Climate Utopians’ Crusade Against Climate Realists
There are two main camps in the climate debate: utopians and realists. The utopians—who receive nearly all of the philanthropic support and thus utterly dominate the field—believe that we must do everything everywhere all at once right now to drive emissions down to net zero, and anything that calls into question the feasibility of achieving that goal is wrong, if not evil.
Realists, the camp to which the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) proudly belongs, believe that to actually solve the climate problem decarbonization solutions must be affordable and practicable on a global scale, and must be effective in driving deep reductions across all sectors of the economy—and we will never get to that point unless clean energy solutions reach price/performance parity with dirty energy, the threshold ITIF calls “P3.”
The realists’ analysis of the issue is deeply offensive to utopians. In their zeal for immediate solutions, they simply cannot abide realist voices being taken seriously. They must be shouted down, insulted, and, if many utopians could have their way, blocked, so the vulnerable masses are not misled by realist disinformation.
A recent case in point is a recent report from the UK’s Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, calling for new, realistic approaches to climate change. (Uh-oh!)
Knowing that they could not just ignore the report and hope people wouldn’t notice it, the utopians came out in mass with shared opprobrium:
- “Tony Blair’s New Climate Reset Report Promotes Delay, Not Action,” CleanTechnica lamented.
- “The former PM’s take on environmental action has taken root—but with the wrong crowds,” HuffPost reported.
- The plan is “muddled and misleading,” a former Blair advisor charged.
- The “most irrational contribution to climate discourse in some time,” said another commentator.
- It risks handing opponents “the wrong message,” said yet another.
Tony, you ignorant fool.
Blair’s sin? Supporting carbon capture, investing in breakthrough clean energy technologies, supporting nuclear and reforestation, and worst of all, having the temerity to point out the obvious: that “any strategy based on either ‘phasing out’ fossil fuels in the short term or limiting consumption is a strategy doomed to fail.”
No sh*t, Sherlock.
The utopians know that it would be a step too far to call the esteemed Mr. Blair a climate denier. They save that insult for people who are not heads of state. Indeed, over the last five years, a sizeable cottage industry has emerged among climate utopians trying to convince the world that anyone who is not a utopian is a denier who should be shunned and blocked. The well-funded movement raising alarms about alleged climate disinformation is massive and has spread to governments. Former Biden climate leader Gina McCarthy has called out realists as climate deniers. The United Nations and the EU have campaigns against realist misinformation.
Indeed, in utopians’ eyes, groups that support clean energy innovation are not just climate deniers and spreaders of misinformation, but even spreaders of digital hate. These climate absolutists want to shut down the arguments of groups that have the audacity to argue the world doesn’t already have all the technology it needs to get to net zero emissions without spending a lot more on energy.
A tour de force on the subject was a 2021 article in the prestigious journal Nature, which argued: “Organized climate change contrarianism has played a significant role in the spread of misinformation and the delay of meaningful action to mitigate climate change.” The four professors who authored the article used AI to scour the web and identify five categories of claims they assert are industry-funded denialist propaganda:
- Global warming is not happening.
- Humans are not causing it.
- Climate impacts are not bad.
- Climate science is unreliable.
- Climate solutions won’t work.
Let me be clear: I agree with the authors that the first four claims are dangerously wrong climate denialism.
But I object to the authors’ assertion that it is denialism to say existing climate solutions won’t work. The truth is that it is demonstrably magical thinking to believe we can solve climate change by pushing existing technologies into the marketplace with subsidies, mandates, and other policy mechanisms. Citizens won’t support it, even if they are told the world will end without it.
The authors of the Nature article present a “computer-assisted classification of contrarian claims,” and among the claims listed under the category of “climate solutions won’t work” are arguments such as “policy increases costs,” “one country is negligible,” “techno fix,” “clean energy unreliable,” and “nuclear is good.” You get the idea.
On the one hand, it is amusing to look back at how an AI-assisted report from 2021 steamrolled over serious analytical nuance in coming up with a classification scheme for alleged disinformation. But while LLMs have come a long way since 2021, this typology of heretical climate thinking continues to animate climate utopians, so it is worth parsing the particulars in detail.
