Essay by Eric Worrall
“… climate deniers have been privately celebrating what they claim is the “silent” acquiescence of billionaires, Democrats, climate activists and even reporters …”
Trump has launched an unprecedented assault on the environment. Where’s the pushback?
Rei Takver
Thu 5 Mar 2026 03.56 AEDTLast modified on Thu 5 Mar 2026 13.35 AEDTClimate deniers expected more resistance to the fossil fuel blitz. But Democrats, billionaires and activists have gone silent
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As Donald Trump assaults the legal foundation of America’s ability to regulate global warming emissions, climate deniers have been privately celebrating what they claim is the “silent” acquiescence of billionaires, Democrats, climate activists and even reporters to the president’s aggressive pro-fossil-fuel agenda.
“In my 26 years of being focused on climate, I’ve never seen anything like this. Trump is gutting everything they ever stood for,” Marc Morano, a longtime climate denier, said in January at the World Prosperity Forum, a five-day event in Zurich, Switzerland, billed as a rightwing alternative to the World Economic Forum in Davos.
“Billionaires are silent. Democrats in Congress have been silent. Climate activists. There has been no pushback on this,” Morano said – and he may have a point, according to some experts who research the climate denial movement.
“The Trump administration just marched in and destroyed the crown jewel of climate science in the United States,” Robert Brulle, a professor of environment and society at Brown University, told me, referring to the Trump administration’s dismantling of the country’s premier climate research center, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, in December.
“And nothing happened. There wasn’t even a whimper. I never thought I’d ever say this: Marc Morano is correct.”
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Microsoft and Amazon, which had donated large sums to Trump’s inauguration fund, have both recently embraced fossil-fuel powered AI data centers alongside Trump energy officials and fossil fuel industry players.
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Why? “In today’s deeply polarizing US political stance, climate discussion has come to feel so radioactive that many leaders would rather avoid it,” Anjali Chaudhry, a business sustainability researcher at Dominican University, wrote in Forbes.
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For Brulle, the environmental sociologist, addressing the growing hush around climate must go beyond talking.
“I think the climate movement in the United States has failed. It has flat failed, and that means we need to rebuild this movement in a completely different manner,” he said.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/04/trump-climate-change-democrats
The reason is obvious. The climate crisis was never real, it was just a means to an end. Climate activists have long accused skeptics of being payed shills of the fossil fuel industry, but the reality is it was always the climate activists who were the useful idiots.
The climate crisis was only supported by politicians so long as it could frighten moderate conservatives into supporting liberals. Now that only the most committed leftists still take climate warnings seriously, the fake climate crisis has outlived its political usefulness.
The AI revolution delivered the finishing blow to a narrative which was already on the way out. But it also offered a new opportunity to those whose campaign style exploits fear of the unknown.
Not only did the AI revolution force big tech to reverse course and support President Trump’s “Drill baby drill” energy abundance agenda, it also created a new fake crisis with greater bipartisan appeal than the failed climate crisis narrative.
The smarter Democrats are already seizing the opportunity. Bernie Sanders has jumped ship onto the new fake AI crisis.
‘Slow this thing down’: Sanders warns US has no clue about speed and scale of coming AI revolution
After meeting with unspecified tech leaders, senator calls for urgent policy action as companies race to build ever more powerful systems
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/21/ai-revolution-bernie-sanders-warning
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer is also jumping on the anti-AI bandwagon.
Americans Hate AI. Which Party Will Benefit?
Party insiders are divided on how to channel Americans’ growing fear of AI.
It’s become a common occurrence: Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer posts a light-hearted video on social media. She’s Christmas shopping, or she’s talking about her Michigan accent or she’s touting her administration’s accomplishments. And immediately, the comments start rolling in, all demanding the same thing: Say no to data centers in the state. Stop construction. “All I want for Christmas is legislation banning data centers in Michigan.”
National figures in the party are beginning to notice the anger. What began on the ground with widespread protests against the facilities that provide infrastructure for the growth of artificial intelligence is finding its way into new plans, memos and rhetoric as the Democratic Party thinks about how to win in 2026 and 2028.
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Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/12/28/ai-job-losses-populism-democrats-bernie-sanders-00706680
My prediction – if Governor Whitmer gathers enough momentum for her anti-data center crusade, she will be the surprise 2028 Democratic Presidential nominee.
Expect to see a lot more AI scare tactics in coming months and years, as Democrat politicians and former climate activists reposition themselves to align with bipartisan concerns about AI, and try to convince voters they are the defenders of the people against the rising AI menace.
