For half a century the West lived under a secular religion called "catastrophic anthropogenic global warming." Its commandments were carved in granite:
Thou shalt not question the 1.5 °C red line
Thou shalt pay trillions for windmills and solar panels
Thou shalt accept that coal, oil and gas are the devil's molecules
Thou shalt atone with net-zero by 2050 or the planet dies
By 2025 that religion is in smoking ruins. Reality – cold, hard, kilowatt-hungry reality – has torched the cathedral. Here's how the doom cult immolated itself.
1. Artificial Intelligence Ate the Renewables Fantasy for Breakfast
The same Silicon Valley prophets who once preached planetary penance (Bezos, Gates, Musk circa 2019) are now begging for 100 gigawatts of new power per year just to feed their data centres. That's 100 new nuclear-scale plants annually. Wind and solar can't even keep the lights on in California on a still August evening, let alone train the next generation of AI models that burn more electricity than entire nations.
Bill Gates – the man who used to lecture us about "climate sinners" – now openly says nuclear is the only realistic path. Google, Microsoft and Amazon are signing long-term deals for… natural gas and new nuclear reactors. The green high priests have become heretics overnight.
2. China Played the West Like a $2 Banjo
While Europe was busy decommissioning perfectly good nuclear plants and capping North Sea gas fields "to save the planet," China was opening two to three coal plants per month and 8–10 new nuclear reactors per year. Beijing also happily sold the West $400 billion worth of subsidised solar panels and wind turbines, then laughed as European steel and aluminium industries packed up and moved to… China, where electricity is cheap and reliable.
The EU now emits 6 % of global CO₂ while China emits 32 %. The Paris Accord turned out to be the greatest wealth transfer in history – from virtuous, de-industrialising Europe to cynical, coal-burning Beijing. Even the King of Sweden finally admitted it out loud in October 2025.
3. The "Loss and Damage" Shakedown Collapsed into Open Laughter
At COP29 in Baku, the Global South demanded $1.3 trillion per year in climate reparations from the West for emissions released decades ago. The response? Crickets from Washington and Brussels. Turns out when you've spent €5 trillion on your own green transition and now face factory closures and blackouts, you suddenly discover that the reparations piggy bank is empty.
The mask slipped: the entire "climate justice" movement was always less about physics and more about post-colonial wealth redistribution. When the money dried up, the moral outrage evaporated overnight.
4. Energy = Geopolitics, and Geopolitics Doesn't Run on Wishful Thinking
2022 taught Europe the hardest lesson since 1945: when Russia invades Ukraine and turns off the gas taps, you don't power Germany with hope and fairy dust. You power it with Qatari LNG, American shale gas, and Norwegian hydropower. Europe's wind fleet sat idle for weeks at a time while gas-fired plants (that greens had campaigned to close) saved the continent from Stone Age winters.
Meanwhile the same fossil fuels that were supposedly killing the planet were quietly keeping NATO's most important industrial heartland alive.
5. The Science™ Stopped Being Settled
Remember when "97 % of scientists agree" was tattooed on every activist's forearm? By 2025 the dissenters are no longer hiding. Judith Curry, Richard Lindzen, John Christy and a growing army of younger climatologists are pointing out the screamingly obvious:
Accurate global temperature records only began ~1880
The Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age happened without SUVs
Extreme weather events are not demonstrably worse when you correct for population growth and better reporting
Climate models still run far too hot compared to observed reality
The IPCC's own AR6 report quietly buried the "highest-confidence" worst-case scenarios because they were becoming embarrassing. The hysteria dial has been turned down from "boiling oceans by 2030" to "manageable warming with adaptation."
6. The Public Smelled the Hypocrisy and Walked Away
People noticed that the same celebrities who jetted to Davos to lecture the plebs about carbon footprints were buying $100 million coastal mansions in Malibu and Martha's Vineyard. They noticed that the green elite never, ever, suggested the solution was to live like Amish farmers. They noticed that blackouts hit the working class first and the solar-panelled rich last.
Trust in climate alarmism has collapsed faster than a German wind turbine in a calm spell. Polls in 2025 show "climate change" barely cracks the top ten voter concerns in the US, UK, Germany or Australia.
The New Consensus (Whether the Activists Like It or Not)
Carbon isn't going away this century – get over it
Nuclear is green, abundant and necessary
Natural gas is the bridge fuel that already crossed the bridge
Adaptation (seawalls, better forestry, air-conditioning) beats futile attempts at global thermostat control
Energy abundance is a moral good, not a sin
The great irony? Global CO₂ emissions will probably peak in the late 2020s anyway – not because of Western hair-shirts and subsidies, but because China finishes its industrial build-out and the developing world leaps straight to cheap gas and next-gen nuclear.
The climate crusade didn't save the planet. It impoverished the West, enriched China, froze pensioners, and de-industrialised Europe – all for a temperature reduction too small to measure.
The doom cult burnt itself out on the altar of energy reality. Good riddance.
https://amgreatness.com/2025/11/17/reality-caught-up-to-climate-change/