CHRIS JOHNSON And AIDEN BUZZETTI: The Left’s Prophesy Of Environmental Apocalypse Demands Revival On The Right

Today’s Left has a religious aversion to the most normal aspects of life: having kids, driving a car, charging a phone, or grilling burgers in the backyard. If you are wondering why your college freshman is convinced that everything you are doing—and, in fact, the entirety of Western Civilization—is evil, look no further than the climate. The Left’s anarchic rage is almost entirely a result of climate panic.

According to the Left’s narrative, the West is ending the world by causing a climate apocalypse. If the West is immolating the entire planet, then, of course, capitalism is evil, anything is permissible to end the crisis, and liberal democracies like Israel and America are the villains.

The Right shouldn’t waste time responding to these conclusions with reasoned arguments. We should lead by example and use every tool available to build and innovate in the energy space. If we don’t, more generations of young people who care about the planet will be lost to ever-more -aggressive forms of environmental extremism that assume there is no alternative way to imagine (and build) the future.

One of the easiest ways we can start to build in the short term is by leveraging the Department of Energy’s Loan Provisions Office. There could be hundreds of billions of dollars available to direct loans (not grants) to whatever technologies the Trump Administration wants to pursue.

In the House version of the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” Republicans were looking to cut this program completely, which would functionally give away an immense opportunity to build the energy dominant future that conservatives want. That is exactly the problem with so many in the modern GOP: even after President Trump came in as a total rejection of the neoliberal consensus that reigned for decades, our leaders return to it.

Thankfully, some of the Office’s financing ability was saved, and some was moved to Section 1706, now called the “Energy Dominance Financing Authority,” in the Senate version. However, the fact that this was a fight at all gets to exactly the frustration with elected Republicans: their knee-jerk is to just cut, cut, cut without thinking.

Conservatives spent the decades between Reagan and Trump repeating the same stale talking points about shrinking government and largely ceded talk of our energy and environmental future to purple-haired baristas who hate prosperity.