For years, climate alarmism has reigned as political catechism: The planet is burning and only drastic action — deindustrialization, draconian regulation, even ceasing childbearing — could forestall certain apocalypse. Now, at least some signs are emerging that both the broader public and leading liberal voices may be recoiling from the doom and gloom. First, recent polling shows that the intensity of climate dread is weakening. According to a July report from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, while a majority (69%) of Americans still say global warming is happening, only 60% say it’s “mostly human-caused”; 28% attribute it mostly to natural environmental changes. A similar October study from the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute found that “belief in human-driven climate change declined overall” since 2017. Interestingly, Democrats and political independents, not Republicans, were primarily responsible for the decline. Moreover, public willingness to countenance personal sacrifice in the name of saving the planet seems to be plummeting: An October 2024 poll from the Pew Research Center found that only 45% said human activity contributed “a great deal” to climate change. An additional 29% said it contributed “some” — while a quarter said human influence was minimal or nonexistent. The moral panic is slowly evaporating. The fading consensus among ordinary Americans matches a more dramatic signal from ruling-class elites. On Oct. 28, no less an erstwhile ardent climate change evangelist than Bill Gates published a remarkable blog post addressing climate leaders at the then-upcoming COP30 summit. Gates unloaded a blistering critique of what he called “the doomsday view of climate change,” which he said is simply “wrong.” The climate alarm machine — powered by the twin engines of moral panic and groupthink homogeneity — is sputtering. When the public grows skeptical, when billionaire techno-philanthropists question the prevailing consensus and when supposedly mainstream scientific projections reverse course, that’s a sign that the days of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” propaganda documentary and John Kerry’s “special presidential envoy for climate” globe-trotting vanity gig are officially over.
