Has there ever, in all of human history, been a policy failure as large as the effort to reduce CO2 emissions?
I am not referring to the debate about whether and to what extent carbon emissions cause climate change–that is an entirely separate issue from what I am talking about.
No, I am talking about the trillions of dollars spent and the enormous human suffering and economic growth foregone in the failed effort to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere.
You know what is absolutely hilarious about the whole climate movement?
It has been one giant colossal FAILURE.
Hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars have been funneled into “research” and “mitigation” on this for the last 40 years, yet none of it has made the slightest dent… pic.twitter.com/NAZH0cUSmi
— Chris Martz (@ChrisMartzWX) August 12, 2025
Whether you believe anthropogenic climate change is an existential threat or you believe it is a hoax intended to usher in a version of Marxist totalitarianism, we should all be able to agree that the effort to reduce CO2 emissions has been a huge, unprecedented failure. Arguably, no other major policy in world history has cost so much and achieved so little.
Actually, things are much “worse” today than when we started spending billions, then trillions, to get to Net Zero.
Al Gore has been pushing his climate change agenda since the early 1980s–before he became Vice President. That is nearly 50 years, and he is not alone. Almost every major politician has been howling about climate change for decades, and the United Nations got into the act in 1988 when it established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
In that time, global carbon emissions have nearly doubled. That, my friends, is really impressive. The record of failure is unbroken, and every year the failures add up even more. It’s not just that CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere are increasing–until you get to worldwide net zero, they will, even if the world were reducing the emissions level every year.
It’s that emissions are going UP, and accelerating.
That’s a 500% increase since 1960, and a doubling since the politicians and “scientists” started squawking about the issue. Net Zero=Net Doubling.
How does one fail so badly at one’s stated goal and see one’s funding increase over time? Only in government. Spend harder!
Now, some policymakers might argue that the First World IS reducing its carbon output–a falsehood I will address in a minute–to which I respond, “So what?” CO2 in the atmosphere doesn’t hang over a country as if it were smog–which actually does disperse over time–but gets pretty evenly distributed around the world in a short period of time. It literally DOES NOT MATTER who emits the CO2, only that it is there. Therefore, decreases in CO2 emissions in the US or Europe are a drop in the bucket, as China and India increase their own production by orders of magnitude more than we reduce it.
Which brings us to the lie that we are not actually emitting that CO2–we are, just by proxy. Who is buying the products made in China and India that contribute to the massive increase in CO2? We do. We are simply exporting the production overseas, reducing our own manufacturing capacity and job growth, and handing economic growth to much less efficient economies elsewhere. Arguably, we are increasing our CO2 production, but locating the emitters overseas to hide the fact that we are causing the emissions in the first place.
Europe did the same trick in the 90s and aughts–they started manufacturing cement in North Africa instead of in Europe because cement production emits a lot of carbon. They didn’t actually reduce their cement consumption–they just exported the CO2 emissions overseas, increasing the net amount of emissions but displacing the blame.
In 2010, Thomas Friedman, the bloviating New York Times columnist, famously wanted the US to be “China for a day” so that we could implement the rational climate policies of the Chinese government.
One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century. It is not an accident that China is committed to overtaking us in electric cars, solar power, energy efficiency, batteries, nuclear power and wind power. China’s leaders understand that in a world of exploding populations and rising emerging-market middle classes, demand for clean power and energy efficiency is going to soar. Beijing wants to make sure that it owns that industry and is ordering the policies to do that, including boosting gasoline prices, from the top down.
Now look at that emissions chart. See where all those extra carbon emissions are coming from? It ain’t us.
It’s impossible to calculate how much money and effort has been wasted on “reducing” carbon emissions, especially if you include foregone economic growth, but the number is in the trillions of dollars. According to a climate change advocacy site the expenditures have reached over $1 trillion a year, and when John Kerry was our climate ambassador under Joe Biden, he was looking for trillions a year in “investments.”
🇺🇸John Kerry: We Need Trillions To Solve Climate Change‼️
“We desperately need money.There is not enough money in any country in the world to actually solve climate change. It takes trillions,no government is ready to put trillions into this on an annual basis.”☝️🤔🙏👇 1/2 pic.twitter.com/aHvzmnvhQ2
— Sophia Dahl (@sophiadahl1) November 12, 2022
He wanted us to spend around $100 trillion in the next few decades–and that would increase if you included inflation–to fight climate change.
Well, look at what we have gotten so far from our investments. Since Obama was elected, emissions have gone up somewhere between 60-80% a year.
So, where is the money going if not to carbon reduction?
The money-making opportunity for fighting climate change is limitless, tens of trillions of dollars.
Climate envoy John Kerry:
“This represents the greatest economic opportunity the world has experienced since the industrial revolution.”
— Ryan Maue (@RyanMaue) June 6, 2023
Let’s just say that there are some pockets being filled, and they are not yours or mine. Kerry called climate change a gold mine for investors, and he sure has been right.
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