I will suggest that most greens never had any real concern for the environment or climate change, but were using that as a tool to
advance their leftism.
Environmentalism and conservationism are not the same thing. The latter is a real concern for the environment, while the former is fashion and frenzy, requiring little in the way of knowledge or even thinking at all. That is why it is a useful tool for the elite social engineers.
The word “environmentalist” is interesting. If you look at old dictionaries, and see the word used in news reporting, academic writing and so forth, you can see that it has had two complete changes of meaning in the last century.
Environmentalist (pre 1950) was someone who believed environment was more important than genetics in shaping personality. It was those who believed in nurture over nature. 1a. Prior to 1950 or so, people who did research about soil, water quality etc were called “conservationists.”
Environmentalist (1960) was an environmental scientist.Environmentalist (modern) is an “advocate” for the environment regardless of any scientific or economic knowledge or lack thereof.
Interesting indeed.
I can’t find that article from a few years back anymore, it detailed how environmental NGOs suffered from climate alarmism.
Instead of local questions some weakly defined global problem was addressed with money the was thin to start with and could only be spent once.
There are various political persuasions who believe in government control over every aspect of human activities…”leftism” is not defined specifically enough. You could just as easily have a “rightist” bureaucracy who legislates control over nearly every aspect of your life. Those who have such a government control belief will tell any story they can in order to be elected….so that they can then do what they believe to be best….or afford their dachau…you can’t tell for sure till you see if they build a dachau for themselves.
Wanting government to control everything, is pretty much the definition of the left, while rightists, for the most part want government to leave them alone.
There are dictators that would disagree with you, and dictators that declare themselves socialist or whatever. I do tend to agree with you “for the most part”, and was trying to point out that….politicians lie to get elected simply for the aphrodisiac of power and privilege.
Then they will send your kids off in uniform to be killed somewhere or have you greatly inconvenienced you for dissenting like the Canadian truckers bank accounts, and have zero remorse about it.
Justin Trudeau’s political and legal persecution of the leaders of the Truckers’ Strike was indeed heinous. This was to be expected: Justatwit long ago betrayed the fact that he was stupid and a coward. Justatwit accounts for much of the reason for the dispute between Canada and the Trump administration.
Just because socialists declare that everyone they don’t like is a “rightist”, doesn’t make them a rightist.
We had a few US government officials (Congressmen, I believe) who stated without reservation that they knew how to spend our money better than we did.
It’s important to tax rich people a lot so that the money isn’t in their bank account….cuz the bankers would try to lend that money out to someone with a sound business plan….whereas politicians could use that same money for dream projects that make everyone’s lives ost excellent…. and who needs sound business plans anyway ?
/s
I would like to hear some of the leftist climate crowd demand adjustments to green energy nameplates from the current basis to actual production rates. Division by ten would bring solar PV much closer to reality. This is based on over 10 years of data from my 3.125 kW rooftop solar panels. My system has produced 9.2% of nameplate.
The climate crowd also needs to push for cradle to grave carbon creation determination for PV and wind turbines. They conveniently ignore the carbon generation in the production, distribution, installation, and disposal of their green energy systems. In this way we could see if their green dreams actually reduce carbon generation as they claim.
They have dug themselves a very deep hole with their misrepresentations of green energy benefits. Screaming will not cause the public to forgive their years of climate lies.
Not carbon. That is a Trans-Reality Alarmist word. It is CO2.
and maybe the former supporters are actually reading the science
Nah. They just got distracted by the newest grasshopper.
That and their holy grail of funding for light rail.
Robert Brulle
has encountered reality.
Whaddaguy
What’s needed is legislation that outlaws utilities raising rates for other ratepayers to cover the increased demand from artificial intelligence facilities and data centers.
The President held a conference with AI industry leaders yesterday to address that very concern. It included a pledge from each of the attending major data companies that they would provide and fund generation for their data centers, as well as improve grid infrastructure in and around the communities involved. We shall see how that works out.
Considering the mountains of money their spending- they can afford to build their own power plants.
Price controls?
‘What’s needed is legislation that outlaws utilities raising rates for other ratepayers to cover the increased demand from artificial intelligence facilities and data centers.’
A) Price controls generally result in shortages
B) Many utilities don’t own generation assets
I’m sure your elected leaders (in CA?) would love to pursue your suggestion, but to the extent they’re all in on renewables, climate alarmism, etc., they’re actually the real cause of high energy prices.
I think the AI ‘revolution’ is more hype than reality and needs some skepticism to weed out the crap from the usefulness. If it steers activists in it’s direction it’s a good thing. The technocrats/globalists who previously sided with AGW will now have a taste of their own medicine.
