Bill and Melinda Gates Bought a $43 Million San Diego, California Beach House in 2020 - "They reportedly paid $43 million for the six-bedroom, 5,800 square foot house."
What an idiot. Doesn't he know that The Science says that it will be underwater soon due to Climate Change?
Climate change stole my beesNexus - "A theory that explains everything explains nothing and cannot be tested, a troubling point in context of the assertion that climate change causes warming, cooling, more hurricanes, fewer hurricanes and anything else that just happened. But it gets worse because we do mean anything. It’s not just weather. Apparently climate change is a major cause of anything you dislike from a wave of beehive thefts in France to pitifully small salmon fillets in Alaska. So the proof that climate change is real is that life is not perfect, a theory that explains everything and therefore nothing. Of course there are other causes behind the beehive thefts. Like thieves. And, the story concedes, “French beekeepers have been stung by a wave of thefts of their hives, which they blame on rising demand and plummeting honey bee populations due to pesticides, the Asian hornet and climate change.” Then it conceded that “it was difficult to give a precise figure of nationwide thefts because many victims ‘don’t talk about it’” according to the president of the national French beekeepers’ union. It also seems to be a problem that the legal system doesn’t treat the crime seriously. So perverse incentives are contributing to the issue. Or would be if it wasn’t all climate change all the time. Since it is, how exactly is climate change supposedly promoting beehive theft? Well, France is of course (drum roll please) warming faster than the global average... you can just imagine what that additional 0.21 °C is doing to les abeilles… because there are no facts on which to base something beyond trendy conjecture. (And for some reason there are no bees on cool, comfy Baffin Island, unlike blazing, hive-melting France where projected highs this week are roughly 16°C at least in Paris.)... As for the salmon, this story that ran everywhere from Bloomberg to the Malaysian Reserve to the New Hampshire Union Leader eventually spat out that “These disruptions are, for now, more a nuisance than serious problem. But they almost certainly presage more costly changes to come and, much more importantly, raise alarm bells about the growing crisis in some key salmon populations that is being driven, according to many scientists, by climate change and more competition for food. Decades after the Atlantic cod fisheries collapsed, concern is now mounting among experts that wild Pacific salmon could face a similar fate.” Uh, not to return to this issue of similar effects having similar causes or anything annoyingly scientific along those lines. But if the Atlantic cod fishery collapsed due to overfishing because of a very obvious tragedy of the commons, and wild Pacific salmon are being overfished and might collapse in the same way for the same reason, and indeed “In Europe and New England, the memory of rivers teeming with wild Atlantic salmon is all but forgotten due to overfishing, habitat loss and dam construction that blocked spawning grounds, said David Montgomery, whose 2003 book 'King of Fish: The Thousand Year Run of Salmon' warns that the Pacific species could face the same fate”, what’s climate change got to do with it? Where, indeed, is the evidence that climate change is even involved? Evidence? We don’t need no stinking evidence. “‘The whole thing is out of whack,’ said Laurie Weitkamp, a U.S. fisheries biologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. ‘Salmon managers are realizing that climate change is impacting their stocks and it is generally not favorable and it’s only going to get worse.’” Oh really? How? Where is the water warmer and what is it doing to the reproductive cycle? Admit it. You have no idea. And in fact they do admit it, once the obligatory genuflection at the altar of green apocalypse is out of the way: “Alaskan salmon are getting smaller partly because they’re returning from the ocean at a younger age, though scientists don’t really know why.” Must be climate change. We know because we don’t. How do you like that science? Now at this point some clown may say yeah, climate change is blamed for everything from road rage to eczema. But it didn’t cause those California fires. At least the giant, deadly Markley Fire, which merged with the Hennessey Fire to become the fifth-largest in LNU Lightning Complex Fire, was allegedly set by a man trying to conceal a murder. But of course (drum roll please) climate change causes increases in crime. And makes fire worse. And unleashes deadly fungal diseases. Never mind that temperature readings have not increased by an amount anyone could detect without a digital thermometer in the last 100 years. Climate change makes people steal French bees, makes salmon head for home early, and makes your hands itch and creep toward someone’s throat. It’s the worst."
