What a difference a single year makes. The once-dominant push to radically reshape society to avert climate catastrophe has collapsed. Look at Davos — that talkfest long dominated by climate advocacy. That consensus has been abandoned by its once-strongest proponents.
Emblematic of the shift was European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen not mentioning the climate transition once during her 2026 Davos talk, after putting it front and centre in preceding years.
But it’s not just the Europeans. Canadian premier Mark Carney once called for “a global net-zero commitment” to solve climate change, which he saw as “an existential threat”. Now he admits the “architecture of collective problem-solving” long supported by World Economic Forum elites, including UN-organised climate-change summits, has been “diminished”. At home, he’s pledging to make Canada an “energy superpower”.
In the US, even Democratic politicians have stopped leading with climate change as a central issue, shifting focus to affordability, low energy prices and immediate economic relief instead. Zohran Mamdani, the democratic-socialist winner of the New York City mayoral election, campaigned on rising grocery bills and housing costs, and barely discussed climate change.
This global shift is not all down to the election of Donald Trump. Voters themselves have become sick and tired of constant climate alarmism, meaning many climate advocacy voices have had to dial back their rhetoric. Shouting about doomsday is failing to deliver political gains.
Other issues have become much more important, and people are reading and watching climate-change news less across all of the Global North. The media itself has less to say: according to a Washington Post analysis, 2025 saw the fewest media mentions of climate change since March 2022.
Shouting about doomsday is failing to deliver political gains
Political strategists are even advising against talking about climate change altogether, because “when leaders say the words ‘climate change’, voters get bad vibes”.
This course correction means the media and left-wing politicians are catching up with the public, who say climate change ranks low even compared with other environmental concerns. A Pew Research Center global survey from last August found a reduction over the past few years across all high-income countries in those seeing climate change as a major threat.
This recalibration even extends to advocacy groups and observers, who have retreated from confrontational doomerism.
This retreat is good for sensible policy, because the failed alarmist approach relied on a series of persistent misrepresentations. Take the claim that extreme events, because of climate change, have dramatically made us worse off. This is simply untrue.
Deaths from climate-related disasters such as storms, floods, droughts and fires have declined sharply over the past century, with the last decade seeing some of the lowest numbers ever, despite the global population quadrupling. In the 1920s, the global death toll was nearly 500,000 people a year on average, while last year it was less than 10,000 — a reduction of more than 97%.
This progress results from better warnings, stronger infrastructure, improved disaster response, and overall societal wealth that enables such protections. Adaptation through innovation has proved to be far more effective than fear-driven restrictions.
Another big fib is the idea that China is rapidly going green. The reality is that China is massively reliant on fossil fuels, just like everyone else. Half a century ago, China obtained 40% of its energy from renewables — when it relied on wood and dung because people were poor. As Chinese people have become massively wealthier, fossil fuels peaked with production of 92% of the country’s energy in 2011 — and that figure has ebbed only slightly, to 87%, in 2023, the last year for which there is data available.
Ambitious commitments at successive climate summits to redirect enormous financial flows towards poor countries for green projects have been proved illusory. Activists and politicians demanded urgent, economy-wide transformations, insisting that only massive shifts could avert disaster. They mobilised calls for trillions to flow from taxpayers and conventional industries into renewables. Those grand visions have faltered, and private capital has all but withdrawn amid high risks and uncertain returns. What was presented as an inevitable tidal wave of sustainable finance now appears to be more like a passing blip.
Europe provides the starkest warning of idealism clashing with reality. Germany’s vaunted energy transition has been a textbook case of climate scares driving poor but immensely costly decisions. Now Chancellor Friedrich Merz confesses that Germany has achieved “the most expensive energy transition in the entire world”.
A large part of the cost comes from prematurely shutting down nuclear plants that were reliable, low-carbon and already fully paid for. Instead, policymakers increased reliance on coal and gas, drove up emissions, and presided over electricity prices skyrocketing. Merz now admits “it was a serious strategic mistake to exit nuclear energy”.
The transition from exaggeration to muted realism among the leaders at Davos is at least some progress. This reflects recognition that exaggerated fear tactics have led to public disconnection, bad policies and political backlash. Now we need to focus on what works. For now, we should deliver cheap, secure energy to boost prosperity while we innovate for a greener future.
• Lomborg is president of the Copenhagen Consensus, a visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, and the author of False Alarm and Best Things First
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