DELINGPOLE: Liberal Mega-Donor Tom Steyer Gives Up On Climate Change (Because No One Cares…)

Tom Steyer – the hedge fund guy with the annoying tartan tie – has decided to quit green advocacy politics and move “beyond climate change” in order to campaign on something – anything – that people actually give a damn about.

“We want to know what matters most to you, and what should be done,” he pleads, desperately, in a new video.

Let us pause for a moment and savour the man’s absurdity, chutzpah and brazen hypocrisy.

Here is a guy who, for the last decade, has been telling us that climate change is the most important issue of our time.

That’s why he spent millions of his personal fortune in the last two election cycles promoting liberal causes and supporting Democrat candidates: in order – as  he puts it on the website of his NextGenClimate SuperPac – to “prevent climate disaster.”

So what exactly has happened to make this great green philanthropist change his mind?

Did the planet stop warming? [well yes, actually, it pretty much did for the last 20 years, but that’s another story…]

Did mankind suddenly see sense and abandon the selfishness, greed and refusal to amend his lifestyle which has caused carbon-dioxide to reach levels unprecedented in the age of humans?

Did the mighty political power of all the nations who met in Paris to secure a climate deal in December 2015 result in an agreement so watertight and effective that the world was saved from the clutches of ManBearPig?

Nope. What happened was that this shyster opportunist – as I reported here, part of his vast fortune comes from his earlier investments in Big Coal – has simply reached the very expensive conclusion that no one gives a damn about the greenies’ imaginary climate problem.

Steyer spent about $86 million in the 2016 election cycle, trying to get Democrats elected. Republicans, however, held onto both chambers of Congress, won the presidency and saw state legislature and governorship gains. NextGen spent about $56 million in 2016, according to campaign finance data.

NextGen spent nearly $21 million in the 2014 election cycle, but only had a 38 percent rate of supporting winning candidates, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Steyer spent more than $73 million of his personal fortune that election cycle only to see Republicans take control of the Senate.

There’s little evidence Steyer’s activism elevated global warming to the top of the political discussion. Polling done after the election found only 2 percent of Americans said “the environment” was their top concern.

An Associated Press-University of Chicago poll conducted in September 2016 found 57 percent of Americans wouldn’t pay more than $1 a month in higher electric bills to fight global warming.

The good news is that in the process Steyer has wasted large amounts of his own money  – $163 million in the last two election cycles – which he definitely won’t get back in kickbacks from the new regime because, hey, as he’s probably now noticed, Hillary didn’t win.

The even better news is that it illustrates how totally over green advocacy has become under Donald Trump. Steyer is the single biggest political donor in the US. If a guy as rich and connected as that can no longer see any political mileage in pushing the climate change scare, then it’s really not looking good for the green scamsters who depend on such Daddy Warbucks for their livelihoods.