And then on December 11, there was Greta Thunberg winning Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year” award. (Did you even know that Time Magazine still exists?) One of the many quotes from Thunberg in the Time article: “‘I want you to panic,’ she told the annual convention of CEOs and world leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January. ‘I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act.’”

Well, that’s the rhetoric. Shall we check in on the reality? For this portion of the post I am grateful to Benny Peiser of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, who has put out a good roundup just today. Highlights:

The UN’s Madrid climate conference ended in what can only be called a total failure. No new compulsory agreements of any sort were reached. From the Washington Times, December 16: “The annual climate fest was widely panned as a failure after wrapping up Sunday with no agreement on hot-button issues such as the Green Climate Fund, an international carbon market, ‘common metrics’ for measuring non-CO2 emissions, and reimbursement to poorer nations for ‘loss and damage caused by man-made climate change.’ . . . After two weeks, delegates from about 200 countries could only agree that there is an ‘urgent need’ to cut greenhouse-gas emissions to meet the goals of the 2015 Paris agreement, despite pressure from activists who swarmed the Madrid gathering.”

From Rupert Darwall at RealClearEnergy, December 16: “Talk doesn’t cut greenhouse-gas emissions. The UN Environment Programme describes the last ten years as a lost decade, in terms of curbing global emissions. ‘There has been no real change in the global emissions pathway in the last decade,’ UNEP says. Global emissions have risen at an average of 1.5% a year over the last ten years, pausing in 2016 but resuming the upward trend in 2017. Emissions have now reached a new record, with no sign yet of a peak. The underlying driver is the strong economic growth of non-OECD economies, which have grown at more than 4.5% a year, compared with only 2% a year for OECD members.”

In a piece for the GWPF on December 12, Vijay Raj Jayaraj summarized the approach of India toward the UN’s carbon-emissions-cutting efforts as a “fossil fuel first attitude.” Excerpt: “The Indian government has adopted a fossil-fuel-first attitude and has made clear it will not compromise on India’s developmental goals. . . . India’s . . . proposed actions [under the Paris agreement] include no significant measures to curb India’s fossil fuel use or production. Moreover, the NDC states that the country reserves the right to overturn its commitments if the proposed climate mitigatory actions cause any impedance to the growth of individual economic sectors.”

And worldwide, is use of coal increasing or decreasing? It’s increasing, of course. From The Hindu, December 17: “Coal consumption is set to rise in the coming years as growing demand for electricity in developing countries outpaces a shift to cleaner sources of electricity in industrialised nations. . . . [T]he International Energy Agency anticipates steady increases [in coal consumption] in the next five years. . . . [G]lobal coal consumption is likely to rise over the coming years, driven by demand in India, China and Southeast Asia. Power generation from coal rose almost 2% in 2018 to reach an all-time high, remaining the world’s largest source of electricity.”