By Ira Katz
October 30, 2026
Tom Woods recently had James Taylor, president of the Heartland Institute, on his podcast . The gist of the conversation is the good news that the data keeps coming in that there is no climate "crisis" (see The Existential Crisis - LewRockwell). Furthermore, the public perception of the so-called crisis is waning. I had become aware of this climate change in the public perception of climate change in a very subtle way.
I spent the last 16 years of my working life with the industrial gas company Air Liquide. I have previously written about the company and my experience in it. In my opinion the company was not "woke" but did express many of the platitudes of big western corporations (see what I wrote about an internal webinar on sustainability). Regarding climate change, and especially the need to reduce greenhouse gases, this was more than mere politics within the corporate culture. In fact, there were many big investments by the company to avoid the wrath of the environmental movement because air separation requires very large amounts of energy. So there was the "need" to find "clean" energy sources. But there were also proactive investments in technologies created by the crisis, i.e., hysteria, itself. For example, with its century of gas handling experience it was natural that the company could develop technology for carbon capture. But the really big bet was on hydrogen production and its complete value chain.
The indicator for the change in the climate change paradigm came in a speech by the former PDG (président-directeur général) of Air Liquide Benoit Potier to the Air Liquide 2026 Annual General Meeting for stock holders (full disclosure, I own Air Liquide stock bought at reduced rates for employees). His presentation was titled, Strategic scoping, where he was to give "the usual macroeconomic and geopolitical outlook on the world." But he added, "And as you know, this is becoming tricky." His overview of events, especially during the current century, lead to an interesting conclusion, that "we have moved over time from industrial capitalism to financial capital capitalism to something that is more of a political capitalism today." In particular, "the border between politics and economics is not so clear. Global trade is being reorganized, technologies, critical raw materials supplies, energy, semiconductors, defense. On all these issues, the states interfere in the role and actions of economic actors. Autonomy and sovereignty are back with a vengeance and national preference is a thing."
Relevant to this article was his take on climate, "the global consensus is on the back foot nowadays and pragmatism is the word of the day even though progress is still very real and for key carbon capture and sacration and hydrogen are still offer significant prospects." My emphasis on this quote from the YouTube transcript of the translation from French. The key word "pragmatism" says it all for the new consensus.
How and why did the consensus change is not an academic question. The global elites that created the consensus are always up to nefarious schemes. I think we will get the answer by following the money. All the big bucks these days are going into artificial intelligence which needs a tremendous amount of energy. So once we learn A) that The Motley Fool; then we know that sure to follow is B) Listen Closely to Hear Bill Gates' Stunning Climate Reversal.