Worst Climate Stories of the Week—We're On a Road to Nowhere

Mar 14, 2025
Jeff Reynolds
Energy & Environment

They're cutting down rainforests to make way for talking heads to arrive on private jets to lecture us about climate.

All the little creatures in the rainforest will just have to make do as the UN and WEF elites, billionaires, and climate activists descend on them to lecture the rest of the world on the evils of man-made global boiling. To quote the Talking Heads (off the Little Creatures album):

We're on a ride to nowhere

Come on inside

Takin' that ride to nowhere

We'll take that ride

Maybe you wonder where you are

I don't care

Here is where time is on our side

Take you there, take you there

The musical theme for this week's column could not be more appropriate. Our main story revolves around talking heads chopping down forests to build a road to get to their annual navel-gazing conference on the climate. If this is paradise, I wish I had a lawn mower!

On top of building roads to nowhere, we have an email scandal that rivals East Anglia’s Climategate; climate cultists implementing retroactive carbon taxes; and a Tesla protester gets some self-induced poetic justice (he’s a real live wire). From our Good News Department, we have Michael Mann spanked in court; the EPA slashing and burning regulations; the continuing failure of the renewable energy markets as subsidies dry up; and a radical climate protest group getting exposed as a communist front (but what else is new).

Let’s get to it.

(DON'T MISS LAST WEEK'S COLUMN: Charles Ponzi Is Rolling Over In His Grave)

We’re On the Road to Nowhere

We have an early leader for the award for Worst Climate Story of the Year. Every year the UN runs its Conference of the Parties (COP) meeting that has become famous for elitists, propagandists, activists, and billionaires flying in on their personal jets to some far-flung locale to lecture the world on adopting communism to save the atmosphere. This year’s COP30 will be held in November in Belém, Brazil. Being located deep in the Amazon, this will require significant upgrades to infrastructure. The solution? Slash and burn that rainforest, baby!

Tens of thousands of acres of protected Amazon rainforest are being cleared and paved over to build a new four-lane highway for, of all things, the upcoming COP30 climate summit in Brazil.

The eight-mile stretch of new highway — dubbed Avenida Liberdade, or Avenue of Liberty — has gouged a deep gash through a large swath of Amazon rainforest just in time for world leaders to convene to discuss how much they care about the Amazon rainforest.

Local officials claim the new highway will be “sustainable.” They don’t say how, but presumably the hope is that slapping that label on it will get people off their backs.

Everyone Is Trying to Get to the Bar

The band in Heaven

They play my favorite song

Play it once again

Play it all night long

The Left is a one-note band, playing the same song over and over. In order to get to Leftist Heaven, you have to hum the same tune. That means lying and committing fraud in the government to get your way on carbon regulation.

That’s what our friend Kevin Killough found this week in his shocking report at Just The News:

As the Trump administration nears a decision on whether to reverse the landmark regulatory declaration that launched the "Green New Deal" movement, the legality and political motivations of the Obama-era environmental regulators are getting a fresh, hard look.

The bottom line: There was no scientific review by the Obama EPA. They began with a goal in mind, and moved activists from friendly non-profits into government positions that reached the necessary conclusions to classify carbon dioxide as a pollutant. No objections to be considered. Not surprising, given what we know of the Obama administration, but brazen in its scope and utter disregard for public input—or actual science.

Big Oil’s Life During Wartime

John Stossel has a new report on blue states fining “fossil fuel” companies billions:

Some states are now fining fossil fuel companies billions—not for breaking the law, but for selling energy legally… DECADES AGO. That won’t help climate change, but it will make EVERYTHING cost more... In New York, energy companies will have to pay $75 billion for carbon emissions dating back to the year 2000. The politicians say, “These companies were polluting! They should have to pay!” But who really pays? You will. Extra costs for energy companies just get passed on to consumers via higher prices. And these taxes won’t even reduce climate change.

One could be forgiven for this sort of post-constitutional lawlessness being reminiscent of the dystopian hellscape David Byrne sang about:

Heard of a van that is loaded with weapons,
 packed up and ready to go
 Heard of some gravesites, out by the highway,
 a place where nobody knows
 The sound of gunfire, off in the distance,
 I'm getting used to it now

Blue state voters who haven’t packed up and moved away are likely just getting used to it now. 

Tesla Protester Can’t Seem to Face Up to the Facts

He’s tense and nervous, can’t relax. Can’t sleep cause his bed’s on fire—oh wait, he’s on fire.


And now for our Good News segment.

Two Minutes for High Sticking

The Hockey Stick just keeps on failing. Michael Mann’s award for libel in his lawsuit against Mark Steyn got reduced on appeal this week. Justice was served, but perhaps even more damning was the judge’s rebuke of Mann himself:

BREAKING: Judge sanctions Michael E. Mann for "Bad-Faith Trial Misconduct" in Mann v. Free Speech: "The record plainly shows the deliberate and knowing misconduct of Dr. Mann’s counsel in eliciting false testimony from Dr. Mann and misrepresenting his grant funding."

Mann’s Hockey Stick graph has been shown to be as fraudulent as his win against Mark Steyn in a heavily biased D.C. court. Read more about his sanctioning by the judge here.

Wouldn't it be appropriate for the judge to send Michael Mann to an actual penalty box?

Once in a Lifetime at the EPA

And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack. And you may find yourself behind a large automobile. And you may ask yourself, “Well, how did I get here? Letting the days go by . . . ”

Letting the decades go by, letting the regulations pile up on top of each other, to the point they make no sense. It’s about time we go into EPA with a flamethrower and gut the regulatory state they’ve created—and that’s exactly what Lee Zeldin announced he’s doing this week:

This is our once-in-a-lifetime moment to gut the politburo that EPA has become.

Burning Down the Renewables House

You could say the renewables market is all wet. You might need a raincoat. Shakedown dreams walking in broad daylight.

Seems the market, with no visible means of support, is burning down the house.

Extinction Rebellion Exposed

Open up, open up, open the door. That’s exactly what this former member of the radical protest group, Extinction Rebellion did. Remember them? That’s the group of nutters who glue themselves to airport tarmacs and throw soup on priceless works of art. It turns out they’re more dedicated to destroying capitalism than climate solutions. Shocking, right?

(READ MORE: EXCLUSIVE: NOAA Caught Manipulating Temperature Data to Advance the Global Warming Narrative)

Jeff Reynolds is Senior Editor for Restoration News, specializing in energy and science policy, as well as dark money. Jeff is an author, editor, strategist, and public speaker. A prolific researcher and writer, he authored the book Behind the Curtain in 2019, which details the billionaires and foundations responsible for the radical left's ascension in American politics. Jeff graduated from Connecticut College with a bachelor's in Zoology. 

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