by Marc Morano, publisher of CFACT’s Climate Depot, former senior staff of U.S. Senate Environment Committee, wrote Green Fraud: Why the Green New Deal Is Even Worse Than You Think.
Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has exploded the global energy debate and exposed the national security dangers of green energy. Europe and the U.S. have ceded away their national security by limiting their domestic fossil fuel energy under the guise of a wind and solar utopia that has yet to materialize.
Russia gets 40% of its federal budget from oil and gas and it is the third-largest supplier of oil to the U.S., behind Canada and Mexico, at over 600,000 barrels a day. The U.S. hit an 11-year high of Russian oil imports in 2021 and the Biden administration was reduced to begging OPEC to increase oil production. Meanwhile, the U.S. is reliant on China for rare earth mining for solar and wind energy, plus electric car batteries.
Americans now watch helplessly as gas prices, home heating, air conditioning, and energy-driven inflation eat away at their paychecks. None of this had to happen. During Donald Trump’s presidency, U.S. energy production soared back to levels of not just energy independence, but energy dominance. The U.S. was the world’s largest oil and gas producer under Trump and the U.S. enjoyed more energy exports than imports, more energy production than consumption for the first time since 1952.
President Joe Biden’s “Net-Zero” Green New Deal-style policies reversed the course of Trump’s policies. Biden even declared that he wanted to jail fossil fuel executives.
The Biden administration is waging a war on American domestic energy by cancelling the Keystone pipeline, banning drilling on federal lands and in the Arctic, and defunding fossil fuel projects by using Environmental and Social Governance policies.
Biden’s Secretary of Energy, Jennifer Granholm performed in a 2018 video singing about the end of gasoline. The lyrics include: “Gasoline, gasoline, you are driving me insane. Gasoline, gasoline, the world’s aflame…We had a good run, but now we’re done….We gotta leave you in the ground.”
Former President Obama famously declared that under his climate policies, energy prices “would necessarily skyrocket.”
The Washington Post lamented in 2021: “If Prez Carter had gotten an extra term in office, we likely wouldn’t be having a climate crisis right now.” Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980 is now being blamed for the “climate crisis.” An expired climate tipping point we somehow all missed from 40 years ago!? President Jimmy Carter could not have been more wrong about energy in the 1970s, but the Post is rewriting history.
The Biden administration admitted that a further rise in gas prices due to the Russian invasion was a great opportunity to help the climate agenda. White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki explained, “The rise in gas prices over the long term makes an even stronger case for doubling down our investment & focus on clean energy options.”
The problem for climate activist politicians is that their policies are finally having their designed impacts. Energy shortages and skyrocketing prices are NOT the unintended consequences of green policies — rather — these are the INTENDED consequences.
Biden’s climate envoy John Kerry’s response to Putin’s invasion was to call for an “urgent” climate summit, lest the world loses focus on the climate agenda. Kerry warned that the Russian invasion could have a “monumental impact on the ability and willingness of people to do what’s necessary” to curb CO2 emissions.
The U.S. is now in a much, much weaker national security position one year into the Biden administration and Putin is the direct beneficiary of these energy restricting policies.
Europe is many years ahead in its disastrous green policies. Former Harvard Physics Professor Dr. Lubos Motl described Europe’s version of the Green New Deal as “standard Marxist garbage.” Europe has been shutting down their domestic energy for longer than the U.S. under their “Net-Zero”. These policies have empowered the Middle East and OPEC, China, and Vladimir Putin.
Energy analyst Rupert Darwall reported that the U.K. was so gung ho on climate goals that it committed energy suicide. “In late 2019, [U.K. Prime Minister] Boris Johnson banned commercial fracking. Earlier this month, the British government ordered that concrete be poured into the country’s two exploratory shale wells and for them to be abandoned.”
To hell with national security, let’s pour concrete into fracking wells that could supply 50 years of U.K. gas demand! Quite simply, madness.
The former head of Britain’s MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove called for the “immediate lifting of [U.K.’s] fracking moratorium” and ripped the ‘Net-Zero’ climate goals as “crazy, unattainable objectives.”
Darwall said that Europe is infected with the same green ideology. “Germany’s and the EU’s net-zero policies will deepen their dependence on Putin’s goodwill as they increase their exposure to unreliable wind and solar, phase out coal, and — in the case of Germany and Belgium — prematurely close their nuclear power stations. Strategically, that’s a win for Putin.”
But Germany had its moment of clarity about the climate agenda. In March 2022, the country U-turned on climate policy, seemingly overnight in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and endorsed nuclear, coal, and gas energy exploration. Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced: “The events of the past few days have shown us that responsible, forward-looking energy policy is decisive not only for our economy and the environment. It is also decisive for our security.”
A 2018 Congressional report detailing how “Russian Attempts to Influence” and fund environmental groups to oppose fracking. “A Republican staff report by the Senate suggests that Russian funds have been funneled through off-shore corporations and passed on to the U.S.-based environmental activist organizations with the intent to effect political change.”
In January 2017, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence stated there is “clear evidence that the Kremlin is financing and choreographing anti-fracking propaganda in the United States.”
Even Hillary Clinton admitted the Russians tried to push their agenda through environmental groups. Then-Secretary of State Clinton said in 2014: “We [the State Department and the U.S.] were up against Russia pushing oligarchs and others to buy media. We were even up against phony environmental groups, and I’m a big environmentalist, but these were funded by the Russians to stand against any effort, ‘Oh that pipeline, that fracking, that whatever will be a problem for you,’ and a lot of the money supporting that message was coming from Russia.”
Environmentalist Michael Shellenberger, who reversed his views and became skeptical of a climate apocalypse, explained in March 2022: “15 years ago Europe exported more natural gas than Russia does today. Now, Russia exports three times more gas than Europe produces. Why? Because climate activists, partly funded by Russia, blocked fracking.”
We need a full expansion of fossil fuel production in America. Biden needs to follow Germany’s path and open up America for domestic energy. Doing so would send a strong signal to the marketplace that America is open for business once again when it comes to oil, gas, and fossil fuels. Putin has Europe by the throat and he knows that their dependence on Russian energy has the power to tank European economies by withholding energy.
Kerry still holds steadfast to his view that climate is the greatest national security threat the U.S. faces, but Kerry has it ass-backward. The greatest national security threat we may face is not from the climate, but from their climate and energy policies.
The West’s dependence on Russia’s energy is just an appetizer for the national security threats that lie ahead due to our reliance on China’s rare earth mining. China is doing their part to give a middle finger to the climate agenda as the nation builds a coal plant a week and is responsible for about 50% of the world’s coal production.
It is nothing short of bonkers from a strategic and national security point of view for Europe, Canada, and the United States to continue to restrict our domestic energy under Green New Deal rules when OPEC, Iran, Russia, and China have zero intention of playing by the same rules.
It’s time to stop the sanctions — against American domestic energy!