The collapse of the Paris Agreement and the unmasking of the net zero illusion were never hard to predict — not for anyone with a shred of intellectual honesty. It didn’t take a fancy research title or an advanced degree. The writing was carved deep into the stone of energy reality, which no press release, no activist lobby and no billionaire-backed foundation could erase.

Most nations — particularly those early in the process of building their futures — offered only empty nods to their climate targets. Their participation was a transparent quest for political leverage. The climate crusade survived by hijacking the political class, manipulating data through compliant scientists, and converting media empires into megaphones of fear.

Bill Gates stepped away from the front lines of climate alarmism in a recent essay timed for the United Nations’ COP30, an annual gathering of jet-setting moralists. Gates admits — and the recent U.S. Department of Energy report on carbon dioxide supports his view — that the world will not collapse because of climate change.

Gates has called for a shift in focus to more immediate needs. He says that “we will still rely on fossil fuels for decades,” that “no single technology can decarbonize the global economy,” and that “the pace of change will be slow.”

He is reacting to the wreckage of ideology from its collision with the laws of physics.

In recent New York election campaigns, some of the Green New Deal’s most famous apostles, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders, saw their climate gospel sidelined, no longer commanding the stage. Voters heard more about housing, jobs, and public safety than decarbonization, offshore wind or carbon credits.

These are signals of a larger shift underway, both in the U.S. and abroad.

In the U.K.’s North Sea and off the U.S. East Coast, massive wind projects are being canceled. “Green steel” is struggling to compete with fossil fuel-based conventional steel. Oil companies, after spending years and billions of dollars on “green” branding and virtue signaling, are quietly backtracking on ambitious climate goals.

In 2025, Argentina shocked global institutions by saying it will reconsider its membership in the Paris Agreement. President Javier Milei declared that his nation would no longer “kneel before climate bureaucrats.” China continues its rapid construction of coal-fired power plants, adding more coal capacity than the rest of the world combined. India’s coal consumption is at an all-time high, and its government is aggressively auctioning new blocks of coal mines.

Developing economies in Asia and South America know that survival requires coal, oil and natural gas. African leaders are also seeking to tap their continent’s reserves of hydrocarbons to power economic development.

The fragile structure of global decarbonization depended on financing from its chief patron, the U.S. When that flow of dollars ceased with the incoming Trump administration, the fading of an already moribund climate narrative accelerated. What remains now is to utterly unmask the 21st century’s most malignant fraud and to educate a generation propagandized in public schools and woke universities.

The truth has emerged bit by bit. We were once told that wildfires were unprecedented, yet historical data show fire frequency has declined globally. We were told the Arctic would be ice-free, yet it remains frozen. We were told of a “climate-driven” food crisis, but the mild warming and increased carbon dioxide — a vital plant food — have contributed to global greening and record crop harvests. The food supply is becoming more secure, not less.

The gap between alarmist predictions and observed reality is no longer possible to hide. Scientists deliberately misled the public with cherry-picked data, tortured computer models until they produced the “correct” scary result and misrepresented natural weather events as proof of climate change. What masqueraded as “consensus” was nothing more than a cartel of profiteers feeding on public guilt and taxpayer money.

This was not good-faith scientific inquiry but rather a narrative designed to frighten, to control consumer choices and to justify a massive political and economic reorganization. Much of the public, sensing this dishonesty, no longer listens. The authority of the climate “experts” has been damaged, perhaps irrevocably. Their incessant cries of “wolf” failed to produce the climate beast.

The climate cult declared war on the very engines that lifted humanity from hunger and hardship. Its legacy is economic vandalism and moral decay.

But the spell is breaking, and what’s emerging from the rubble is not despair, but liberation — a long-awaited return of reason to a world held hostage by fear.

Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition in Fairfax, Virginia. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K. He served as a research associate with the Changing Oceans Research Unit at University of British Columbia, Canada.

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