“Environmentalists”

At the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos this January, Klaus Schwab’s wife, Hilde Schwab, opened the annual meeting with the assertion that Antarctica is melting.

“Antarctica, which holds 91% of the world’s glaciers, faces catastrophic ice loss, contributing to rising sea levels,” she claimed.

That statement is simply not true. According to a recent study, Antarctica gained 661 billion tons of ice during 2009-2019. “The Antarctic continent,” in fact, “has not warmed in the last seven decades.” A December 2024 study, in addition, concluded that “iceberg calving, the detachment of ice blocks from ice sheets and glaciers… a primary process in mass loss from ice shelf systems in Antarctica and a major source of uncertainty in future projections of sea level rise” is not necessarily a consequence of climate change, not even when we’re talking about “extreme calving events”.

The sleepy town of Mandan, North Dakota, with a population of just 25,000, might seem an unlikely backdrop for a titanic legal battle. Yet, within its unprepossessing courthouse, a zealous oil billionaire is taking on Greenpeace. It’s Trump-supporting Goliath versus tree-loving David, in a case that could have far-reaching implications for both climate activism and free speech worldwide.

A B.C. Supreme Court judge has found members of the RCMP made “grossly offensive, racist and dehumanizing” remarks about Indigenous women who were arrested in 2021 during a blockade of Coastal GasLink pipeline construction.

Justice Michael Tammen said in a ruling delivered in Smithers, B.C., on Tuesday that his findings of state misconduct don’t warrant a stay of proceedings against the women, but they and another protester will get a reduction in their sentences for criminal contempt as an “appropriate” remedy.

Tammen said audio recordings captured police laughing and comparing the women protesters to “orcs” from The Lord of the Rings.

... No remedy for the Orcs?

The Retail Council of Canada says Ontario’s blue-box recycling program will cost companies $740 million in 2026 to run, nearly four times as much as when they shared the cost of curbside collection with municipalities before the program was privatized beginning in 2023.

The retail council is asking the provincial government to revamp the program to offset these costs for companies, which include any business or manufacturer whose materials end up in the blue box.

If you found a worm in your sliced bread you would be horrified. You would probably share photos and outrage on social media and return the loaf to the shop you bought it from.

Consider then that mealworm powder has just been approved by the European Union as a novel food ingredient and is now legally allowed to constitute up to 4% of food products like bread, biscuits, cakes, cheese, pasta and potato-based snacks.

But why mealworms? Why bread? And why now?

You may have seen the glorious painting, Flaming June by Frederic Leighton, showing a sleeping woman in an orange dress. Samuel Courtauld once called it ‘the most wonderful painting in existence’. But if it were to be painted today, I doubt whether the sensual masterpiece would be given the same name. Or, if it was, it might be given a trigger warning. The eco-activists wouldn’t be impressed: ‘June’s “flaming” because of climate change, you irresponsible boomers – let’s chuck some soup on it!’

Voters have concluded that the private jet-flying alarmists don’t really believe their own claims.

Momentous social movements begin to die the moment adherents figure out their leaders don’t believe what they say. Liberal Protestantism’s long decline started in the 1950s, when congregants began to wonder if their ministers still believed the old creeds (they didn’t). Communism dies wherever it’s tried because sooner or later the proletariat realize their self-appointed champions aren’t particularly interested in equality. Many sects and cults dwindle the moment their supposedly ascetic leaders are revealed to be libertines.

Something similar is happening to climate ideology.