Pic: design master, istockphoto

You can tell when you’re winning a game when your opponent starts to sweat. Why has Donald Trump tried to block offshore wind? Because his backers in the oil and gas industry are starting to see demand slump. Why did the ever-wrong* Institute of Economic Affairs release a report claiming the true cost of Net Zero was eleventy-gazillion quid? Because their backers in the oil and gas industry are starting to see demand slump. Why do we see a constant stream of misinformation about EVs... because somebody sees ‘our’ winning as them losing. And they’re right.

Even the Guardian’s recent article about the so-called ESG-backlash, included the oil majors getting cold feet. Of course they will – after all, a low carbon economy means “no oil majors.” Durr. If there’s an ESG backlash in the energy sector, why is increasing amounts of capital going into renewable energy?

In the same way that climate change deniers like to cherry pick annual temperature data to try and claim globally warming has paused (“It stopped in 1998. No wait, it stopped in 2016, No wait…), certain people will pick over any data for a slight downturn in any green economy data and make out it’s an apocalyptic failure.

Always look at the signal, not the noise. And, despite everything, the signal is still going in the right direction. All the rest of this is just the extended death rattle of vested interests realising their time is up.

Spoiler alert: One of my Kick Ass Sustainability Ideas for 2026 (next week’s webinar), is the role of creative destruction in the low carbon transition. It’s the bit that no-one wants to say out loud – that the closure of an oil refinery is a sign of success. That’s very harsh on the employees concerned, I know, but on the other hand the green economy is desperate for people with practical technical skills – and of course concerns about, say, the employment impacts of AI don’t make the headlines.

* These people were the brains behind Liz Truss’s mini budget.