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President Donald Trump re-took the White House on campaign promises aimed at upending the global climate debate.
He vowed to dismantle climate legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act and recommit the United States to fossil-fuel-based energy independence.
Now it’s clear his strategy wasn’t just an American story, but part of a global pushback.
Just look at the United Kingdom, where a full-scale revolt against extreme green policies is exposing the dangers of net-zero mandates that favor virtue-signaling over affordability and innovation.
The UK’s net-zero law, enacted in 2019, committed the country to zero carbon emissions by 2050.
It was hailed as bold leadership, but the reality has been economic sabotage.
Since climate policy began in earnest in 2003, UK inflation-adjusted electricity prices for households and industries have increased 140% to 2024.
They are now nearly three times higher than US electricity costs.
The Labour government’s renewable-heavy plans will only inflate costs further.
At a recent parliamentary hearing, top energy executives laid bare the facts: Even if wholesale prices were to plummet to zero, consumer bills would remain just as high as today due to escalating policy-driven expenses.
Now, public fury has shattered the cross-party net-zero consensus.
Britain’s Conservative Party has long publicly backed climate legislation. But with polls putting its support at just 18%, even lower than its catastrophic 24% showing in last year’s elections, the Conservatives have pledged to scrap the Climate Change Act and its 2050 target, finally recognizing that it fuels higher costs.
Not coincidentally, the surging Reform UK party echoes this stance, decrying poorly designed green policies.
Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer might quietly scale back or delay key green targets, according to reports, in a belated, tokenistic effort to keep energy bills down.
Even the Tony Blair Institute, hardly known for climate skepticism, now urges suspending carbon taxes on gas to slash energy prices through 2030, prioritizing cheap power over emission cuts like the US and China do.
The UK’s plight is a harbinger of a retreat from the global net-zero experiment that until very recently has been championed by politicians in blue US states and across Europe, as well as further abroad.
In Australia, the conservative Liberal Party has abandoned the promise of net-zero in 2050, and will instead prioritize lower energy prices.
Germany’s far-right AfD surged to 20% in 2025 elections, railing against “elitist” green burdens and vowing to halt decarbonization.
Japan’s new Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi prioritizes nuclear revival for energy security over aggressive renewables.
Even the European Union is rolling back environmental laws, easing off its sustainable finance rules amid farmer protests and deregulation pushes.
Its climate promises for 2040 have already been watered down, and crucially left the door open to further loosening those pledges if they — inevitably — end up having a negative impact on the EU economy.
The broadening dissent doesn’t dismiss the reality of the climate issue.
Rather, it insists that we shouldn’t deny the costs of climate policy — and must admit that net-zero will cost hundreds of trillions of dollars and deliver few benefits.
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The truth is that the rich world matters very little for climate in this century.
The main UN model shows that even if all rich countries were to cut their carbon emissions to zero, it would avert less than 0.2°F of projected warming by the end of the century, while imposing massive hits of up to 18% on rich-world GDP by 2050.
The ever-increasing cost of climate policy is one reason the rich world is cutting back in many other areas, including aid to the world’s poorest.
That, in part, is why philanthropist Bill Gates has called for a strategic pivot on climate.
He has laid out three tough truths: Climate change is serious but “will not lead to humanity’s demise”; temperature is not the best progress metric; and we should instead focus on boosting human welfare.
This means shifting away from the obsessive focus on emission cuts that has shaped climate and energy policy across the UK, Europe and other western countries.
The burgeoning political revolt — from the UK’s energy crisis to Trump’s America-first energy revival — is a wake-up call: Net zero means economic pain with little climate gain.
Yet Democratic politicians in the US — from California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who vowed at COP30 to force the United States back into the Paris Agreement, to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who threatens a “nuclear option” if California’s strict vehicle emission standards are revoked — must recognize that aggressive climate mandates are courting a severe voter backlash.
Politicians still pushing aggressive mandates, even in Democratic strongholds, should take note.
It’s time for honesty over hype in US climate policy.
Only then can America tackle its challenges — and the climate — without self-inflicted wounds.
Bjorn Lomborg is president of the Copenhagen Consensus and author of “False Alarm” and “Best Things First.”