What Happened to the Climate Change Cult?

By Arthur Schaper

"Stand with Ukraine! Free Palestine! No One is Illegal!"

Did I forget any other empty slogans? For the last eight years, the basement-dwelling interlocutors of the Left have screamed and yelled for The Revolution, bearing their signs, blocking the streets, and bawling in front of politicians' homes.

Conservatives and the general public have endured these mantras blasted all over social media and the airwaves. These empty epithets have dominated college campuses, overwhelmed classrooms and public squares, and they featured prominently in debates, podcasts, and talk shows.

The Left never tires of finding causes to fight for. Whatever declares war on the West, undermines natural law and basic reality, and places power above principle, the Left lines up for the kill.

But there's one slogan that has disappeared, one fight which has fizzled out:

The Climate Change Cult.

For the last 20 years, ever since Al Gore ended up without a job, liberal elites have clamored about the threats of global warming, rising sea levels, the carbon dioxide explosion in the skies, and that we had to do SOMETHING, ANYTHING! before catastrophe struck.

Now, no one seems to care about the weather, least of all the Left.

What happened?

Matt Ridley posits that the relentless doom and gloom tired out voters, and they tuned out from hearing "The Sky is Falling!" because the sky was not falling.

I am sure the disproven blather about the polar ice caps disappearing in 2013 convinced people, too, as they are still shining, chilling, gelling, and taking up more space in Antarctica and the Arctic.

But here's the thing: in 2014 and beyond, academics, pundits, and politicians were still raising widespread alarm about climate change, long after failed former Vice President Gore's catastrophic conclusions melted away. I recall attending a campaign event for Marianne Williamson, a Tea Party of the Left congressional candidate in Palos Verdes, California, in 2014. She was passionate about climate change, and when I pressed her on the fact that most climate change fearmongering never came to pass, she cited a piddling study from the Los Angeles Times, then received a round of applause from her sycophant audience. After the meeting, three Boomers rushed up to me, trying to agitate me about the climate crisis, and that we need to see the world through different eyes and try to understand their weathered fears and complaints.

Yeah, sure, whatever.

After Trump won his first term in 2016, he followed through on a key campaign promise to exit the United States from the Paris Climate Accord. Leftists took to the streets denouncing Orange Man Bad. Weekly marches bellowing about Evil Trump often included denunciations of his climate denialism.

Only after Election 2024 have we witnessed the marked decline in crying about the climate. The "No Kings" protests never mention it. There's more to this political climate change than the fact that voters focused on other issues: crime, immigration, and the economy. After all, climate alarmists screamed about the weather for decades, whether the voters paid attention or not.

It's not about the voters turning a deaf ear to the climate cult. It's not the affordability issues that took everyone's attention away from the weather. If we want to understand why climate change no longer matters to the Left, look no further than Greta Thunberg. 

A little background on the socially autistic Swedish girl manipulated for left-wing propaganda purposes is in order.

In 2019, she burst onto the stage, blurting out with staged outrage, "Entire ecosystems are collapsing, and all you care about is money! How dare you?!" Sure, she was reading from a script, and she was making a fool of herself, but it's easy for a fool with a global megaphone to lead all the climate fools to buy into the message.

For four years, she wailed that all of us selfish people needed to stop using fossil fuels to stop the coming ecosystem carnage. She charmed corporate media, and San Francisco made a mural in her honor.

Then came October 7, 2023.

Suddenly, the Arab-Israeli conflict dominated the news, the college discussions, the public square. The festering outrages over Israel (or Palestine) seized all the attention with growing contention.

The racialized, ethnic bigotry-based Left found its key issue to build on the diminishing returns of Black Lives Matter. Let's not forget that BLM activists had found time to squeeze in complaints about Israel and demand justice for Palestine while demanding the defunding of the police, the abolition of prisons, and the incarceration of all police officers (make it make sense!).

What's more, disarrayed dissidents on the Right, who harbor embittered sentiments toward Jews, found this new left-wing public outcry over Gaza to their liking, and they allied their hatred with them by bashing the IDF, but slipped in some Jew hatred without retribution.

Most importantly, Greta Thunberg went from screaming about the skies and the rising temperatures and sea levels to excoriating the so-called genocide in Gaza perpetrated by Israel. She even made a few trips to Gaza for the cause!

Add to this development the fact that climate change activists have witnessed their funding streams cut off because of Trump's cost-cutting reforms. USAID funding propped up much of this climate alarmism, no doubt. All gone! Most of the indoctrination for climate alarmism came from the universities, and they are facing financial freefall from the Trump Administration. Promoting Islamic terror has its drawbacks, including massive cuts to funding for all programs, especially the push for climate change terror. No doubt, rising energy prices have pushed astroturf perennial activists to rethink their demands for an eco-friendly earth.

But the main issue is the all-consuming focus on Palestine. Thunberg's transition galvanized the new fight and paved over climate alarmism. The all-consuming outrage about Jews and Israel and the broad opposition to Zionism is the main left-wing bugaboo now, crystallizing a surging hatred of mainstream America and the West with a stronger following and broader global support than climate alarmism could ever conjure up.