One reason for thinking the climate alarmist position is crumbling in its moment of apparent triumph is that everything about it seems to be coming apart at once. But while some of us think increasingly obvious and ragged holes in the logic and science are crucial, others point to the policy failures that are turning what were once seductive speculative dreams into practical nightmares. For instance people are beginning to realize the vaunted switch from conventional to alternative fuels is not going according to plan, and the spot meant to be occupied by a wind and solar unicorn is instead now occupied by a big dark coal troll.

Part of the reason is that coal remains an affordable, reliable source of power that can now be burned very cleanly. Some politicians and advocates may insist that cheap coal or other hydrocarbons make power expensive and expensive wind and solar make power cheap, but it’s a hard sell. The New York Times “Climate Forward” may warn of “[t]he vicious cycle of extreme heat and fossil fuels” where CO2 heats the planet so people need more air conditioning powered by fossil fuels, and more air conditioning powered by fossil fuels releases more CO2. But if other sources of energy like wind and solar worked better than say coal, it wouldn’t happen. So the vicious cycle is in their reasoning.

Part of it is that much of the world, especially Communist China, never remotely bought into climate alarmism though they pretended to in the hopes that we would cripple ourselves economically and militarily. And part of it is a resolute determination to cling to fantasies about alternative energy, for instance Heatmap recently assuring us:

“Solar, wind and lithium-ion battery storage are proven winners in the clean energy economy, but what is the next suite of technologies and tools that will help accelerate the path to achieving global climate goals?”

It better be something better than those things. Which brings us to the sad truth that part of coal’s ongoing prominence as an energy source is conduct indistinguishable from stupidity. In an item back in February the “Doomberg” newsletter invoked the famous “Streisand effect” (in which the celebrity singer and actress took legal action to suppress publication of an obscure photo of her lavish home, causing millions of people to post it online in the ensuing kerfuffle) to discuss the weird way climate alarmists had driven governments to rely on coal when the Ukraine-war-related energy crisis of 2021 hit:

“In the years leading up to the emergency, most of Western Europe effectively ceased domestic exploration and production of natural gas – implementing a complete ban on fracking, for example – while simultaneously and preemptively closing down perfectly operational nuclear power facilities. From these foolhardy decisions did a global calamity evolve. In an ironic twist reminiscent of Streisand’s self-defeating parade of photograph #3,850, these actions will likely result in massively more coal being burned by the rest of the world than if Europe had simply left well enough alone, all but ensuring ever-increasing global carbon emissions for decades to come.”

And Matthew Wielicki recently wrote a post that won’t win him any friends on the other side, starting:

“Coal built America’s power grid and lifted millions into the middle class. Today, it’s treated like a dirty word, while China builds more coal plants every month than we’ve built in a decade. It’s time to ask why.”

As he argues, the main reason for the decline of coal in the U.S. wasn’t regulation or scruples. It was the increasing availability and cheapness of natural gas, especially with fracking. (A process that, be it noted, caused a huge number of environmentalists to become completely hysterical.) He then points out that modern coal plants are far cleaner than the polluting horrors of days gone by, making it a key bridge fuel to nuclear if nothing else.

So surely it’s weird that so many environmentalists, especially if they were climate alarmists, were dead set against natural gas and nuclear. Though to be both fair and positive, in the real world some governments are finally starting to pass the alarmist sanity test of turning to fission nuclear power including, we’re surprised and pleased to note, the Canadian one. Moreover, even the New York Times “Climate Forward” is writing sympathetically about reliable ways of disposing of spent reactor fuel whose imaginary unmanageability was long meant to be a decisive argument against nuclear power.

Others governments, alas, are still building pastures for the unicorns they are sure will shortly bound into view and wondering why so many coal trolls are still sitting there.