As The Transition To Green Energy Crumbles, Funding For The Climate Scare Soars

November 08, 2023 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

In December 2016 Donald Trump had just been elected President. He had been widely accused of calling the climate scare a “hoax.” In a post titled “The Impending Collapse Of The Global Warming Scare,” I went out on a limb predicting that the change of administration could bring about a the rapid demise of the climate scare. The post reported the then-increasing focus of the environmental movement on the climate issue, and ended with this prediction:

The environmental movement has climbed itself way out onto the global warming limb.  Now the Trump administration is about to start sawing off the limb behind them.

Well, that didn’t happen. In the event, the Trump Administration was mostly a disappointment to us climate skeptics. Yes, they did take on a few significant regulatory matters, like rescinding the so-called Clean Power Plan (forced closure of fossil fuel power plants). But they never tackled the Endangerment Finding (labeling CO2 a “danger” to human health and welfare); nor did they make any meaningful pushback against the activist bureaucracies or scientific societies; nor did they cut funding for the climate alarm movement to any significant degree.

So we have been left to wait for the climate scare and the energy transition to collapse under the weight of the combination of their own scientific absurdity, physical impossibility, and crushing costs. It has been a long wait.

But you have likely seen over the course of just the past few months that the supposed green energy transition — widely hyped and massively subsidized for two decades — has suddenly started to crumble on multiple fronts. We are rapidly approaching the green energy wall. And yet at the same time, the promoters of the climate scare are not backing down. Not in the least. To the contrary, the New York Times reports just today that the major environmental NGOs are in a process of cutting their funding for their most basic programs, like dealing with toxic chemicals, in order to double down and focus even more on the one big issue — climate change.

More on that in a minute. But first, a small update on the approach of the green energy wall. Here are just a few of the latest data points on the supposed green energy transition not happening due to issues of cost and physical impossibility:

• From the New York Times, November 2: “Wind Power, Key to Democrats’ Climate-Change Goals, Faces a Crisis.” The article recounts the developers backing out of four big offshore wind projects off New York a couple of months ago, followed by an overlapping group of developers backing out of two big wind projects of the coast of New Jersey just a few days ago (November 1). (See also my post of October 5 as to other cancelations of offshore wind projects off the mid-Atlantic and New England.). For New York, where offshore wind is supposed to be the magic elixir that will enable us to close all our natural gas plants and at the same time electrify all buildings and cars, we are left with exactly one offshore project currently moving forward, with all of 12 turbines. Excerpt from the Times piece:  “Instead of gathering momentum as the long-promised benefits of offshore wind farms are about to be realized, the industry is now mired in an existential crisis. An assortment of recent obstacles to projects in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut are almost certain to delay — and possibly derail — Northeastern states’ grand ambitions to harness the winds blowing over the Atlantic Ocean.”
• The darned fossil fuels just won’t go away. From the New York Times today: “Nations That Vowed to Halt Warming Are Expanding Fossil Fuels, Report Finds.”Excerpt:  “In 2030, if current projections hold, the United States will drill for more oil and gas than at any point in its history. Russia and Saudi Arabia plan to do the same. They’re among the world’s fossil fuel giants that, together, are on course this decade to produce twice the amount of fossil fuels than a critical global warming threshold allows, according to a United Nations-backed report issued on Wednesday.”
• Values of stocks of wind and solar developers have been crashing. Jo Nova reports today that the Invesco Solar ETF is down 40% year-to-date. She previously produced this chart of the stock price of Siemens Energy, with two dramatic drops in the past few months tied to announcements of losses in the wind energy business:  
• The Germany-focused website No Tricks Zone keeps us updated on Germany’s ongoing de-industrialization due to soaring energy costs resulting from going all-in on wind and solar. Today’s post has the headline “Green Economic Collapse: 1/3 Of Germany's Automotive Suppliers Considering Moving Abroad."

Which brings us to the other New York Times article from today, headline: “Environmental Groups Cut Programs as Funding Shifts to Climate Change.” Even as everyone can see that this whole green energy thing is just not going to work, the Times reports that the entire environmental movement is doubling down, cutting other programs and focusing their funding on climate change to the exclusion of everything else:

A significant shift in donor contributions to nonprofits fighting climate change in recent years has left some of the nation’s biggest environmental organizations facing critical shortfalls in programs on toxic chemicals, radioactive contamination and wildlife protection. The Natural Resources Defense Council is shutting down its nuclear mission and has laid off its top lawyer in the field.......

The NRDC is not alone. The Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife and the Environmental Working Group, which have been at the forefront of efforts to clean up waste water, regulate pesticides and adopt tougher standards for atomic power plants, are facing similar financial problems.

All the funders and the activists care about any more is climate change:

Meanwhile, global spending to fight climate change by environmental groups and other nonprofits reached $8 billion in 2021, most of it in the United States and Canada, according to a survey released in September by the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. . . . “Funders that had a nuclear program or a toxics program have left those fields entirely and have gone to climate change,” said Marylia Kelley, senior adviser and former executive director of a citizens oversight group. . . .

I’d be surprised if the total annual funding of all climate skeptic organizations is as much as $25 million. Well, they have religious fervor and fanaticism on their side, but we have reality.