Bill Maher Suffers Humiliating Self-Own While Trying To Dunk On New Trump Climate Change Policy

Bill Maher can often be a voice of rare sanity on the political left. He criticizes the Democrat Party for mistakes and for allowing the far left of the party to take over. He criticizes "woke" ideology, admits the absurdity of allowing males to compete in women's sports, and has conversations with people on all sides of the political aisle. 

But even he apparently can't escape the self-serving sense of superiority that's all too pervasive among those on the political left. And his apparent white whale of political issues is, of all things, climate change policy. 

Maher's most recent show consisted of an angry monologue about the Trump administration's efforts to roll back nonsensical Environmental Protection Agency rulings and regulations. For example, Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the EPA, announced that as part of their new rollback, car manufacturers will no longer be essentially forced into adding stop/start buttons to internal combustion engine cars. "Not only do many people find start-stop annoying, but it kills the battery of your car without any significant benefit to the environment," Zeldin said. "The Trump EPA is proudly fixing this stupid feature at Trump Speed."

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Similarly, Doug Burgum, the secretary of the interior, celebrated their regulatory shift, saying, "The whole endangerment thing opens up the opportunity for the revival of clean, beautiful American coal." 

This apparently set Maher off, and, unfortunately for him, led to one of the more embarrassing moments he's ever had on his show.

Bill Maher attends the 2025 Vanity Fair Oscar Party at Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on March 2, 2025 in Beverly Hills, California.  (Photo by Dia Dipasupil/FilmMagic)

Bill Maher Gets His Facts Wrong To Dunk On Climate Policy

Maher, during his monologue on "Real Time" this week, went off on Doug Burgum, and accidentally revealed how little he actually knows about the environment. 

"Doug Burgum, he's the interior secretary," Maher said. "Listen to this, the way they all line up behind this nonsense. He said, ‘CO2, carbon, was never a pollutant.’ He said when we breathe, we emit CO2.

"Okay, Doug, you know what, let's try this little experiment. Tonight, when you get home, go in the garage, close the door, turn the car on, and lets see if carbon is a pollutant."

Well, here's the thing with that; carbon dioxide is not carbon monoxide. Carbon dioxide, or CO2, is what we emit when we breathe. We do not, in fact, emit carbon monoxide. Carbon monoxide is extremely dangerous, which is why we have specific monitors in our homes to detect it. We don't have carbon dioxide monitors, Bill. Whoops.

What makes this especially bad is that Maher used this smug, dismissive attitude to criticize Burgum and the Trump administration for ignoring the supposed dangers of climate change. And then got a very obvious, basic fact wrong about the difference between carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. And even if he was just trying to say that "carbon" can be dangerous, that's like saying water can be dangerous. It's not when you pour it from a tap or filter into a glass and drink it, but it is dangerous if it's contaminated with sewage. Those are two different things, however. 

This is the issue with Maher and those like him. They're so obsessed with the feeling of superiority that "following science" gives them that they abandon any semblance of independent thought, getting basic concepts wrong in the process. Confusing carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide shows how little awareness the left often has, while acting as though their ideology makes them a better, more sophisticated person than the simplistic rubes who correctly evaluate that the "climate crisis" is mostly fictional. And so Maher's attempted dunk on Burgum turned into a gigantic self-own instead. Oof.