Energy realists
Roger Pielke Jr. and Alex Trembath have noted that interest in fast and deep
decarbonization has dwindled in favor of a more pragmatic approach to energy
production, consumption, and emissions. With electricity demand rising and
consumer electricity costs rising, there is more emphasis on affordability and
less on emissions reduction.
Trembath, in a recent article for
The Dispatch, noted that the issue in the previous decade was deployment vs.
innovation, with some advocates pushing for massive rollouts of existing
technologies like solar, wind, and batteries, and others favoring more
investment into innovations like CCS, hydrogen, geothermal, etc. He says both
sides were successful and the deployment faction triumphed with the IRA and
Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, at least until the Big Beautiful Bill clawed
back a lot of that investment, a significant portion of which was mired in slow
deployment due to permitting snafus. Some of the innovation side has been
retained by the Trump administration, and some dropped. Emissions reporting is
no longer considered of primary importance. Trembath also notes that Democrats
are now more concerned with inflation and the debt than they were before and
less concerned with emissions reduction, mainly in response to voter concerns.
He sees more emphasis on innovation if and when Dems return to power. He says
there will be no IRA 2.0. He also sees bipartisan permitting reform, long
overdue, succeeding in the future. That seems likely since there is significant
bipartisan agreement about it. He thinks, and I agree, that regulatory reform,
or rather regulatory relief, will help everyone from fossil fuels to renewables
to nuclear.
Pielke Jr. cites Canada’s leader,
Mark Carney, as changing course from an aggressive approach to emissions
reduction to one more accommodating of important energy projects in a move
toward economic realism. In the UK and EU, as well, there have been more moves
away from climate advocacy to preserving and supporting important industries.
He notes the recent veto of a fee on carbon emissions in the shipping sector by
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who noted:
“We want to be ambitious about the energy transition,
but we must be realistic, not undermine the competitiveness of European
industry, and certainly not cause social unrest by imposing unbearable costs on
our households and businesses.”
Pielke Jr. notes that mainstream
Democrats are coming around as well, with Delaware Senator Chris Coons noting
that climate was not a top-three policy right now. He also points out that the
efforts to force decarbonization through hampering fossil fuel industries have
not been successful and are being abandoned. These were never a good idea.
“For decades, conventional wisdom among climate policy
elites was that deep decarbonization would be achieved by making fossil energy
substantially more expensive—through policies such as taxes, tradable emissions
permits, regulation, litigation, and supply-side constraints—thus providing
fossil fuel alternatives with an economic advantage.”
The point, he says, is that most
people are not really willing to pay more to advance climate policies and if
necessary, will use their vote to avoid it. Thus, climate catastrophism is more
and more falling on deaf ears. It is being ignored as it should be, in favor of
more pragmatic approaches. He also points out that temperature rises predicted
by 2100 keep getting revised downward as countries decarbonize as able and that
earlier models for high coal use are being abandoned as not plausible. He sees
the most likely 2050 target at a “warming of 2.2°C—certainly disruptive, but
not civilization-threatening.”
He also says that climate
catastrophists have doubled down in the sense that past apocalyptic scenarios
of 4 or 5 degrees of warming have been replaced by equally apocalyptic
scenarios of 2 to 3 degrees of warming.
“Effective climate policy is a marathon, not a sprint.
The ongoing reset of expectations about energy and climate is an opportunity to
reject apocalyptic fatalism and to embrace realism and pragmatism.”
There is also, he says, more
acknowledgement that high emissions scenarios are no longer likely or
plausible, which is also an acknowledgment that decarbonization is working.
Shannon Osaka and Kevin Crowe of
the Washington Post note that:
“…Democrats have pulled back from talking about climate
change. At the same time, nations and companies have been whittling down their
goals, pulling back from their most ambitious plans to lower carbon emissions —
or going silent on the issue entirely.”
They note that climate change
takes a back seat to affordability and economic concerns, which are a more
immediate need. They note that mentions of “climate” and “climate change”
peaked in August 2022 and have dropped off to their lowest ever since they
began tabulating the mentions in March 2022. Recently elected Democrats,
including even Mamdani, shied away from climate talk. A recent Gallup poll
shows that Americans see climate as less important among issues, even among
other environmental issues. In pivoting to affordability, the Dems are trying
to blame the Trump administration for high electricity costs, but that is not
accurate.
Bill Gates' recent essay about human
betterment spending being more important and immediate than climate spending.
which I wrote about recently, is another instance of the shift toward energy
and climate pragmatism.
