The West’s
Green Delusions Empowered Putin
While we banned plastic straws, Russia
drilled and doubled nuclear energy production.
How has
Vladimir Putin—a man ruling a country with an economy smaller than that of
Texas, with an average life expectancy 10 years lower than that of
France—managed to launch an unprovoked full-scale assault on Ukraine? There is
a deep psychological, political and almost civilizational answer to that
question: He wants Ukraine to be part of Russia more than the West wants it
to be free. He is willing to risk tremendous loss of life and treasure to get
it. There are serious limits to how much the U.S. and Europe are willing to
do militarily. And Putin knows it. Missing
from that explanation, though, is a story about material reality and basic
economics—two things that Putin seems to understand far better than his
counterparts in the free world and especially in Europe. Putin
knows that Europe produces 3.6 million barrels of oil a day
but uses 15 million barrels of oil a day. Putin knows that Europe produces
230 billion cubic meters of natural gas a year but uses 560 billion cubic
meters. He knows that Europe uses 950 million tons of coal a year but produces
half that. The
former KGB agent knows Russia produces 11 million barrels of oil per day but
only uses 3.4 million. He knows Russia now produces over 700 billion cubic
meters of gas a year but only uses around 400 billion. Russia mines 800
million tons of coal each year but uses 300. That’s
how Russia ends up supplying about 20 percent of Europe’s oil, 40 percent of
its gas, and 20 percent of its coal. The math
is simple. A child could do it. The
reason Europe didn’t have a muscular deterrent threat to prevent Russian
aggression—and in fact prevented the U.S. from getting allies to do more—is
that it needs Putin’s oil and gas. The
question is why. How is
it possible that European countries, Germany especially, allowed themselves
to become so dependent on an authoritarian country over the 30 years since
the end of the Cold War? Here’s
how: These countries are in the grips of a delusional ideology that makes
them incapable of understanding the hard realities of energy production.
Green ideology insists we don’t need nuclear and that we don’t need fracking.
It insists that it’s just a matter of will and money to switch to
all-renewables—and fast. It insists that we need “degrowth” of the economy, and that we face
looming human “extinction.” (I would know. I
myself was once a true believer.) John
Kerry, the United States’ climate envoy, perfectly captured the myopia of
this view when he said, in the days before the war, that the
Russian invasion of Ukraine “could have a profound negative impact on the
climate, obviously. You have a war, and obviously you’re going to have
massive emissions consequences to the war. But equally importantly, you’re
going to lose people’s focus.” But it
was the West’s focus on healing the planet with “soft energy” renewables, and
moving away from natural gas and nuclear, that allowed Putin to gain a
stranglehold over Europe’s energy supply. As the
West fell into a hypnotic trance about healing its relationship with nature,
averting climate apocalypse and worshiping a teenager named Greta, Vladimir
Putin made his moves. While he
expanded nuclear energy at home so Russia could export its precious oil and
gas to Europe, Western governments spent their time and energy obsessing over
“carbon footprints,” a term created by an advertising firm working for British
Petroleum. They banned plastic straws because of a 9-year-old Canadian child’s science
homework. They paid for hours of “climate anxiety” therapy. While
Putin expanded Russia’s oil production, expanded natural gas production, and
then doubled nuclear energy production to allow more exports of its precious
gas, Europe, led by Germany, shut down its nuclear power plants, closed gas
fields, and refused to develop more through advanced methods like
fracking. The
numbers tell the story best. In 2016, 30 percent of the natural gas consumed by the European Union came from
Russia. In 2018, that figure jumped to 40 percent. By 2020, it was nearly 44
percent, and by early 2021, it was nearly 47 percent. For all
his fawning over Putin, Donald Trump, back in 2018, defied diplomatic
protocol to call out Germany publicly for its dependence on Moscow. “Germany,
as far as I’m concerned, is captive to Russia because it’s getting so much of
its energy from Russia,” Trump said. This prompted Germany’s
then-chancellor, Angela Merkel, who had been widely praised in polite circles
for being the last serious leader in the West, to say that her country “can
make our own policies and make our own decisions.” The
result has been the worst global energy crisis since 1973,
driving prices for electricity and gasoline higher around the world. It is a
crisis, fundamentally, of inadequate supply. But the scarcity is entirely
manufactured. Europeans—led
by figures like Greta Thunberg and European Green Party leaders, and
supported by Americans like John Kerry—believed that a healthy relationship
with the Earth requires making energy scarce. By turning to renewables, they
would show the world how to live without harming the planet. But this was a
pipe dream. You can’t power a whole grid with solar and wind, because the sun
and the wind are inconstant, and currently existing batteries aren’t even
cheap enough to store large quantities of electricity overnight, much less
across whole seasons. In
service to green ideology, they made the perfect the enemy of the good—and of
Ukraine. Common Sense only
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Germany. Green
campaigns have succeeded in destroying German energy independence—they call
it Energiewende,
or “energy turnaround”—by successfully selling policymakers on a peculiar
version of environmentalism. It calls climate change a near-term apocalyptic
threat to human survival while turning up its nose at the technologies that
can help address climate change most and soonest: nuclear and natural gas. At the
turn of the millennium, Germany’s electricity was around 30 percent
nuclear-powered. But Germany has been sacking its reliable, inexpensive
nuclear plants. (Thunberg called nuclear power “extremely dangerous,
expensive, and time-consuming” despite the UN’s International Panel on
Climate Change deeming it necessary and every major scientific review deeming
nuclear the safest way to make reliable power.) By 2020,
Germany had reduced its nuclear share from 30 percent to 11 percent. Then, on
the last day of 2021, Germany shut down half of its remaining six nuclear
reactors. The other three are slated for shutdown at the end of this year.
