A Free-Market Energy Blog

Adaptation Momentum, Mitigation Fatigue

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- August 5, 2026

“True, Australia is ‘not reducing fast enough to achieve NSW’s legislated targets of a 50% reduction by 2030 or a 70% reduction by 2035.’ That calls for loosing or ending the unrealistic targets, which is now the climate policy for most industrial economies.”

Rob Grant, a self-described “energy transition leader” based in Perth, Western Australia, recently expressed the concern of the climate alarm community: that adaptation is the way forward, with traditional mitigation yielding. “Australia is quietly settling into a climate strategy of adaptation over abatement,” he begins, “and the temperature data says that is a bet we will lose.”

Last week’s Labor conference set no new aspiration on climate. Our Paris commitment stays the central plank, and if you assume we deliver on it, the comfortable read is “this is all Australia needs and can do.”

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Climate Journalism in Decline

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- August 4, 2026

Belle de Jong, environment editor at The European Correspondent [1], recently posted on social media:

Climate journalism is shrinking, this recent Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard piece shows. CBS lost its entire climate desk, the Washington Post cut 74% of its climate team, and NPR laid off its climate desk editor. The Media and Climate Change Observatory’s 2025 year-end analysis showed a 38% reduction in global media’s climate coverage in 2025, since the high-water mark of 2021.

She then reverses the causality to state:

The decline in weekly climate news consumption was driven partly by reduced supply, rather than a lack of interest, the Reuters Institute’s 2025 report found. People are still interested in climate news, but newsrooms stopped supplying it.

de Jong then states what she wishes were true:

All while climate change is changing our daily lives, from fatal heatwaves and floods to food prices and public health.

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Energy & Environmental Review: August 3, 2026

By -- August 3, 2026

This post excerpts energy and climate material from the Media Balance Newsletter, a free fortnightly published by physicist John Droz Jr., founder of the Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions. Droz is also the author of the popular Substack Critically Thinking About Select Societal Issues.

Unreliables (General):
Iron Law of Infrastructure
Climate change is real, but it is an unfortunate fact that renewables are useless

Wind Energy — Offshore:
Engineers studying a floating wind farm in the North Sea discovered it may be slowing the wind before it even reaches the blades

Nuclear Energy:
*** 5 states offer to accept nuclear waste
*** CGNP’s Advocacy for Diablo Canyon Extended Operations to 2045

Fossil Fuel Energy:
Energy Security and Climate Realism Usher in Coal’s Rise
When Will Upstate New York Claim What’s Theirs, Right Under Feet?

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Discovering Milton Friedman (1912–2006)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 31, 2026
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Free-Market Electricity Reform Advancing (Advocates for Consumer Regulated Electricity)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 30, 2026
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Petrostatism vs. Oil Exceptionalism: Venezuela and Beyond

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 29, 2026
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Cheap Renewables? Reuters Recycles the Myth

By -- July 28, 2026
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Vehicle Freedom from Big Climate Brother (Presidential Memo to the EPA)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 27, 2026
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Global LNG vs. the European Union

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 23, 2026
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E15 Misdirection (WSJ letter from farm-state US senators)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 22, 2026
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