Ed. Note: Today’s post provides the background and significance of Robert Bradley’s recent op-ed in The Houston Chronicle, “World Should be Optim­istic About Our Fossil Fuel Future.”

For more than a decade, my once regular site for climate/energy opinion-page editorials has been off limits, with only a few letters-to-the-editor published. Examples from the good-old-days:

• “ExxonMobil on Right Path” (June 14, 2009)
• “Climate-Change Alarmism Runs into a Reality Check” (January 9, 2009)
• “False Alarms and Climate Change” (March 30, 2008)
• “Al Gore’s Telling Whoppers Again” (June 4, 2006)
• “Shoppers: There is a Bright Side to Rising Gas Prices” (April 18, 2002)
• “President is Correct to Ignore Climate Alarmists” (May 14, 2001)
• “Fear Not: The Energy Malthusians Are Wrong” ( April 21, 2000)

That changed completely when the well-monied Progressive Left captured the Chronicle, probably via grants from Big Green nonprofits that ensured that pro-wind, pro-solar, pro-“energy transformation” reporting was the regular fare–and contrary articles such as my mine were kept out (with nary an explanation, much less simple acknowledgement of receipt and/or consideration).…

“Europe’s biggest nuclear power operator EDF, which manages France’s fleet of 57 reactors, is under pressure to show it can improve on its record of reactor construction. Recent projects have been severely delayed and hugely over budget, taking well over 10 years to complete.” – Financial Times, February 20, 2026).

There’s a new leader in the nuclear power plant cost overrun derby, and it isn’t even in the clubhouse yet. Britain’s Hinkley Point C — being built in Somerset by France’s government-owned Électricité de France (EDF) — is now going to cost at least £49 billion ($65 billion) if it goes into service in 2030 and another £1 billion ($1.3 billion) if the first unit is delayed to 2031. This equates to $10 million per megawatt–best case–with multiple years of waiting.…

“The global climate elite are scrambling for relevancy and power. The poll-conscious wind and solar lobbies are disingenuously pitching affordability. And the climate zealots are getting nutty. Energy reality bats last.”

Let history note that the United States has issued a notice to withdraw from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), effective February 27, 2026. This withdrawal is broader than the previously announced (and started) withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015. The UNFCCC is the governing global network behind the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) “consensus” science (based on subjective climate-model interpretation), as well as the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 and the Paris Climate Accord of 2015.

The one-year window is running, with formal withdrawal set for February 27, 2027. As summarized by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI):

In January, President Donald Trump announced that the United States would be withdrawing from the UNFCCC.

“There is no evidence that UN COP meetings and more than $10 trillion spent on renewables over the last 30 years have affected the climate. The average atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, which is blamed for global warming, has been rising over the last 50 years without any change to the trend.”

World leaders are in turmoil. For 30 years, the United Nations, World Economic Forum, and International Energy Agency, among business and political leaders called for a shift from hydrocarbon fuels to renewable energy. Thousands of laws were enacted to try to force a net zero energy transition. But it’s now clear that green energy is unable to meet the needs of growing developing nations or support the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution in advanced nations.

Since the founding of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1992, the UN has led efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to try to fight human-caused global warming.…