A Climate of Exhaustion

 Waiting for the world to end will exhaust you.

Democratic zeal for the climate once ran red hot. Catastrophism produced the steam that powered the progressive engine. You may have been a little wobbly on open borders, or you may have been a little unsure about defunding the police. But you never doubted for a moment that the Earth had a fever and human activity was to blame.

Now, in the bleak midwinter of Trump and ICE and Ukraine and AI, you’re a little like, eh, do I have to? Still?

On Thursday, the Trump administration announced its repeal of the Environmental Protection Agency’s “endangerment finding,” the 2009 determination that greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health. It was the legal basis for most federal climate regulation, allowing Washington technocrats to treat carbon dioxide, methane and four other gases as pollutants. The White House trumpeted the repeal as “the single largest deregulatory action in U.S. history.”

That sounds right to me. I’m no scientist, but I exhale carbon dioxide. So do you. Cows produce methane in their stomachs via enteric fermentation. Despite what you’ve heard, they mostly belch it out. If sighs, yawns and cow burps are pollution, then words don’t mean anything.

The Trump administration’s deregulatory move prompted howls from the usual suspects, but those howls weren’t nearly as plaintive or potent as in years past. The bottom has dropped out of the green subsidy scam. The electric vehicle fad has run its course. Companies that install rooftop solar panels are getting ready for what they expect to be a huge downturn in business this year.

The joy has gone out of the climate game. The thrill is gone. You can feel it.

I’d like to think that sanity has finally prevailed and the panic is over for good. In a better world it would be. But I’m not holding my breath

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