Apparently the world just ended so we thought we should say goodbye. In case you missed it, Donald Trump was elected President of the United States and the alarmist crowd has told us this time it’s over, for real. The Guardian wailed “Trump has pledged to wage war on planet Earth – and it will take a progressive revolution to stop him”. And Scientific Communism shriek-mails “A second Trump term will be devastating for curbing climate change: he has vowed to promote fossil fuels, weaken pollution regulations and reverse Biden administration climate efforts.” Although just in case the world doesn’t end we at CDN plan to carry on, including reporting on why we weren’t surprised the climate emergency crisis thingy didn’t bring voters out to stop Trump.

As Roger Pielke Jr. put it, “There is no such thing as a ‘climate voter’”. Robert Bryce chimed in that “While this race was about many things, one issue lurked throughout: climate policy. And the results clearly show that the Democratic Party is woefully out of step with mainstream voters on energy and climate policy.” Most Americans do not actually believe there’s a crisis, because all this supposedly worsening weather that sealed the deal for Kamala Harris was far more visible in the pages of the New York Times than outside their windows. Which actually means that while the American government might throw less money at anyone claiming to be able to fix the weather with their magic beans, the net impact on the world of the change at the top of the Executive Branch will be less than “devastating”. So they’ll keep whining, and we’ll keep rebutting their unreasonable claims.

Slightly less hysterical outlets took the same view. David Gelles in The New York Times “Climate Forward” lamented the morning after that:

“It’s perhaps an understatement to say that the election of Donald Trump will seriously complicate international efforts to combat climate change.”

Or, we add on substance as well as a general opposition to weasel words like perhaps, “Perhaps not” since they weren’t going anywhere anyway.

It’s a mark of just how vital the United States remains in world affairs that, The Australian notes:

“Anthony Albanese’s chief climate tsar has declared Australia’s ‘job’ to drive down emissions and power up a cleaner economy has become “even more urgent” following Donald Trump’s win”.

Though how exactly Australia could take up any of the supposed slack if Trump does indeed wage war on the Earth isn’t clear, especially since, that story immediately continued, “as the Prime Minister refuses to commit to a 2035 target before the federal election.” Or, we imagine, have any idea how to hit one afterward should he win by concealing his radical and ill-advised aspirations.

Which brings us back to what really happened in the American election, on climate and beyond, and why the underlying economic and political realities suggest that Trump’s victory won’t really affect U.S. greenhouse gas emissions because neither party could or would rein them in sharply.

In many non-Democratic people’s view, including many on the left, the Democrats’ obsession with climate helped prevent them from developing sensible economic policies that might again connect them with those at the bottom of society, formerly the “working classes”, that they think they represent as though it were 1934 not 2024. But in our view this whole climate thing, including the notion we recently ridiculed of evangelicals for climate turning out for Harris in meaningful number, is part of a woke matrix that is deeply detached from the lived experience of most Americans, especially those who cannot afford luxury beliefs.

On election night NBC reported that according to their early exit polls:

“Asked to choose among five issues, 34% of voters said democracy mattered most to their votes, while 31% said the economy. Abortion (14%) and immigration (11%) ranked as the next-most-important issues, while just 4% named foreign policy.”

And what’s not on their list? Right. A whole new kind of don’t ask, don’t tell.

As for the impact of partisanship on results rather than rhetoric, we give the final word to Chris Martz, who wrote:

“Dear climate scientists,
🪶 𝑅𝑒𝑝𝑢𝑏𝑙𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑛𝑠 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑟𝑒𝑑
𝐷𝑒𝑚𝑜𝑐𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑠 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑏𝑙𝑢𝑒
𝑁𝑒𝑖𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑦 ℎ𝑎𝑠 𝑎𝑛 𝑖𝑚𝑝𝑎𝑐𝑡
𝑂𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑙𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑙 𝑜𝑓 𝐶𝑂₂ 🪶”

And illustrated it with a chart of the “Monthly Average Mauna Loa CO2” readings from 1987 to 2004, coded red with Republicans in the White House and blue with Democrats, showing an absolutely consistent upward line regardless.