Last year’s presidential election was a demolition derby for a host of progressive causes and illusions. Democrats are the biggest casualties of this collision with political reality, but Green New Dealers aren’t far behind.

President Trump’s triumphant return to the White House puts climate science deniers back in charge of national policy, at best retarding and at worst reversing America’s clean energy transition for the next four years.

After declaring a bogus “national energy emergency” last week (is he really unaware that U.S. oil and gas production has surged in recent years?) Trump issued executive orders pulling America out of the Paris climate accord, expanding drilling on public lands, blocking offshore wind and gutting former President Joe Biden’s clean energy initiatives.

Climate change was far from the voters’ top issue last November. In fact, the outcome underscored the failure of environmental activists to convince voters that it should be. Nor have they come close to forging a national consensus behind their demands to swiftly phase out fossil fuels and rely exclusively on renewables.

It turns out that waging a quasi-religious war against oil and gas isn’t an effective way to rally majority support for fighting climate change. Most Americans favor the latter, but not the former, which they see as both impractical and gratingly sanctimonious.