Together on Twitter - "This member of Scottish Parliament just announced "the era of unrestrained private car use is well & truly over" What? Too many got high dictating to public in Covid We prefer: The era of politicians dictating every tiny aspect of our lives is over. Take Back Democracy
We edited this tweet for text and weirdly the original video seems to have been lost - here it is: Member of Scottish Parliament announces "era of unrestrained private car use is well & truly over""
Children Matter More Than Their Carbon Footprint - "Emily Holleman a writer for The Cut, – part of New York Magazine’s ‘One Great Story’ section – recently condemned bearing children in the age of the “apocalypse,” selfish... “Catastrophic climate change,” drags down an otherwise thought-provoking story of pregnancy and married life. For her, “Having a child in a developed nation is among the most environmentally unsound decisions you can make — a baby born in the United States adds another 58.6 tons of carbon to the atmosphere per year.” Presumably, to avoid the charge of racism, it appears that for Holleman, having a child in an undeveloped nation is perfectly acceptable. The hint of contradiction, self-hatred and contempt for her own nation, and its people wafts like a pungent smell from here on out... Holleman’s article is a cross between anti-parenting, anti-carbon and anti-people... The hope of a better world Holleman finds in the embrace of her newborn son is morbidly smothered by a lament at what a child’s carbon footprint is. Twistedly Holleman infers children are a great evil, but they’re a useful distraction. For her, kids are a “blessing” to have around, because they provide ‘small moments of joy.’ A welcome distraction from ‘cataclysmic changes to the climate [and other] inequities it exacerbates.’... A world that also equates conceiving a child, with contracting an STD. What’s also striking is the use of eschatological terminology: “End Times.” Indicative of the religious environmentalism – or cultism – which pervades her Green ideological evangelism... The takeaway conclusion: “Carbon is the great Satan. Humans are carbon. Ergo, humans are a great evil.”"
Environmentalism is misanthropic
Australian Academic Freedom Test Case Defeat Is a Win for Courage Culture - "Dr. Ridd was sacked from James Cook University after the University claimed he’d breached “codes of conduct” by criticising other scientists for being too “emotional and not objective” enough. In brief, his big “dismissible offence” was challenging the overreach of Climate Change fanaticism... This case was the first real fight for academic freedom of speech. The loss is a setback to countering the march of Cancel Culture authoritarianism throughout Australia’s institutions."
‘Fact checks’ on Great Barrier Reef aim to cover up ‘dodgy’ past predictions: Dr Peter Ridd - "Media ‘fact checks’ proclaiming climate change’s impact on the Great Barrier Reef are a form of “covering up all the dodgy predictions they’ve made in the past”, Marine Physicist Dr Peter Ridd says... One tweet from 2014 was about scientists’ predictions that climate change will “wreck irreversible damage” to the Reef by 2030 – the other was from 2022 about the rebound in coral growth recorded by the Australian Institute of Marine Science. “I’ve been fact checked probably three or four times by Australian Associated Press – they always come to the same conclusion that the Reef is doomed,” Dr Ridd told Sky News host Rita Panahi. “They’ve been proven to be wrong again and again and again and these fact checks are just a form of covering up all the dodgy predictions they’ve made in the past.”"
