Picture this: A room full of suited billionaires, yachts bobbing in the harbour outside, all nodding solemnly as they pledge to save the planet from their carbon footprints, via Zoom, of course, because irony is the new black. Fast-forward to October 2025, and the script flips. Those same tycoons are quietly rerouting investments from solar dreams to silicon realities, while world leaders who once thundered about net-zero now mumble excuses about "practicalities." Lara Williams nailed it in her Bloomberg Opinion piece last week: Climate deniers aren't lurking in the shadows anymore; they're "hiding in plain sight." Is the global warming "regime" — that sprawling apparatus of pledges, summits, and subsidies — finally sputtering out? Or is it just recalibrating for a world where AI eats power like a teenager devours tacos?

The Political Pageant: All Talk, No Walk

Start with the optics, because that's where the farce shines brightest. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, fresh off a campaign touting "climate leadership," is reportedly ghosting COP30 in Brazil next year, the UN's big climate circus. Remember when he skewered Rishi Sunak for ditching COP27? Now it's his turn, and the hypocrisy meter is pegged. It's not just Brit bluster; it's symptomatic. US President Donald Trump, never one for green galas, is doubling down on his UN speech tirade against climate "hysteria," emboldening a chorus of retreats. Over in the EU, Ursula von der Leyen pipes up at the UN about "continued climate leadership," but her bloc's actions scream otherwise: endless squabbles over 2035 and 2040 emissions targets, a one-year delay on anti-deforestation rules (blame "technical issues"), and Right-wing parties torpedoing a forest fire monitoring law.

The numbers don't lie, either. A fresh Stockholm Environment Institute report drops the plate: Governments worldwide are plotting to pump out 120% more fossil fuels by 2030 than what's compatible with a 1.5°C warming cap. And get this, 74% of Paris Agreement signatories haven't even bothered submitting updated 2025 targets, per Climate Watch data. That's not a glitch; it's a ghosting. Williams calls it a "widening gap between climate rhetoric and reality," and she's spot on. These aren't fringe deniers; they're the establishment, repackaging inaction as "pragmatism."

Zoom out, and it's global. Asia's economic engines, think semiconductor fabs and EV battery plants, are prioritising gigawatts over guilt trips. Even the English-speaking Anglosphere, once the epicentre of eco-virtue signalling, is wobbling. The "energy transition" was sold as a smooth swap: Fossil fools out, renewables in. But as Williams observes, "the political and corporate commitment to ambitious climate action is increasingly fragile." Translation: The steam's leaking from the green machine.

Tech's Power Hunger: The AI Asteroid Nobody Saw Coming

If politics is the appetiser, tech is the main course, and it's devouring the planet's energy buffet. Here's the plot twist: The very innovations meant to "save" us (AI, cloud computing, data centres) are the wrecking balls to green goals. Each Nvidia high-end AI chip guzzles as much juice annually as three electric cars, and demand? Limitless, baby. US utilities are sounding alarms: Data centres could suck up more electricity than entire industries like steel-making. Reshoring manufacturing? Noble, but power-thirsty. EVs? Green on paper, but their charging infrastructure needs a small country's worth of electrons.

Enter the corporate confessional. Microsoft, the poster child for tech virtue, vowed carbon-negative by 2030. Reality check: Emissions jumped 30% from 2020 to 2023, courtesy of AI sprawl. They're not alone, Google, Amazon, the whole FAANG gang is in the same boat, publicly genuflecting to net-zero while lobbying for looser regs behind closed doors. Williams highlights the irony: "The tech industry now recognizes that its competitiveness depends on abundant, cheap energy." Translation? Renewables can't scale fast enough for this boom, so fossil backups (or nuclear, if anyone's serious) become the quiet heroes.

This isn't anti-climate sabotage; it's physics biting back. The "green energy revolution" assumed a tidy timeline: Swap coal for panels, done. But AI's explosive growth, chasing AGI, throws a wrench in. Data centres alone could double US electricity demand by 2030. Tech firms, once bankrolling green candidates, might now cosy up to Trump-era deregulation for that sweet, deregulated power flow. As Williams puts it, the collision with "reality" is derailing ambitions across the board.

Hype, Hubris, or Hard Limits? A Truth-Seeker's Take

Sceptics will crow: "Told you so — the whole thing was a Ponzi!" Fair point; the climate regime has always had its grifters, from carbon credit casinos to summit schmoozes that emit more hot air than a Texas summer. This retreat? It's less denial than disillusionment. Policies got overpromised: Ambitious targets without the tech or trillions to back them. Now, with energy poverty biting in the Global South and AI demanding terawatts yesterday, the facade cracks. Williams warns of a "deeper collapse of the green movement," but I'd frame it as evolution. The old regime, top-down pledges, virtue Olympics, can't hack it. What's emerging? A pragmatic pivot: Nuclear renaissance? Yes, please. Smarter grids? Overdue.

The tell-tale sign is the money. Billionaires aren't ditching jets for e-bikes; they're hedging bets on fusion start-ups and gas pipelines. Even the yacht crowd senses the shift. But here's the rub: This doesn't doom the planet, it demands better ideas. Climate action falters because it was fake from the beginning.

The Reckoning: From Regime to Reality

In the end, Williams' piece isn't a dirge; it's a dispatch from the front lines of a movement mid-stream. The green steam is running out, sure, but that's for the best. A leaner, meaner approach could actually deliver: Innovation over incantations, abundance over austerity. As one wry observer on X quipped, "If even the deniers are hiding, maybe it's time to stop playing hide-and-seek with physics."

https://www.naturalnews.com/2025-10-04-climate-cult-leaders-abandoning-their-fake-narrative.html