World leaders at the G7 summit in Germany signaled they will turn back to fossil fuels despite their commitments to a green energy transition thanks to the ongoing energy crisis.
The war in Ukraine is heavily restricting fuel imports, with Russia cutting off European access to the Nord Stream pipeline and the US imposing a fuel embargo on Putin. [bold, links added]
As a result, the U.S. and European countries are abandoning their climate agenda to return to fossil fuels.
Amid skyrocketing fuel prices, the Biden administration has been forced to abandon certain planks of its climate agenda.
Biden called for a temporary increase in domestic fuel production two weeks ago and also asked Congress to suspend the federal per-gallon gas tax for three months last week.
“The G7 leaders are pretending that nothing has happened to the green agenda,” Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Forum, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “In reality, if you look at individual member states… it’s quite obvious that the green agenda will be sunk.”
The Biden administration looks to complete its first oil-drilling lease sales on onshore federal lands this week, it announced in April. In total, the administration plans to sell up to 173 new oil and gas leases.
In Europe, countries are now investing in liquefied natural gas to meet gaps caused by the war in Ukraine and drive down fuel prices.
New investment in liquefied natural gas is a temporary but “necessary response to the current crisis,” G7 leaders said Sunday in their final press release from the Bavarian Alps.
“Europe is finally waking to the reality that without energy, they are nothing. President Biden continues to blindly stumble along the path they seem to be veering from,” Institute for Energy Research senior vice president Dan Kish told TheDCNF.
European imports of liquified natural gas rose by more than 50 percent compared with the period a year earlier in the first five months of 2022, according to The New York Times.
John Kerry on Joe Biden’s agenda destroying American energy jobs: it’s “what needs to be done”https://t.co/1DN7lhenK6 pic.twitter.com/Z2dAgULHFD
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) January 27, 2021
Despite criticism from climate activists, the G7 leaders said the increasing natural-gas investment would not jeopardize environmental goals.
“Supply disruptions of oil and natural gas from Russia are going to force European countries to concentrate on avoiding energy calamities—blackouts, energy poverty, freezing to death—and forget about reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Whether they drop the rhetoric of climate as an existential crisis is another matter,” said Myron Ebell, director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Energy and Environment.
The slashing of Russian energy imports is also forcing Europe to neglect its promises to reduce domestic fossil fuel investments.
German Economy Minister Robert Habeck, a member of the Green Party, announced last week that the government was instituting a surge in the use of coal-powered plants.
“The global climate agenda has hit the wall of energy reality harder and sooner than expected because of Russia’s war on Ukraine,” Ebell stated.
Coal use has increased across Europe following the significantly reduced supply of natural gas via the Russian Nord Stream Pipeline.
As Putin continues to cut off natural gas flows to Europe, Italy, The Czech Republic, and Austria are firing up coal plants to prepare for the winter.
“Europe is facing a devastating winter,” Peiser warned. “We are only in the summer where energy consumption is fairly low. Come October and November, the energy crisis will be catastrophic and the political and social implications will be dramatic.”
“These G7 leaders are, of course, the main culprits behind the whole climate agenda and they will never concede that this is part of the problem of the energy crisis. They will never admit that renewables are making their national energy systems more destabilized,” Peiser added.
Climate Club Announced
G7 leaders also announced a “Climate Club” to combat climate change and achieve climate neutrality by 2050. They gave sparse information on what the club would actually do, even though they noted that their current climate efforts were insufficient.
A “climate club” is a perfect metaphor for a group of increasingly unserious nations in the midst of an increasingly serious world,” Kish said.
“Their unilateral disarmament of their countries under the guise of climate virtue signaling has already led to war and will lead to death, destruction, and starvation in the poorer parts of the world,” he said of the G7 leaders.
“It is appropriate that their intellectual guiding light is a teenage girl from Sweden, Greta Thunberg,” Kish concluded.
Read rest at Daily Caller
I agree, green energy is good and is our future and Im looking forward to a clean and independent energy production.
However we have 2 issues:
How to store the energy from solar/PV and windpower?
And who will pay for the green energy which IS more expensive due to all the investments to be done (and a family-sized EV)? Especially the working class and below have no possibility in doing so.