Konstantin Kisin | This House Believes Woke Culture Has Gone Too Far - 7/8 | Oxford Union - YouTube
Makes the good point that climate change hysteria is useless because the developing world wants to get rich, so we need to just provide cheap climate-friendly technology that they can use. The cope is that the West's self flagellation will be such an inspiring example that everyone else will follow. Which only the naive will believe - the rest of the world are not suckers like the West An alternate cope is that the West were historically responsible for emitting carbon, so now they need to make up for it. Which again exposes the reality that climate change hysteria is not actually about fighting climate change but Western neuroses
The green revolution is fuelling environmental destruction - "According to the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the World Bank, the switch to “cleaner” renewable energy sources is going to require an unprecedented surge in the extraction of precious minerals from the earth. Whether it is lithium and cobalt needed for batteries, or rare earth elements used for magnets that power wind turbines and electric car motors, we simply can’t make the green technologies we need without them. Yet campaigners and researchers warn that the mines producing these minerals raise troubling environmental questions of their own, with the worst examples ravaging landscapes, polluting water supplies and desolating crops. The industry also poses geopolitical challenges for Britain and its allies, with China currently dominating the supply chains. It means that without drastic improvements to global standards and greater engagement by the West, the switch to clean power risks becoming very dirty indeed. Henry Sanderson, a business journalist and author of Volt Rush, a book that examines the complicated issues surrounding transition minerals, believes that overcoming these contradictions is one of the biggest challenges facing businesses and policymakers. “Mining has an impact. And often local communities don't want it,” he says. “So how do you reconcile those facts with the fact we need mining for clean energy technologies?... Whereas a conventional car uses about 34kg of minerals, an electric car requires 207kg, or six times as much, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Meanwhile, a typical offshore wind turbine requires 13 times more minerals than a gas-fired power plant for each megawatt of capacity. The IEA predicts this will cause demand for critical minerals to soar to 42.3m tonnes per year by 2050 - up from around 7m tonnes in 2020. Per Kalvig, an expert at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, says this will require an “explosion” of mining in the coming years. “They’re necessary for wind turbines, for electric vehicles. Europe needs these minerals, and it doesn’t want to continue relying on China to produce them”, he explains. It is prompting difficult questions for the EU, which believes it will need five times as much rare earth minerals by 2030, a meteoric rise that will require a correspondingly rapid increase in extraction. Whether the practice of actually mining the materials will be permitted within the bloc is another matter, however... in Portugal, for example, where large lithium resources exist, there has been persistent opposition from local communities against new mining schemes. British company Savannah is among those trying to open a project in the northern region of Barroso by 2025 with EU funding. It plans to produce about 5,000 tons of lithium a year. But despite the company’s protestations that it has been “specifically designed to minimise its impact on the natural environment and local communities wherever possible” – such as new ways of storing waste and recycling 85pc of its water – it has struggled to persuade naysayers. In Sweden too, where Europe’s biggest ever discovery of rare earth oxides was recently made, progress is proving tricky... Given the strength of feeling in communities, Kalvig is doubtful there is the political will in Europe to push through many domestic mining schemes. “Generally, we experience public resistance against mining projects,” he adds. But if Europe is unwilling to extract minerals itself for the green transition, it will simply need to import them from somewhere else – and typically, that means Africa and Asia... some are examining the potential of mineral extraction from the sea bed - despite loud protestations from environmental groups. While China has raced ahead producing critical minerals since the 1980s, the country also presents a cautionary tale of environmental destruction as well... The price for local people has been poisoned water, chemically-blighted crops and a growing threat of landslides, with experts concerned that the mountains could collapse... Beyond environmental issues, mining can also take a terrible toll on workers. In the DRC, tens of thousands of children are pressed into working in dangerous, small mines, while research published in medical journal The Lancet has found that labourers working in the African “copperbelt” were at higher risk of having children with birth defects... The London Mining Network, which monitors Glencore, Rio Tinto, Anglo-American and other miners listed on the London Stock Exchange, argues that the coming “wave of green extractivism” risks “reproducing the same dynamics and practices that caused the climate crisis in the first place”... China’s grip on the market has left the US vulnerable - unable to independently produce even the materials needed for F-35 fighter jets and radar systems"
Simple. Just offshore mining to the developed world where we can pretend it does no damage, and compensate for the crazy costs (especially with tight mineral supply) by taxing alternatives to deaths. So only the rich will not be in penury. And naive liberals will blame greedy companies
Meme - Wall Street Silver @WallStreetSilv: "Europe is going backwards into a state of energy poverty. The University of Strasbourg remained closed all week to save energy. The university's gas and electricity bill will rise from 10 to 36 million euros. Another closed week is scheduled for February."
