The frightening reality about energy security

Shortly after sabotage operations blew ruptures in the Nord Stream pipelines from Russia to Germany, OPEC announced plans to reduce oil production by two million barrels per day. Both actions increased pressure around energy shortages, notably in Europe, where prices are already substantially higher than last year and are likely to get worse as winter nears. However, the threat is global and immediate. 

Fossil fuels will be a vital source of energy for decades to come, yet the Canadian and U.S. governments remain mesmerized by climate-change evangelism and continue to stifle production of oil and gas for domestic markets, never mind for increasingly desperate allies. 

The fixation on the threat from climate change lacks both balance and perspective. The technology simply does not yet exist for a rapid transition to a world without fossil fuel. In the wake of Russia’s war on Ukraine, Germany and France are desperately reopening coal-fired power plants and reactivating dormant nuclear reactors in order to meet energy shortfalls. At the same time, China and India are importing more coal from Russia. 

As Amin Nasser, the CEO of Saudi Aramco recently observed, plans for a transformation to renewables have been “sandcastles that waves of reality have washed away.” 

Without the responsible development of fossil fuels, our societies face economic and social crises more imminent than those stemming from climate change. Yet, dubious prophecies from climate activists go largely unchallenged while evidence of global resilience to climate change over centuries is widely ignored, as are notable efforts by industry to reduce carbon emissions. U.S. and Canadian emission reductions in recent decades are largely due to the expansion of natural gas production that climate lobbyists want to shut down. 

Many of the dire predictions spouted 20 years ago have been thoroughly debunked. The polar bears are not a vanishing breed. Their population has increased from between 5,000 and 10,000 in the 1960s to roughly 26,000 today. Ten years ago, environmentalists warned sternly that the Great Barrier Reef was nearly dead as a result of bleaching caused by climate change. This year, according to Bjorn Lomborg, “two-thirds of the Great Barrier Reef shows the highest coral cover since records began in 1985.”

GO READ THE WHOLE THING.