So, first, let’s be clear, Hoss. Policy does increase costs; otherwise, we could get rid of all clean energy subsidies, and we’d see 100 percent adoption of renewables because they would save us money. No one who studies the cost evidence seriously believes that. Green hydrogen costs more than grey hydrogen. And it’s impossible to have a predominantly solar- and wind-powered electricity grid at a lower price than the dirty default because long-term storage costs are astronomical.
What about the idea that it does little good for one country alone to go to net zero emissions? Well, that’s true. Climate change is global. So, the only way to solve it is to develop clean energy that is cheap enough without subsidies that low-income nations will adopt it because it makes economic sense. Until then, if a few countries want to wear the hair shirt of eliminating fossil fuel consumption, they will accomplish almost nothing.
“Low public support” is another argument that must not be uttered. Really? The question is not whether people say they want climate change solved. Who other than some right-wing libertarians wouldn’t say that? The question is whether people are willing to pay for it and/or be inconvenienced by it. And they are not. The University of Chicago polled 1,202 adults in 2018, and just 23 percent were willing to pay an extra $480 a year. That number surely goes down to 1 or 2 percent in most of the developing world. Does anyone want to discuss the yellow-vested protesters in France forcing their government to rescind fuel price hikes?
Next, we have the “techno-fix” subcategory—i.e., claims that better climate technologies are critical to solving climate. Those amount to climate denial? Hmm, I see. That means it is climate denial to believe that the only solution to grid-scale storage is better technology. So is the idea that nuclear fusion could solve most problems. You get the message. They refuse to acknowledge we need better technology because they believe the crisis is so great and so present that the only answer is to fight it with brute force—massive subsidies, bans on fossil fuel and its related components, guilt, degrowth, no more meat eating.
Their objections to claims that “nuclear is good,” as they say in poker, this is the real tell. Nuclear is a zero-carbon electricity source. As such, nuclear innovation, including in SMRs is critical. But no, this is denialism.
I am especially bemused by the authors’ decision to categorize as denialism the claim that carbon capture an sequestration (CCS) is “unproven/expensive.” What planet do they live on? Of course it’s unproven! That’s why Congress funded research and pilot programs on it. And of course it’s expensive. How could taking CO2 out of the air and burying it not cost money? Even more bemusing is the fact that many environmental groups make the same point, because their top goal is to end fossil fuels, not end fossil fuel emissions. I don’t hear the authors calling any of these 500 environmental organizations opposing CCS climate deniers.
The Nature article’s authors include a number of right-of-center think tanks as deniers. Heritage Foundation makes the list, presumably for having the gall to say it’s “time to bring nuclear energy into the 21st century” and that renewables (in 2018) were not cost competitive. The Hudson Institute is called out, presumably for having the audacity to say that we should support the aspirations of the 6 billion people in developing economies to become middle-class. And the Manhattan Institute makes the list, saying that, “Observations that [fossil fuels] aren’t being replaced and can’t be in any meaningful time frame” evoke specious claims of “climate denialism” or the equivalent.
Shutting down debate on how to address climate change is wrong. In fact, the efforts by so many on the environmental left to shut down serious debate about the means, only slows needed progress.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate calls on Internet platforms to not link to these “haters.” The NDRC wants people to report climate misinformation, including claims that solutions will cost money, so social media platforms can shut it down. I guess that would mean no Google links to ITIF’s report on a realist pathway through the green transition, since it hatefully says, “governments must focus all their policy efforts on getting key technologies to price performance parity” with fossil fuels. Hateful! Shut down this heresy now! The Conscious Advertising Network,,” developed in partnership with climate and disinformation experts, wants Internet platforms to demonetize such deniers, even climate realists.
When the history is written about why the world didn’t solve climate change as it should have, much of the blame should be placed on the environmentalists who gave short shrift to the critical need for innovation, and even attacked those who called for it.
I get why so many climate utopians are so passionate. Climate change is an existential threat. But, man, take a deep breath and get back to having necessary debates about how to solve the problem, and stop trying to shut down anyone who doesn’t buy into your panicked “net zero now” nonsense.