“Henry Ford aimed to pay employees enough to afford his products”
What if his employees only required MWH and they only manufactured products desired by non-employees who own nothing and are happy?
ie AI does not buy a Model T
That quote from Ford was great propaganda, but it never made any economic sense.
Ford paid his workers more because he needed to, in order to attract enough workers to keep his production lines running.
He was able to afford the higher wages because his production lines were much more efficient compared to previous construction methods.
bingo!
Why you can “win” and still lose…it was never about climate.
The narrative (catastrophic anthropogenic warming) is separable from the infrastructure (treaties, councils, reporting regimes, supranational mandates).
That infrastructure is being generalized toward “global challenges,” “collective security,” and “planetary crisis,” and explicitly designed to build acceptance of supranational authority over time. Broader compacts (Pact for the Future, Global Digital Compact) already extend beyond climate into taxation, digital governance, and measuring “wellbeing,” which can justify intrusive policies even if climate alarmism fades.
So you can demonstrate that climate catastrophe rhetoric was exaggerated, politicized, or pseudo‑scientific, and yet find that: The legal‑institutional scaffolding is intact; its mandate has expanded; and the next crisis (digital harms, AI risk, pandemics, “democratic backsliding”) becomes the new justification for the same or stronger governance tools.
In that sense, “winning the climate battle” is mostly an epistemic victory; the “global governance war” is about institutional power and path‑dependency, and that war can quietly continue—and even advance—under new narratives long after the old one has been discredited.
Whither appears to have moderated her rhetoric recently. She is trying to recast herself as more of a centrist with her focus on 2028. Newsom can only attempt to spin his years of disasterous California policy failures as the fault of someone else. Whitmer obviously sees Newsom’s history of failure and is trying to move away from her own leftist history.
Eric Worrall: “My prediction – if Governor Whitmer gathers enough momentum for her anti-data center crusade, she will be the surprise 2028 Democratic Presidential nominee.”
isthatright: “Newsom can only attempt to spin his years of disasterous California policy failures as the fault of someone else. Whitmer obviously sees Newsom’s history of failure and is trying to move away from her own leftist history.”
IMHO, the people behind the scenes who control the Democratic Party have already chosen Gavin Newsom as their 2028 presidential nominee. It is they who will decide who becomes the 2028 nominee, not those who will vote in the 2028 primary season
Newsom’s record in California is viewed as a complete success by the socialist/marxist wing of his party, which is now the great majority of true blue Democrats likely to come out to the polls in 2028.
He is physically and ideologically attractive to millions of liberal white women voters. He has the Pelosi political machine and Silicon Valley dark money behind him. He has considerable skills as an actor in delivering glib policy explanations which give the false impression that he has substance as a thinker and competence as a manager.
We will see others make an attempt to gain the 2028 Democratic Party nomination. When Gavin Newsom comes to the fore through fair means and foul, the others will bow out and accept handsome rewards for doing so.
My $.02 is California is viewed negatively by most Americans as a hotbed of radicals and kooks. Its’ record in just about every important metric today can be easily used against him. I hope he gets the nomination.
AI: Artificial Ignorance – Climate Alarmists
Maybe the horse died from all that dye that was used to color it’s coat green?
Wasn’t is the Oz Horse of a Different Color?
Must be so. The horse that appeared in the original Wizard of Oz is known to be dead.
The left is 0 for infinity, in terms of the things they want us to worry about.
I think that the main objective / challenge for any parties that crave the reins of elected governance is to craft and prosecute policies that the dumbest of voters will accept as wisdom from on high.
(plus – lotsa free stuff with no obligations on offer)
Switching from climate activism to AI action will not bring the economic boom that has been promised to many companies. They seem to have neglected to look at what is really achievable and whether it is economically viable.
Pushback against Trump? That’s not a healthy choice. 🙂
The Climate Liars have lost the Climate Wars, and they know it. One would hope that they would apologize for all the harm they’ve caused. Maybe on the day pigs fly, and Satan ice skates to work that’ll happen. You never know.
Pigs are real, Satan is an invention.
Can you prove that Satan is an invention? Or is that just what you have been taught to believe?
It would be premature for skeptics of climate alarm to relax on the scientific front. That house of cards is smoke-damaged from President Trump’s actions against the Paris Accords, the IPCC, the UNFCCC, the Endangerment Finding, the NCAR, and the like. But the house is still standing in the view of many of the state legislatures and state government entities here in the U.S.
