I’ve written in prior Climate Change Weekly posts about President Donald Trump’s moves to rein in the regulatory state, promote sound climate science, advance U.S. energy dominance, and claw-back national sovereignty. It is one thing when I, a long-term advocate for such moves, discuss Trump’s actions, describing them in guardedly glowing terms. It’s another thing entirely when radical environmental activists and climate alarmists are forced to acknowledge and reckon with Trump’s actions and his actions’ influence on other countries’ leaders, admitting climate realism is, for the present, winning its war on their pet causes. But that’s just what happened recently.
We Don’t Have Time (WDHT), which bills itself as the world’s largest media platform for climate action, recently posted an article detailing what it refers to as the fossil fuel lobby’s successes—specifically 45 policies instituted across the globe which WDHT counts as “policy reversals . . . across 15 jurisdictions and the global shipping regime . . . adopted, announced, proposed, taking legal effect or materially advanced between July 2025 and July 2026.”
The first policy reversal listed was the International Maritime Organization’s decision to delay its net zero framework of shipping taxes and port fees for at least a year, possibly longer, at the behest of the Trump administration and Saudi Arabia.
Then WDHT detailed seven pan-European Union policies that delayed, made less stringent, or extended timelines for meeting net zero corporate reporting and finance goals; suspended penalties for methane emissions tied to imports; ended its internal combustion engine ban; postponed its carbon market for transportation fuels; and delayed and diluted its deforestation policies.
Beyond EU wide policies, WDHT also discussed actions taken by individual European countries, particularly, Germany, France, the Czech Republic, and the United Kingdom, that scrapped various net zero goals related to methane reductions and heating fuels, among other rules, standards, and deadlines related to reducing fossil fuel use and cutting emissions.
WDHT then listed seven actions taken by the Trump administration reversing climate programs. Most of these actions, like moving to withdraw the Endangerment Finding for carbon dioxide, the offshore wind leasing pause and buybacks of leases, and leaving the Paris agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, I’ve discussed in the Climate Change Weekly posts linked above.
Even greener-than-thou developed countries like Canada, Australia, Norway, Sweden, and New Zealand have rolled back, reduced, or delayed their previous climate commitments and laws over the past year. Norway and New Zealand, for instance, acted to expand offshore oil and gas exploration. This is a reversal of previous bans. And Canada, suspended the clean electricity regulations of Alberta, moved to expand its oil pipeline network to allow expanded shipping of crude, and eliminated its national electric vehicle mandate. Keep in mind these are countries whose leaders like to lecture the United States at various international fora concerning the need for it to cut emissions and to agree to internationally enforceable strict net zero policies— complete with penalties for non-compliance and reparations for developing countries for the past climate sins of the global West.
Nor were developing countries across the globe immune from climate policy backsliding. Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, and Indonesia—all countries that had previously pushed for quicker climate action by developed countries and committed to their own green energy programs— each implemented policies that allowed for the expansion of the development and use of their domestic fossil fuel resources, including coal.
By any measure — from media coverage, to funding, to opinion polls, to public political discussion, to actual policies—climate alarm is in retreat across the globe like never before in my lifetime. And it’s not just me saying so, like some heretic whistling past the graveyard. Rather it is those most wedded to the misanthropic, green energy, climate change, ideologically driven hoax that are decrying the shift.
Honestly, in many respects this is my Conan the Barbarian “crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women,” moment. And the lamentations are beautiful to hear, despite being, regrettably in my opinion, overblown and possibly premature.
Like Dracula, bad policies have a way of rising from the grave to inflict harm once again. Crossing my fingers this is not one of those times.
Guest author H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., is director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at The Heartland Institute.
