who got into good schools and invested in climate-related degrees. Life is going to get really difficult for the ones who don’t have trust funds. Only so many of them can pivot before obvious paths like selling life insurance and investment funds at a strip mall become saturated.
I didn’t read this comment before writing my own. Opps!
Even Bill Gates agrees (now that the other well, the one once filled with NetZero subsidies, has just about dried up)! Wait, I’m not sure that makes me feel better.
The UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and partners have recently launched an initiative to develop a full system approach to guide investment in energy.
“Traditional cost metrics, such as LCOE, widely used around the world to assess investment opportunities in different energy options, provide a baseline for technology comparison but overlook critical system-wide elements such as grid upgrades, balancing costs for renewables, flexibility needs, eg storage, demand response, essential reliability services (reactive power, frequency response), back up capacity and externalities like unserved energy costs and environmental and climate impacts. This leads to suboptimal investment, increased planning risk and overreliance on intermittent sources without adequate firm capacity.”
https://unece.org/climate-change/press/unece-and-partners-launch-initiative-develop-full-system-cost-approach-guide
The UN?
Be still my racing heart.
But the author and most responders continue to miss the most important difference, lifecycle. CCGT and SMR last 60 – 75years vs wind at 20 years and solar at 25 years. That alone triples capital requirements and destroys the business model.
Intermittency alone also destroys the business model. So there never was a “business model,” only an opportunistic grift based on government interference.
Of course, they did need to preach the faith about the imaginary “externality” of “climate.” 🙄
I have been thinking about the argument that wind and solar are “Free” while fossil fuels are not. I think this is wrong. Just like wind and solar are “free” as the wind blows and the light beams down, so are gas and oil sitting in the ground. The “cost” of the fossil fuels is directly related to the costs associated with finding, extracting, refining and transporting the material to where it is used, just like the costs associated with solar and wind relate to finding good places, extracting the energy and turning it into usable energy and transporting it to where it is used. Conceptually there is no difference. Thus, in the same way that solar and wind are “free” so are oil and gas. What do you think of that argument?
You are not the first and, hopefully, not the last.
In the abstract its correct. They are philosophically the same. However its not correct if you are trying to assess a given solar or wind project and compare it to a coal fired project.
The reason is that NPV analysis is the only correct method, and what that uses is cash flow. When a project uses wind or sun for fuel, that does not lead to any cash out. But when it uses coal, there is cash out, to buy the coal.
Read Brealey & Myers, Corporate Finance, for a detailed explanation with examples.
The problem with wind and solar is that if you do NPV analysis of the total costs of supplying dispatchable power to the point of use by wind, solar or conventional, conventional wins every time.
The fact that, some of the time, there is no cash out for fuel does not change that. Nick keeps claiming that it does, but he has never posted or linked to any analysis.
The fact that fuel (and an entirely separate generation apparatus making wind and solar redundant) is required at all times for backup and frequency modulation means the argument that there is no “cash out” is false, it (like every attempt to justify any part of wind and solar) ignores Intermittency AND ignores the poor quality of the power they produce.
That is why I said ‘some of the time’, and that is why the analysis has to be for producing ‘dispatchable power to the point of use’. The cash flows have to be for the total system including whatever it takes to make it dispatchable and transmitted, and in addition, the power counted as produced has to be when there is demand for it. Failure to do which is one of the problems with levelized cost as a comparison parameter.
When you do this right it ends up trying to make a case for adding wind and/or solar to an existing gas or coal system. Its not backup, as its usually called. I have never seen such a case.
Under the doctrine of “First, do no harm”, remember that the true best use of “all that money” would be to leave it in the hands of those who earned it. Always.
¡Blasfemia! ¡Llama al inquisidor!
Their five main weapons are fear, and surprise, surprise, and fear. And ruthless efficiency.
Cuidado! Llamas!
Fish are also “free”, it’s catching them and transporting them to the people who might want to eat them that’s expensive.
Think of how many lives could have been saved by spending that money on clean water and sanitation for worlds poor.
(30,000,000 – 1,000,000 a year die for a lack of clean water)
That’s only important if your goal is, in fact, to provide clean water and sanitation to the world’s poor. I think at least as far back as the progressive implementation of Eugenics the ultimate goal has been to get rid of the world’s poor.
Actually it is to increase the numbers of poor and to cause greater numbers of that growing number of poor to die.
One of the main reasons those people are poor and have no ready access to water is because of trainwreck, kleptocratic leadership.
“The collection of that energy is not free, not even close.”
I like to tell people that my gasoline powered pickup is also “solar powered” and that the energy that it runs on was also “free”. Like the energy collected by solar panels, it too came from the sun, albeit millions of years ago. What I actually pay for at the pump is for someone to find the oil, pump it out of the ground, the infrastructure to process it and then transport it to me when and where I need it.
Most people fundamentally misunderstand energy and the costs of delivering it to consumers in a useful and reliable form. That would include most of our policy leaders.
“Moore correctly points out that the trillions of dollars spent could have been better used elsewhere, …”
This is a concept covered in Econ 101.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost
Was Climate Change the Greatest Financial Scam in History?
It seems so for now, but that’s just for now. Why am I saying this? Look at Global Environment Outlook 7 (GEO-7), the UN’s flagship report on the global environment that was released in December 2025. Led by Sir Robert Watson, a well-known person to WUWT readers, this assessment report aggressively promotes the leftist global agenda, stating literally that “Transformation of the economic and financial systems would include delivering the estimated US$6-7 trillion per year of investment needed to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions globally by 2050”. This US$16 trillion, Lomborg has estimated, seems peanuts as compared to… No wonder that the US delegation did not endorse the GEO-7 Summary for Policy Makers in October 2025. It would have been anything but shame if they did. Enough is enough.
Interesting discussion on the Australian AEMO pricing problems because of “renewables”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUEEFlL_sxc
Bit of political nonsense at the start, then Topher’s payment advert… but after that a great explanation from the guy on the right.
Oh , someone doesn’t want to know how batteries and wind solar distort the electricity price. OK !!
Very nice Linnea.
Slightly off topic but I have yet to read anything about the huge amount of corn devoted to ethanol, which now is not necessary.
This is no small amount.
Those who wish to run for President don’t dare criticize the ethanol subsides, because they want to do well in the first test of any Presidential election- the Iowa Caucuses.
I maintain that consumers were suspicious about the climate change rhetoric from the outset, particularly when they didn’t notice anything extraordinary with their weather over a period of several years at a time. There were just the normal fluctuations, like the stock market. Except when they noticed their living costs rising regardless of the lack of any big climate changes, their suspicions were confirmed, a confirmation that went even further when they saw charts showing how the billions spent on green initiatives and COP conferences did nothing to reduce global emissions. So now that any hopes of the green scammers have been dashed, maybe the money can be used to promote things that actually have a hope of succeeding.
“If more of the mainstream media had been willing to ask the right questions and lean in on realism instead of green washing, trillions could have been saved from this financial scam. “
Many of them are Marxists, so what they do is by design. There was never a chance they would ask the right questions.