Right on schedule, the climate activists and their corporate backers are capitalizing on wartime fuel shortages to claim that now, finally, we can get serious about fighting climate change. [some emphasis, links added]
On March 15, The New York Times weighed in with an article titled “How War in Iran Could Remake the Global Energy Landscape.” Claiming the oil crisis could “spur countries to invest in wind, solar, and other renewables,” the article quotes UN “Climate Chief” Simon Stiell, saying, “If there was ever a moment to accelerate that energy transition, this is the time.”
This is the same Simon Stiell who, in April 2024, claimed that the energy industry had only two years left “to save the world” by making “dramatic changes in the way it spews heat-trapping emissions, and it has even less time to act to get the finances behind such a massive shift.”
It’s difficult to know where to begin in the face of such ghoulish opportunism.
Increasing numbers of credible observers have begun to question the apocalyptic urgency of the climate emergency narrative. And now that refineries are blowing up and ships are sinking in the Persian Gulf, there’s a new compelling reason to accelerate the transition to “renewables.”
So, now that the climate industrial complex discovers new momentum thanks to a catastrophic war, maybe, by the numbers, it’s also time for another reality check.
We can start by acknowledging that there is a direct connection between energy and prosperity. If we accept that premise, then here’s an immutable fact based on data reported in the 2025 edition of the Energy Institute’s Statistical Review of World Energy:
For everyone on earth to have access to half the energy per capita that Americans consume, global energy production will have to more than double.
To document that fact, about a year ago, in an in-depth analysis titled “The Delusions of Davos and Dubai,” I reported per capita gigajoules of energy consumption in the world, comparing Americans to the global average, and related that to total global energy consumption, measured in exajoules.
Not much has changed.
Yearly per capita energy use by Americans, according to updated 2024 data, averaged 268 gigajoules. The UN estimates the global population will peak later this century at 10.3 billion people.
If every person consumed an average of 134 gigajoules—half what Americans consume—the total energy required worldwide to deliver that much energy would be 1,381 exajoules. In 2025, total energy production in the world was 592 exajoules.
When it comes to delivering enough energy to assure prosperity around the world, that’s what we’re up against. Proponents of renewables often also support new technologies to deliver energy more efficiently.
They’re right, and that’s why the 1,381 exajoules that we’re going to need someday will amount to half as much energy as Americans consume per person.
Can we do even better? Deliver efficiency gains of more than 50 percent? OK. Fine. Let’s set our total global energy production goal at 1,000 exajoules. That’s a good round number, and it’s the minimum amount of energy we’re going to need.
The real question is how, since renewables are evidently our future, will they fill the gap, much less contribute to massive increases in global energy production, if oil, natural gas, and coal are removed from our energy landscape?
Here’s how those exajoules stacked up by fuel source in 2024. Of the 592 exajoules produced (EJs), 199 came from oil, 165 came from coal, and 149 came from natural gas. That constitutes 87 percent of all energy consumed.
The share of global energy produced by oil, coal, and gas is rising, not falling. Nuclear energy produced 31 EJs, hydroelectricity produced 16, and “renewables” altogether produced 33 EJs, but five of those were from biofuel.
So let’s imagine we’re going to generate 1,000 exajoules of energy to power global civilization mid-century, and let’s suppose we’re going to do that without the 513 EJ we currently get from oil, coal, and gas. We can rule out biofuel as a major contributor.
There are already over 400,000 square miles of biofuel plantations worldwide, while total arable farmland totals about six million square miles. Biofuel production has devastated rainforests throughout the tropics, from Brazil to Indonesia.
Even doubling biofuel production would wreak havoc on the environment and yield only 10 exajoules of the 1,000 needed.
The same goes for hydroelectric energy. It is difficult to imagine even doubling output; most of the best rivers have already been harnessed for hydroelectricity. Figure hydroelectric potential maxes at around 30 EJs.
If biofuel and hydroelectricity—both problematic if vastly expanded—could be doubled in capacity, we would still have 960 EJs to go.
Read rest at American Greatness