(Compare this to nextdoor France, which fulfills 70 percent of its electricity
needs with carbon-free nuclear plants.) Germany
has also spent lavishly on weather-dependent renewables—to the tune of $36
billion a year—mainly solar panels and industrial wind turbines. But those
have their problems. Solar panels have to go somewhere, and a solar plant in
Europe needs 400 to 800 times more land than natural gas or nuclear plants to
make the same amount of power. Farmland has to be cut apart to host solar.
And solar energy is getting cheaper these days mainly because Europe’s supply
of solar panels is produced by slave labor in concentration
camps as part of China’s genocide against Uighur Muslims. The
upshot here is that you can’t spend enough on climate initiatives to fix
things if you ignore nuclear and gas. Between 2015 and 2025, Germany’s
efforts to green its energy production will have cost $580 billion. Yet
despite this enormous investment, German electricity still costs 50 percent
more than nuclear-friendly France’s, and generating it produces eight times
more carbon emissions per unit. Plus, Germany is getting over a third of its
energy from Russia. Germany
has trapped itself. It could burn more coal and undermine its commitment to
reducing carbon emissions. Or it could use more natural gas, which generates
half the carbon emissions of coal, but at the cost of dependence on imported
Russian gas. Berlin was faced with a choice between unleashing the wrath of
Putin on neighboring countries or inviting the wrath of Greta Thunberg. They
chose Putin. Because
of these policy choices, Vladimir Putin could turn off the gas flows to Germany,
and quickly threaten Germans’ ability to cook or stay warm. He or his
successor will hold this power for every foreseeable winter barring big
changes. It’s as if you knew that hackers had stolen your banking details,
but you won’t change your password. This is
why Germany successfully begged the incoming Biden administration not to
oppose a contentious new gas pipeline from Russia called Nord Stream 2. This
cut against the priorities of green-minded governance: On day one of Biden’s
presidency, one of the new administration’'s first acts was to shut down the
Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada to the U.S. in service to climate
ideology. But Russia’s pipeline was too important to get the same treatment
given how dependent Germany is on Russian imports. (Once Russia invaded,
Germany was finally dragged into nixing Nord Stream 2, for now.) Naturally,
when American sanctions on Russia’s biggest banks were finally announced in
concert with European allies last week, they specifically exempted energy products so Russia and
Europe can keep doing that dirty business. A few voices called for what would really
hit Russia where it hurts: cutting off energy imports. But what actually
happened was that European energy utilities jumped to buy more contracts for the Russian
oil and gas that flows through Ukraine. That’s because they have no other good
options right now, after green activism’s attacks on nuclear and importing
fracked gas from America. There’s no current plan for powering Europe that
doesn’t involve buying from Putin. We
should take Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a wake-up call. Standing up for
Western civilization this time requires cheap, abundant, and reliable energy
supplies produced at home or in allied nations. National security, economic
growth, and sustainability requires greater reliance on nuclear and natural
gas, and less on solar panels and wind turbines, which make electricity too
expensive. The
first and most obvious thing that should be done is for President Biden to
call on German Chancellor Scholz to restart the three nuclear reactors that
Germany closed in December. A key step in the right direction came on Sunday
when Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck, the economy and climate minister,
announced that Germany would at least consider stopping its phaseout of nuclear.
If Germany turns these three on and cancels plans to turn off the three
others, those six should produce enough electricity to replace 11 billion
cubic meters of natural gas per year—an eighth of Germany’s current needs. Second,
we need concerted action led by Biden, Congress, and their Canadian
counterparts to significantly expand oil and natural gas output from North
America to ensure the energy security of our allies in Europe and Asia. North
America is more energy-rich than anyone dreamed. Yes, it will be more
expensive than Russian gas sent by pipeline. But it would mean Europe could
address Putin’s war on Ukraine, rather than financing it. Exporting
gas by ship requires special terminals at ports to liquify (by cooling)
natural gas; environmentalists oppose these terminals because of their
ideological objection to any combustible fuel. So it’s a good sign that
Chancellor Sholz announced plans on Sunday to build two of these terminals to
receive North American gas, along with announcing major new military spending
to counter Russia. Third,
the U.S. must stop shutting down nuclear plants and start building them.
Every country should invest in next-generation nuclear fuel technology while
recognizing that the current generation of light-water reactors are our best
tool for creating energy at home, with no emissions, right now. What you’ve
heard about waste is mostly pseudoscience. Storing used fuel rods is a
trivial problem, already solved around the world by keeping them in steel and
concrete cans. The more nuclear power we generate, the less oil and gas we
have to burn. And the less the West will have to buy from Russia. Putin’s
relentless focus on energy reality has left him in a stronger position than
he should ever have been allowed to find himself. It’s not too late for the
rest of the West to save the world from tyrannical regimes that have been
empowered by our own energy superstitions.
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