Climate change should be the big story of 2026
Fossil-fuel production and use must be reduced by half by 2030. And with fear and fatigue—and in an increasingly insecure world—nobody even wants to think about this sword over our heads, and what we owe our future generations. Economic actors were already backing away before Donald Trump’s corrupt negligence.
Environment and Climate Change Minister Julie Dabrusin, pictured on Dec. 1, 2025, at the House Environment Committee, has a low profile in the Carney government. The Hill Times photograph by Andrew Meade
OPINION | BY BILL HENDERSON | February 16, 2026
GIBSONS, B.C.—“We are currently living through a paradigm shift in the speed, scale, and severity of risks driven by the climate-nature crisis. Yet many regulations and government actions are dangerously out of touch with reality,” said Laurie Laybourn, at the Strategic Climate Risks Initiative, to The Guardian.
The big story of 2026 should be that climate is an emergency requiring urgent emission reduction. Seriously, the only other story in the running is how much closer United States President Donald Trump is pushing us to a possible nuclear world war.
But, of course, climate change is getting to be less of a story everyday: it’s old and tedious, governments have more important things to do, the econosphere has more important things to do. Climate change is just dismissed—without any needed reason—by the most important country in the world where the Trump administration is partner with the fossil fuel industries trying to get as much coal, oil, and gas burned as possible (for as much personal and wider business profit as possible). Even before Trump’s second term, businesses and governments had begun pulling back from what could be characterized as a long and expensive attempted transition that hadn’t had much effect on emissions, at least globally where production of the fatal poison continues to rise.
As former Washington Post climate reporter Chris Mooney opined on Substack. “I continue to think this is more a zeitgeist thing, where there’s a broader shift away from considering climate change an urgent issue,” he wrote. “Nothing major about the science has changed, of course. But I think there is just fatigue, reflecting in part the domestic and global failures to show significant progress on the issue.”
The climate events and science have grown more dire, but instead of being the hub of activity, climate change—especially mitigation—has been put on a back burner. A surreal society-wide denial has us all hushed up because we can’t quit fossil fuels.
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Nobody really wants to do without fossil fuels. Those who control our society (business leaders and the wealthy) certainly don’t want to burn less of it—that would make them poorer; government would be far more difficult if successful mitigation kept fossil fuels from powering the economy and generating wealth; we don’t want to lose our very fortunate lifestyles made possible by a fossil fuel economy. It’s the economy, stupid (like it used to be i’t’s the crops, stupid’ when we all lived in agrarian societies) and almost all of us are totally dependent and still reliant on fossil fuels for more than 80 per cent of energy.
The energy transition was supposedly a path to displacing fossil fuels without impairing our economy, our lifestyles, without diminishing our energy use, but energy transitions are additive—historically the new source of energy just added to the continuing increase in energy, not displacing the previous sources. Renewables are growing like topsy, but fossil fuel production and use continues to grow; emissions have not declined, have not even peaked.
“Structurally we are close to a peak, but we have been structurally close to a peak for 10 years,” said Glen Peters, from the Norwegian Centre for International Climate Research, one of the closest watchers of global emissions.
Renewables are great technology and a hopeful future, but we need urgent and deep emission reduction in an emergency climate situation that gets worse each passing moment—at least a reduction by half globally by 2030. But there isn’t a possible painless route—fossil-fuel production and use must be reduced by half by 2030. And with fear and fatigue—and in an increasingly insecure world—nobody even wants to think about this reality, this sword over our heads, and what we owe our kids and future generations. Economic actors were already backing away before Trump’s corrupt negligence.
We’ve raced past the 1.5C guardrail, and we are on pace with accelerating warming to exceed a 2C rise in Global Mean Surface Temperature by 2050. Climate change is causing horrific deaths and destruction already in more vulnerable parts of the world, and extreme weather is getting increasingly expensive even in privileged North America.
But far worse, accelerating warming already threatens to set off feedbacks or push natural systems (like an AMOC collapse—the possible future shutdown of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, a system of ocean currents that transports warm water northward) over tipping points. We should never be this close to such existential risks. Cutting emissions significantly this decade is essential in trying to achieve climate safety. And this must mean a direct regulated wind-down of fossil fuel production and use nationally and globally, and that’s just impossible, so nobody goes there and the biggest story of our day is ignored by everybody.
In his foreword to a must-read new report on recalibrating climate risk, Mark Campanale, CEO of Carbon Tracker, said: “The net result of flawed economic advice is widespread complacency amongst investors and policymakers. There’s a tendency in certain government departments to trivialise the impacts of climate on the economy so as to avoid making difficult choices today. This is a big problem—the consequences of delay are catastrophic.”
The Recalibrating Climate Risk report seems especially aimed at bankers, denizens of international finance, and leaders of government whose experience with managing complex systems and risk should have prepared them better: you should have been much more precautionary, it’s not just the economy that is at risk, stupid.
Bill Henderson is a long-time climate activist. Contact him at [email protected].