The WAPO writers note:
“Travis Fisher, director of energy and environmental
policy issues at the Cato Institute, says that the shift offers an opportunity
for both Democrats and Republicans to focus on energy abundance: that is,
building both fossil fuels and renewables. Net-zero, he said, “could be a fad
that comes back — but it’s definitely on the outs.”
There have also been significant
pullbacks of emissions pledges and aggressive ESG goals in realization that
those policies are too costly, too difficult to achieve, and will not have
immediate impacts. Of course, decarbonization will continue to be pursued, but
at a more measured pace, which will also be more economically favorable, as I
argued in my 2021 book, Sensible Decarbonization. As clean energy technologies
continue to drop in price, becoming more economically competitive, they will be
adopted more.
In an article in the New Atlantis
by Daniel Sarewitz, The Party of Science is Over, he notes that
Democrats were so caught up in appealing to experts that they ignored voters.
He notes that each side often appeals to its own experts and that it is often
not scientific experts who make policy decisions, but policymakers informed by
experts, as it should be.
“Politically controversial issues are never settled by
Galilean, E=mc2 truths. Instead, truths are continually negotiated through the
institutions of democracy. Scientists — “experts for the affirmative and
experts for the negative” — are participants in the negotiation process, but
often it is judges, juries, lawyers, elected officials, bureaucrats, advocates,
journalists, and voters who determine what counts as truth.”
He applies this logic to show that
scientific experts have not led policy about climate change any more than they
did about other difficult and controversial topics. He seems to echo what Alex
Epstein noted in his book, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, that
scientific experts should function as advisors rather than policymakers. He
also noted in the book that while scientists may be experts at science, that
does not automatically make them experts at policy.
“But agreement on the fundamental science did not
determine what to do about climate change any more than E=mc2 had determined
what to do about nuclear arms. Policymakers would need to know how quickly
climate change would unfold, how severe the consequences would be, how those
consequences would be distributed, how much it would cost to reduce them, and
what were the best alternatives for doing so. These were the same sorts of
open-ended, only half-scientific questions that had been fueling political disagreement
around other types of risks for fifty years.”
He notes that climate
change, as an issue, propelled by mainstream Democrat Al Gore, led to the
Democratic Party aligning itself as the party of science. This perhaps led to
more politicization among scientists, most of whom seem to be Democrats
according to an analysis of political donations.
When COVID hit, there was much
debate about science and policy. There, he saw scientific experts breaking into
policymaking, with mixed but often undesirable results, especially due to the
uncertainties.
“Leaders of the mainstream scientific community, rather
than owning up to both the uncertainties and the value judgments behind policy
choices, tried to invoke their status as purveyors of Galilean truths to
explain why, say, six feet was the right amount of social distancing, or why
school closings needed to persist.”
He notes that any dissent to these
policies is seen as anti-science, even when it is offered by competing
scientists and medical experts.
“When Democrats sell themselves as the party of science,
truth, and rationality, what they are really saying is that if you are rational
and believe in science and truth then obviously you will support Democratic
policies. But given that half the country does not ideologically align itself
with Democrats, this is a hard case to make, and those who disagree with
Democratic agendas may in turn wonder why they should accept the science those
agendas bring with them. Such skepticism may not be irrational, or even
anti-science. Yet it has created a space not just for Trump’s endless effusion
of lies, but for the attacks he and his minions are mounting on mainstream
scientific knowledge and on the scientific institutions that Democrats had
labeled as their own.”
“If the Democratic Party wants to convince more voters
that it is the party of what is true, it will first have to convince them that
it is the party of what is good, what matters, and what is right.”
In any case, I welcome the move
toward pragmatism in energy and climate debates, and the move away from
ideologically-based policy positions and the politicization of science from
both sides of the aisle.
References:
The
world turns to energy pragmatism on the path to a new climate consensus. Roger
Pielke, Jr. for The Dispatch. November 6, 2025. The
world turns to energy pragmatism on the path to a new climate consensus | |
caledonianrecord.com
The
big issue Democrats have stopped talking about. Shannon Osaka and Kevin Crowe.
The Washington Post. November 10, 2025. The
big issue Democrats have stopped talking about
The
Party of Science Is Over: Democrats became so caught up appealing to experts
that they forgot to appeal to voters. Daniel Sarewitz. The New Atlantis, Fall
2025. The
Party of Science Is Over — The New Atlantis
The
End of the Climate Hawk Era. ‘Net zero’ is out, energy affordability is in. Alex
Trembath. The Dispatch. October 9, 2025. The
End of the Climate Hawk Era - The Dispatch
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