So an increase in the world climatic extreme weather events is as a result of?
Despite overwhelming scientific evidence I can’t believe the comments I’m reading here….Covid highlighted what our impact on the planet is, and whilst a global shutdown is not sustainable, there can be no doubt we are impacting out planet negatively. We can continue as is don’t worry, it will balance out in the end regardless of the conversation being had!
What Russia is doing now with oil and gas, China will do in the future with the minerals required to replace the renewable generators and storage batteries on which we would be dependent.
Time for the Devest in Fossil Fuels and Keep it in the Ground idiots to get bitter dose of reality
It’s hard to imagine more biology and climate science ignorance than amongst leading politicians in our unenlightened age. Through green photosynthesis, sunlight, CO2, and water are the basic ingredients of life on earth. CO2 has been dangerously declining from luxuriant levels more than twenty times today’s levels at life’s birth. Declining to within 30ppm of the beginning of the death of all things during glacial phases of the coldest range in climate since multicellular life began – our ongoing Pleistocene Ice Age. CO2 is a follower of temperature change because CO2 solubility is temperature dependent. Politicians and “journalists” should have to take an entrance exam in the science of the environment before they can even mention it.
In Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” he showed graphs how in earth’s geological history temperature and carbon dioxide levels went up and down together. What he wasn’t smart enough to realize is that his own data showed that temperature was leading the CO2. Therefore Gore’s data showed that temperature was controlling the CO2, not the other way around. I’m sure this has been pointed out to him, but typical of climate activists he just ignored what didn’t support his narrative.
The crazy thing about the West losing the plot on energy and the so called climate change disaster caused by fossil fuels is the move to “green hydrogen” to save the planet. ie the main combustion product of hydrogen fuel is water vapour which has a greater per molecule IR (“warming”) effect than carbon dioxide! And thats before we get to the relative mass basis of atmospheric water / CO2 ie 10,000 ppm water to 400+ ppm carbon dioxide. Crazy extremis!
The whole thing is a series of devious plots and ploys to destroy the west, eventually to force nations to come under a world government. It is about power, control and money, always money! The slight increase in CO2 has been shown to help green the planet, here in Australia it has become quite noticeable in the last 30-40 years. We are inundated with fake predictions, complicit media, subservient governments and a mountains of lies. The elites are pulling the strings at climate conferences, Davos, Agenda 21 and more. The computer modelling is supposed to somehow tell us the weather in 80 years when often here on our east coast often cannot get it right for the week. Not sure how you could computer programme what the sun would be doing in 2100 as it is the major influencer of weather.
Water vapor does have a greater warming affect than carbon dioxide, but only when it is in the upper atmosphere. That isn’t an issue when hydrogen is burnt for fuel at the ground level. However, hydrogen isn’t a viable fuel if the goal is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Today it is made from natural gas in a process that releases CO2. The “green” way to make hydrogen is by hydrolysis from electricity produced solar or wind power. However, it is very clear that these sources can not provide enough power for the electric grid. There certainly isn’t enough to divert to using hydrogen as a major source of power. Producing hydrogen in this manner is also very expensive.
CO2 does not warm the earth. Never has a shred of empirical evidence, in nature or in a lab, been produced which indicated CO2 had any significant affect, at all, on the climate. Historically ,CO2 increases in the atmosphere came after a grand maximum which, means the heat brought the CO2, not the other way around. CO2 is plant food. It is what they eat to produce O2 using the process of Photosynthesis. Therefore more CO2 means greener and healthier plants which means we don’t all die of starvation. Lots of empirical evidence in nature and in labs to support every word.
Absolutely and entirely correct.
You are absolutely correct. Sometimes I think like a climate extremist for a particular point, in this case the how hydrogen isn’t a viable fuel. To add to your statement, one of the most compelling evidence that CO2 does not warm the earth is that 40% of the warming blamed on man occurred between 1910 and 1941 when the carbon dioxide levels were relatively low and raising very slowly. Yet, the warming pause earlier in this century happened at a time when CO2 level were rising rapidly.
Currently CO2 is about 420 ppm. Many green house operators run their houses at 1,800 ppm, the same level that existed when angiosperms appeared.