The Biden Administration Finally Admits Its Mistake in Canceling the Keystone XL Pipeline - "At long last, the Biden administration is admitting what experts have always known: reckless energy policies have disastrous consequences. This time, the Department of Energy quietly released a report highlighting the positive economic benefits of developing the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada, an energy project canceled by President Biden in the hours following his inauguration. But the DOE’s report is a proverbial day late and a dollar short. The cancelation of the Keystone XL pipeline has already cost the United States thousands of jobs and billions in economic growth while families suffer under the weight of record high energy prices. It’s time for lawmakers to make American energy independence a top priority. Released without a formal announcement, the DOE’s report points out that the pipeline would have created between 16,149 and 59,000 jobs and would have had an economic benefit of between $3.4 and 9.6 billion. That’s no small impact. Yet with one stroke of his pen, Biden slashed the project and instead focused his efforts on costly “green energy” goals. As a result of his executive action, 11,000 pipeline workers were promptly laid off and told to “go to work to make solar panels” instead. But Biden’s green energy efforts are bound to backfire sooner rather than later. That’s because today, more than 70 percent of the energy produced and consumed in America comes from oil, gas and coal. That’s not likely to substantially change anytime soon. In fact, the International Energy Agency predicts that oil’s share of energy production in the United States will only fall 8 percent in the next two decades, from 31 to 23 percent. And that’s assuming a sustained commitment to green energy policies. The forecast spells bad news for the Biden White House. At his political peril, Biden ignores the lessons of Presidents Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush, who both lost elections due to spiked oil prices and accompanying recessions. Two years into sowing its Green New Deal policies, the administration is reaping a bitter harvest. Due to Biden’s folly, oil, natural gas and electricity prices have more than doubled in just a single year. Meanwhile, more than 28 percent of Americans abstained from purchasing food or medicine to pay an energy bill in 2021. And now, the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act includes wind and solar spending that will cost Americans $369 billion... Conditions in Europe serve as a timely warning of that future. European leaders are years ahead of the United States in their quest towards achieving a green utopia, but they’ve seen little success... The United Kingdom takes the prize for dystopian power-saving measures, where families are being bribed to sit in the dark in exchange for electric bill savings and other prizes. If the United States follows in Europe’s green footsteps, it risks ushering in a similarly dark, cold and dismal existence."
High energy prices will kill more than 100,000 Europeans this winter, study finds - "The study found that, if energy prices remain around their current high levels and if temperatures this winter remain typical compared to previous years, 147,000 more people will die over the coming winter months from cold-related illness or diseases than if electricity costs remained at the 2015-2019 average... if each country were to experience its coldest winter since 2000, this figure would rise to 185,000 deaths. Indeed, the study found that even relatively mild winter temperatures will still be fatal to tens of thousands of Europeans: even if each European country experiences its warmest winter over the past twenty years, 79,000 Europeans will still die as a result of high energy costs... The figures cited by The Economist dwarf that of the 120,000 Ukrainians the EU believes have died in the conflict in Ukraine so far... "[Russian President Vladimir] Putin's energy weapon could take more lives outside Ukraine than his artillery, missiles and drones do directly within it""
Weird. Those who advocated shutting down the world economy, supposedly to save lives, are also pushing disastrous energy policies
Germany plans to destroy this village for a coal mine. Thousands are gathering to stop it - " Lützerath, about 20 miles west of Dusseldorf, has long been a climate flashpoint in Germany because of its position on the edge of the open-cast lignite coal mine, Garzweiler II. The mine sprawls across around 14 square miles (35 square kilometers) in North Rhine Westphalia (NRW) – a huge, jagged gouge in the landscape... As far back as 2013, the German courts ruled the company was able to expand, even at the expense of nearby villages... The Greens and RWE also say the expansion will help relieve the energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine, which has curtailed gas supplies... Climate groups fiercely oppose the deal... Fabian Huebner, campaigner on energy and coal at Europe Beyond Coal, said: “I think the Greens, faced by very difficult decisions, took the wrong turn and de-prioritized climate policy.” Germany should accelerate the clean-energy transition instead, he added, including a faster roll out of renewables and energy efficiency measures: “You can’t solve the crisis with the energy source that basically created this crisis.”"
