How AI Is Disrupting Climate Change Orthodoxy
By Victor Davis Hanson | Published on November 19, 2025
For more than three decades, a single narrative has dominated Western politics and media: the belief that humanity faces an imminent climate catastrophe unless advanced economies rapidly abandon fossil fuels in favor of wind and solar energy. That orthodoxy shaped policy, spending, and culture, and for a long time it seemed untouchable.
Yet a surprising combination of technological, strategic, and moral realities is now eroding that consensus. Artificial intelligence, geopolitical competition, and visible hypocrisy among climate elites are forcing a new and more skeptical conversation about energy, growth, and the true costs of “green” policy agendas.
From “Global Warming” to Climate Orthodoxy
Over roughly 35 years, the public conversation evolved from warnings about “global warming” to a broader label of “climate change,” a shift that allowed virtually any weather extreme to be framed as evidence of a carbon-driven crisis. Advocates in the West argued that industrial societies, especially the United States and Europe, bore special guilt because they had built prosperity on fossil fuels and therefore had a moral duty to decarbonize first.
At the same time, the actual empirical record remained more limited and complex than many slogans suggested. Human beings have existed for only a fraction of Earth’s history, and reliable instrument-based temperature records cover little more than a century and a half, during which natural multi-decade cycles of unusual warmth and cold still appear. That gap between sweeping claims and incomplete data helped seed quiet skepticism even as official policy hardened.
AI and the Return of Hard Energy Math
The rise of advanced artificial intelligence has suddenly reintroduced an uncomfortable reality that climate policy often tried to wish away: modern economies need staggering amounts of reliable, around-the-clock electricity. Large-scale AI models and data centers consume power at a rate that rivals heavy industry, and industry leaders now speak openly about the need for tens or even hundreds of gigawatts of new generating capacity each year—on the order of a hundred big nuclear reactors or equivalent fossil-fuel plants annually.
That simple arithmetic has shaken some high-profile climate advocates and philanthropists who once believed that wind turbines and rooftop solar arrays could smoothly replace coal, oil, and natural gas. As AI becomes the next “industrial revolution,” it is colliding with the vision of a fully renewable grid and revealing how dependent innovation, security, and prosperity remain on dense, dependable energy sources.
Geopolitics: Energy, Adversaries, and Allies
Against this technological backdrop, geopolitics has also intruded on climate idealism. Major adversarial states such as Russia and Iran rely heavily on high oil and gas prices to fund their militaries and foreign adventures, which means that aggressive Western decarbonization and constrained domestic production can unintentionally strengthen hostile regimes. When the United States ramped up fossil fuel output during Donald Trump’s first term and again in his current presidency, greater supply applied downward pressure on global prices, undercutting those adversaries and aiding allies in Europe and Asia who desperately need affordable imports.
At the same time, Beijing has perfected a dual-track strategy. China loudly embraces climate rhetoric abroad while flooding Western markets with subsidized solar panels and wind components, undercutting local manufacturers and deepening dependence on Chinese supply chains. Yet at home it continues to approve multiple new coal and nuclear plants each month, securing cheap, stable power that enhances its long-term industrial and military edge.
The Developing World’s Demand for Growth
Leaders across Latin America, Africa, and much of Asia have spent years insisting that wealthy Western nations bear historical responsibility for most accumulated emissions. They argue that since Europe and North America industrialized first—filling the atmosphere while building prosperity—the West now owes financial transfers or “climate reparations” while poorer countries continue to expand their own fossil-fuel usage.
Yet those same governments eagerly import cars, machinery, plastics, and consumer goods that are all manufactured using energy-intensive processes in advanced economies. This contradiction raises an obvious question: if Western industries are to be punished for emissions, should they also be expected to keep exporting the very products that underpin growth in the developing world? The tension between moral claims and material dependence is becoming harder to ignore.
Hypocrisy and Failed Green Mega-Projects
Public trust has also been eroded by the gap between elite rhetoric and personal behavior. Some of the most visible champions of climate alarmism own expensive oceanfront estates or crisscross the world in private jets while lecturing ordinary citizens about cutting back on air travel and accepting higher energy prices. When the same class that prescribes sacrifice seems immune to its costs, skepticism is inevitable.
On the policy front, a series of heavily subsidized “green” projects has underperformed or failed outright. High-speed rail schemes have consumed tens of billions of dollars without delivering functioning lines, large solar installations have been dismantled after disappointing results, and grid-scale battery farms have suffered fires and reliability issues. Each failure reinforces doubts that top-down climate planning can deliver affordable, dependable energy on the scale modern societies require.
Toward a More Honest Energy Debate
Put together, these trends—AI’s insatiable electricity demand, the strategic value of abundant domestic energy, the rise of assertive fossil-fuel powers, the ambitions of the developing world, and the conspicuous contradictions of climate elites—are eroding the once-unquestioned authority of climate change orthodoxy. The question is no longer whether temperatures matter, but whether the prescribed cures truly match the scale, complexity, and trade-offs of the problem.
A more honest debate would openly weigh costs and benefits, distinguish between realistic and utopian technologies, and admit that human flourishing—from AI breakthroughs to basic air conditioning for the poor—depends on energy that is both affordable and reliable. Voters, policymakers, and citizens deserve that clarity before being asked to remake their economies at the command of a small, often unaccountable elite.
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