Suppressing Climate Dissent Cannot Prevent Reality From Asserting Itself

Manhattan Contrarian ^ | 17 Jan, 2026 | American Thinker

[MtnClimber]

Here in the U.S., the second Trump administration has largely pulled the plug on the suite of crazy energy policies marching under the banner of “fighting climate change.” But the same is not true in many other advanced-economy countries, for example Germany, Australia and the UK.

Consider the UK. In the 2024 election the voters gave a large parliamentary majority to the left-wing Labour Party. The resulting government has doubled down on the policies of Net Zero, fossil fuel suppression, and generating energy from “renewables.” Convinced of their own correctness, and indeed righteousness, the government seeks to silence all dissent from its policies, characterizing disagreement as “misinformation” or “climate denial.”

Meanwhile, however, when it comes to actual energy production, reality keeps asserting itself.

In a January 9 column at Net Zero Watch, Andrew Montford covers the UK government’s latest tactics in enforcing groupthink and silencing climate dissenters. (Full disclosure: I am on the Board of NZW’s American affiliate.). The title of the column is “The antics of the climate clique.” It seems that Parliament has formed a group called the “Energy Security and Net Zero Select Committee,” and that Committee is conducting a series of hearings with the title “Supporting the energy transition.” Andrew’s summary:

It’s very much what you might expect – panel after panel of prominent members of the green blob, with not a dissenting voice heard, either among the witnesses or the panel members. This is no surprise – most select committees are simply choreographed stage shows, carefully designed to maintain narratives and suppress inconvenient truths.

Montford lists witnesses at two recent hearings, all of them members of what he calls the “tightly closed clique” of climate scaremongers:

- Angharad Hopkinson, a political campaigner from Greenpeace

- Lorraine Whitmarsh, from the Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations

- Stephanie Draper, a climate campaigner

- Roger Harrabin, ex-BBC Energy and Environment Analyst

- Bob Ward, PR bod at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change

- Rebecca Willis, ex-Green Alliance, and now an academic at Lancaster University.

Montford’s conclusion:

Everywhere you look – from universities to the academies to the mainstream media there has been a complete shutting out of dissenting voices and an absolute refusal to engage with counterarguments. That is why we are in the disastrous economic state we are.

But then there is reality. You may recall that, back in the early 2000s, the large British oil major then called “British Petroleum” changed its name to BP and began a big rebranding using the tag line “Beyond Petroleum.” Nearly two decades later, in 2020, finding itself still in the oil business, BP decided to double down on its dive into energy transition. This was the time of peak woke. From Forbes, August 4, 2020:

In details released this morning, London-based BP established a battery of targets for 2030. It plans to reduce its oil and gas production by 40% by 2030, from roughly 2.6 million barrels per day currently; increase its investments in renewable energy with the aim of having 50 gigawatts of generation capacity by 2030, up from 2.5 gigawatts last year; and increase the number of electric vehicle charging points it owns from 7,500 to 70,000. And it pledged to undertake no more oil exploration activities in countries where it does not already have some upstream operations.

At the time, some expressed skepticism about BP’s plans, but analysts noted that the goals were sufficiently detailed and specific as to indicate that they “meant business”:

A note by analysts at Sankey Research said that, while skeptics are generally right to harbor “suspicions of a ‘Greenwash’...the scale and scope of these targets is impressive.” The long list of specifics in BP's new plan offer evidence that BP means business. It knows that targets unveiled today will be used by investors and environmentalists to hold the company to account a decade from now.

Five and a half years later, but still well short of 2030, it looks like BP’s big shift to renewables didn’t work out. The Wall Street Journal had a piece on January 14, quietly buried on page B3, reporting on BP’s debacle. The headline is “BP Flags $5 Billion Write-Down of Low-Carbon Business.” Excerpt:

BP said it would write down the value of its gas and low-carbon energy division by up to $5 billion, the legacy of an ill-timed move into renewables that left it the least profitable of the major oil companies. The London-based company is now in the early stages of a turnaround aimed at bringing the business back to its roots: drilling for oil and gas. BP has reined in investments in operations geared toward the energy transition, walked away from some renewable projects and abandoned plans to sharply reduce its oil and gas production.

As part of the re-focusing, BP is bringing in a new CEO, and getting rid of the people who steered it in the disastrous direction of “fighting climate change”:

Last month [BP] appointed Meg O’Neill, an outsider considered a fossil-fuel champion, as its next boss. . . . BP has brought in a new team of executives, replacing those associated with the expensive push into renewables.

Montford of NZW takes note of the bigger picture, in which the people in the UK Parliament, despite continuing ability to silence their opposition, are rapidly losing the game:

In the aftermath of Ukraine and Venezuela, and the USA’s withdrawal from both the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the IPCC, it is clear that the world is moving on very quickly. Seen in this light, the select committee inquiry can be seen as the last hurrah of a dying movement.

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TOPICS: Business/Economy; Science; Society
KEYWORDS: greenenergy

[MtnClimber]

How much money has been lost due to this “scary children’s tale” that the Earth is about to end?

[MtnClimber]

Manhattan Contrarian ping

[MinorityRepublican]

The resulting government has doubled down on the policies of Net Zero, fossil fuel suppression, and generating energy from “renewables.”

The EV mandate will return if we elect Gavin Newsom in 2028.

[Bon of Babble]

The UK is a police state.

Flood the country with destitute, incompatible 3rd world scum to displace, replace and bankrupt the native population.

Then, harshly punish, jail and fine, anyone who speaks out against the genocide being waged against them:

"Data from the Times and parliamentary sources indicate over 12,000 arrests in 2023 under "hate speech" laws—equating to about 33 per day.

The UK has seen landmark sentences for online hate speech, such as Jordan Parlour (20 months) and Tyler Kay (38 months) in 2024, for posts that 'incited racial unrest.'"

[jerod]

For hundreds, if not thousands of years, it’s always been called the ‘January Thaw’... Now it’s called global warming.

Give it a break... There have always been periods during winter months when you get a few days of pleasantly warm weather. It’s not global warming... Nor is it global warming because you get a heatwave during the summer... Heatwaves and January thaws are nothing new and have been around for several millennia.

[combat_boots]

Raping young British girls without consequence for years is proof of conquest.

[sauropod]

Bkmk

[combat_boots]

The faces of jihad

https://nypost.com/2026/01/19/opinion/how-radical-islamists-and-the-far-left-united-to-fight-america-everywhere-and-all-the-time/

[Brian Griffin]

It must be my imagination that my part of Florida is cold this winter morning.

January 19th does seem a bad day in many years.

[rktman]

Lemmings!

[dagunk]

The faces of jihad

*******************************

Took the Europeans 700 years to kick them out last time they invaded.

[SaxxonWoods]

“Suppressing Climate Dissent Cannot Prevent Reality From Asserting Itself”

Exactly, and I’m fine with that.