Case in point – the recently adopted NY “Energy” “Plan” from NYSERDA, which entails huge costs into the future and claims fictional “Avoided GHG” and “Health” “benefits” to justify it all. This is an embarrassing and shameful failure of academic origin and needs to be refuted firmly. See Figure 56 in the “Pathways Analysis” segment of that “Plan” linked here if you are interested. (Caution – this link may download the pdf to your device.)
https://energyplan.ny.gov/-/media/Project/EnergyPlan/files/2025-Energy-Plan/Pathways-Analysis.pdf
Here is an image of Figure 56 only.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_gt5EYltq5B2Y2tSAA7zf6GbNkbg3Xso/view?usp=drive_link
On the NY policy front, Francis Menton and Roger Caiazza and others are doing great work against these monstrous plans and the CLCPA that mandates the transition. But on the scientific matters, the point still needs to be driven home, that there never was a sound physical reason to expect emissions of CO2 to have a perceptible influence on any trend of climate variables – and most certainly there is no risk of harm. I make this point by demonstrating the vanishingly weak radiative effect of the 2XCO2 case in the proper context of dynamic energy conversion within the general circulation.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1PDJP3F3rteoP99lR53YKp2fzuaza7Niz?usp=drive_link
Thank you for your patience. Don’t stop hammering away at the core claim.
Star Wars XXIIXX: The AI Menace.
Elect my pet goldfish as the new Secretary General of the UN.
As far as how much will actually get done? That is a wash (pun intended).
Governor Hochul’s decision not to pursue the New York 2019 Climate Act implementation schedule is under heated attack from New York Democrats in the state legislature:
Calling Questions “Climate Denial” Won’t Keep the Lights On (Roger Caiazza, March 6th, 2026)
More than two thirds of N.Y. state Senate Dems oppose climate law changes as Krueger leads pointed letter to Hochul. (Spectrum News 1, March 5th 2026)
From the Spectrum News article:
“More than two-thirds of the Democratic majority in the New York state Senate oppose changes to the state’s climate law, as a looming budget battle between Gov. Kathy Hochul and legislative leaders continues to overshadow other issues at the state Capitol.
Twenty-nine Democratic state senators out of a total of 41 sent a letter to Hochul on Thursday, urging her to refrain from an all-but-announced push to make changes to the law, which sets the framework for the state’s emissions reduction goals.”
The Spectrum article goes on to note that a similar letter is now in the works from Democrats in the New York State Assembly, the lower house of the New York legislature.
Governor Hochul’s spokesman said in response to the Senate letter that the political and economic environment is different from when the 2019 Climate Act was passed. The Hochul spokesman claims that Donald Trump’s energy policy decisions are the chief obstacles to getting the Act’s mandates completed on its original schedule.
From the Spectrum article:
“Ken Lovett, Hochul’s senior communications adviser on energy and environment, responded to the letter and Krueger’s comments, pointing to the governor’s sustained arguments in recent weeks that some of the law’s components as written are of another time, lagging in progress and threatening affordability due largely to factors related to the pandemic, inflation and Trump administration policy hostile to progressive environmental policy.”
The Democrats in the New York state legislature claim it is still possible to reach the Climate Act’s targets because the renewables are so cheap and easy to buy and install.
If they think that, then they owe New Yorkers a detailed project plan of action including a detailed project task list, the associated deliverables, and the costs — illustrating just how all this can be done.
Among the reasons that climate alarmists have been toning down their protests is their examination of the numbers. They’ve found that despite all their efforts, fossil fuel consumption continues to rise and still dominates global energy generation. Meanwhile for all the subsidies they’ve received, renewables like wind and solar in particular still provide less than 20% of the energy and that figure includes nuclear and hydro. Global temperatures are still creeping upward; yet this rise has had no deleterious effect on populations which continue to rise and prosper as well. So maybe the climate crisis crowd has either given up the ghost or is hoping for more sympathetic administrations to be elected in countries which will restore the gravy trains for them.
Couple things. Number one big tech didn’t wake up one day and embrace fossil fuels and nuclear. They gave their all to prove wind and solar were the way forward. After dumping billions into it they proved first hand that wind and solar can’t support their community much less society as a whole. Number two no one should give a damn what activists think, their only purpose is to protest, they will move from one issue to another for no reason at all other than it’s the thing to do. They deserve zero attention.
“Now that only the most committed leftists still take climate warnings seriously”
They never took it seriously. None of them gave up any of their FF-supplied conveniences.
That was moral license – because they’re such good people campaigning for the right causes, all the good they do earns them special privileges not enjoyed by lesser mortals.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/05/04/study-greens-believe-they-have-a-moral-license-to-pollute/