Why would they hide? The Church of Climatology reached its radiant peak in 2022, nestled deep in the Biden years, when the prevailing assumption was that we were in for a full eight-year sermon. But peaks always arrive after the overstretch, never during the quiet ascent.
If I had to place a wager, I’d say the foundations of the movement’s eventual unraveling were laid during the Obama era. That was when the climate crusade stopped being a cause and started becoming a creed. And like every extremist movement in history, it inevitably drifted toward its most unhinged fringe.
There is no middle ground in the world of revealed “ultimate truths.” If you’re convinced you’ve glimpsed the celestial endgame, compromise is heresy. Once society hands over money and freedoms to the zealots, more is immediately demanded. There’s no logical terminus—idealism knows no finish line, only the misty promise of “bliss,” undefined and therefore insatiable.
Clinton gave the idealists a microphone. Obama turned up the volume to eleven. From that point onward, the clock was ticking. Extremist movements always burn hottest just before they begin to collapse under the weight of their own purity tests.