By Gary Abernathy

This article originally was published at The Empowerment Alliance and is re-published here with permission. 

While not everyone is on board with President Trump’s “America First” philosophy, its importance when it comes to energy is brought into sharp focus when considering where the U.S. would be if it capitulated to the whims of global organizations like the United Nations or obeyed the verdicts of world courts.

The frightening attitudes of believers in global rule were recently on display courtesy of a New York Times opinion piece headlined “Climate Science is Now the Law,” penned by three writers who are all part of something called the Center for International Environmental Law. In their article, the authors claim, “The science on climate change has long been settled. Now the law is, too.”

How did this phenomenon occur? The writers inform us that the International Court of Justice – the judicial branch of the United Nations – has ruled on a petition from “the South Pacific archipelago nation of Vanuatu and other climate-vulnerable countries, with the help of Pacific Island students” who “secured” a U.N. resolution asking the court “to clarify what existing international law requires governments to do about climate change and what legal consequences they face if their failure to uphold the law causes serious harm.”

The result? Not a surprise. The court ruled that “countries must protect citizens from the ‘urgent and existential threat’ of climate change. When a country fails to curb greenhouse gas emissions — whether by producing or consuming fossil fuels, approving new exploration to find them or subsidizing the industry — it may be held liable for ‘an internationally wrongful act,’ the court’s 15 judges said.”

The authors conclude, “This makes it much harder for any government or company to say that rules don’t apply to them or they don’t have to act. … It is a cease-and-desist notice to fossil fuel producers.” So there!

One can easily imagine the Biden administration subjugating itself to the international judiciary. Fortunately, the Trump administration – remembering that little document called the U.S. Constitution – treats rulings from international courts with the same level of respect paid to “Do Not Remove” tags on couch cushions.

At about the same time that the International Court of Overstep was issuing its decree for nations to kneel at the feet of the wind and solar gods, the Trump administration took another giant leap in its race to reverse Biden’s disastrous energy policies. On July 7, the Energy Department unveiled its “Report on Evaluating U.S. Grid Reliability and Security,” as required under President Trump’s April executive order to examine the topic.

“This methodology equips DOE and its partners with a powerful tool to identify at-risk regions and guide federal interventions to prevent power outages, accelerate data center deployment, and ensure the grid keeps pace with explosive load growth driven by artificial intelligence and reindustrialization,” the DOE reported.

Rather than follow international directives and judgments to rid itself of energy sources like natural gas, which is necessary to power technology, manufacturing and the coming AI data centers, the DOE is, fortunately, doing the exact opposite. Among the biggest DOE findings:

• If current plant retirement schedules and incremental additions remain unchanged “most regions will face unacceptable reliability risks within five years.”
• Radical change is necessary because otherwise, the magnitude of projected AI data centers and other manufacturing “cannot be met with existing approaches to load addition and grid management.
• The coal and gas plant retirements previously planned by 2030 “could lead to significant outages when weather conditions do not accommodate wind and solar generation.”
• Even with plans to replace 104 gigawatts of plant retirements with 209 gigawatts of new generation by 2030, “only 22 (gigawatts) come from firm baseload generation sources,” meaning that “the model found outage risk in several regions rises more than 30-fold.” (A gigawatt is equal to 1 billion watts.)

In other words, replacing firm baseload sources like natural gas with alternative sources like wind or solar is not an apples-for-apples proposition, since “renewables” put the grid at greater risk. Establishing arbitrary end dates for our most affordable and reliable energy sources is both illogical and reckless.

On the heels of the international court’s irresponsible and (thankfully) unenforceable decree, and the DOE’s astute recommendation to do the opposite of what the court prescribed, came a story from Reuters declaring that the Trump administration’s actions to end or curtail Biden-era subsidies and credits for “renewables” are, fortunately, having an impact.

“Singapore-based solar panel manufacturer Bila Solar is suspending plans to double capacity at its new factory in Indianapolis. Canadian rival Heliene’s plans for a solar cell facility in Minnesota are under review. Norwegian solar wafer maker NorSun is evaluating whether to move forward with a planned factory in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And two fully permitted offshore wind farms in the U.S. Northeast may never get built,” the news agency reported.

President Trump is putting America first and leading an energy renaissance that should be in full bloom on our nation’s 250th birthday on July 4, 2026. It’s difficult to imagine a greater Independence Day gift to the American people than freedom from the cold, dark landscape that would result from following the directives of global agencies and the rulings of international courts.

Gary Abernathy is a longtime newspaper editor, reporter and columnist. He was a contributing columnist for the Washington Post from 2017-2023 and a frequent guest analyst across numerous media platforms. He is a contributing columnist for The Empowerment Alliance, which advocates for realistic approaches to energy consumption and environmental conservation. Abernathy’s “TEA Takes” column will be published every Wednesday and delivered to your inbox!

This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.

Charles Rotter

Breaking: Climate Consensus Crusaders Sue to Save the Endangerment Finding From… Skeptics With Opinions

Yesterday, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) stormed into federal court, clutching their pearls and a 40-page complaint, to demand that the EPA and Department of Energy be stopped from—brace yourself—listening to people who don’t think “climate change” is the meteorological equivalent of Armageddon.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, reads like a mashup of Chicken Little’s autobiography and a high-school debate club’s “Appeal to Consensus” handbook. According to the plaintiffs, the great crime here is that Secretary of Energy Christopher Wright dared to assemble five well-known climate skeptics—John Christy, Judith Curry, Steven Koonin, Ross McKitrick, and Roy Spencer—to review the evidence and produce a report questioning the EPA’s 2009 “Endangerment Finding”. That’s the sacred ruling declaring greenhouse gases an official public health menace, without which the climate policy priesthood fears their altar might crumble.

The complaint is a parade of consensus incantations—“overwhelming scientific consensus,” “ocean of evidence,” “confirmed time and again”—interrupted only by ad hominem swipes at the Working Group’s résumés and reading lists. Curry, they note with horror, has criticized the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for “corruption.” Koonin once worked for BP. Spencer testified on behalf of a coal company. In other words, these people are contaminated by thoughtcrime.

EDF and UCS accuse Wright’s Climate Working Group of operating in secret, holding no public meetings, stacking the deck entirely with “contrarians,” and failing to genuflect before the holy consensus. They demand the court erase the group’s report, bar EPA from using it to justify repealing the Endangerment Finding, and—naturally—extend public comment periods until the paperwork gods are appeased.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, for his part, has called the reconsideration “the largest deregulatory action in the history of the United States” and a “dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion”—a metaphor that, judging from the plaintiffs’ reaction, hit the bullseye.

In sum, the lawsuit boils down to this: the wrong people were asked the wrong questions and gave the wrong answers. In the plaintiffs’ worldview, “science” is not a method of inquiry but a franchise with exclusive licensing rights. Any unauthorized competition must be shut down, preferably by federal injunction.

One thing’s for sure—this case will test not just the legal durability of the Endangerment Finding, but whether “consensus” has officially replaced “evidence” as the highest standard in American science. And if the complaint’s tone is any clue, the consensus crowd isn’t feeling particularly confident.