Time to freeze to death to "save the climate" and double down on a failed policy (and when it fails even more catastrophically, blame insufficient commitment)
Activists don't care about the rule of law, only their agenda
Candle fever strikes as blackout-fearing Germans revive festive flames - "Germans are seeking comfort in the warm yellow glow of open flames this Christmas, as a revival of festive traditions coupled with blackout fears make candles the target of the latest stockpiling frenzy... as fears of gas rationing and power cuts brought by Russia’s war in Ukraine stalk the land, candles have also undergone a revival as a reliable way to light homes. The home improvement retail chain Bauhaus said it was noticing a rising demand for “candles of all kind, including tea lights, wax and pillar candles”, with sales across the board up by around a quarter on the previous winter... The public broadcaster ARD recently released a short video advising people against building DIY “tealight ovens” to heat their homes. The heat generated, it warned, was negligible compared with the potential fire risk"
Fingrid warns car cabin heaters might cause blackouts - "Warming your car before you get in is a Finnish winter ritual, but it might have to change this year if the country is to minimise strain on the power grid. National grid operator Fingrid says that warming the cabins of cars before departure might be an unnecessary luxury this year, as electricity production comes under strain thanks to sanctions on Russia over its war on Ukraine... Cars are generally warmed in the morning before people travel to work, a time when demand peaks anyway due to other usage. Jonne Jäppinen from Fingrid says that a cold interior of the car is not much of an inconvenience, in the grand scheme of things, if it saves electricity and helps avoid power cuts... Generally cars in Finland are fitted with a heater for the motor and another heater inside the cabin of the car, which runs from power sockets in parking spaces.
Meme - "1987: This is your brain on drugs
2023: You can't afford the egg, the gas stove is being outlawed, the only thing you can get is the drugs."
Meme - "Green credentials
Average lifecycle for car in US midwest
Tesla Model S P100D (battery-electric vehicle)
BMW 7 Series 750i xDrive (internal combustion engine)
Mitsubishi Mirage (internal combustion engine)
Production emissions (kg CO, equivalent)
Tesla - 12,204
BMW - 8,190
Mitsubishi - 4,752
Use emissions - 270,000km (kg CO2 eq)
Tesla - 48,600
BMW - 95,310
Mitsubishi - 46,980
End of life emissions (excluding battery, kg CO2 eq)
Tesla - 311
BMW - 351
Mitsubishi - 159
Lifecycle emissions total - 270,000km (kg CO2 eq)
Tesla - 61,115
BMW - 103,851
Mitsubishi - 51,891
Lifecycle emissions per km - intensity (g CO2 eq/km)
Tesla - 226
BMW - 385
Mitsubishi - 192
Source: Trancik Lab, MIT"
From the FT
Toyota Calls On Science To Tell EV-Only Extremists That They’re Wrong - "With some solid facts and figures at hand, the carmaker’s Chief Scientist Gill Pratt says that the best approach for a sustainable future is a multipronged one, blending EVs with hybrids and other green technologies, and not a full-on commitment to battery-powered cars only... This statement comes as several car brands pledged to go full-electric at some point in the future, with Honda, Acura, Cadillac, Jaguar, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, and more saying they’ll do the best they can to become carbon neutral in this century... if the small amount of lithium were spread among smaller, 1.1-kWh batteries, it would be possible to make 90 hybrid cars, which would still leave 10 traditional combustion cars, but the average emissions of the theoretical fleet would drop to a much lower 205 g/km. It’s a counterintuitive idea, that a big fleet of hybrids would make a bigger positive impact on emissions than a smaller fleet of EVs, and Toyota says this nuance is lost in the talks about adopting EVs on a global scale. Pratt also criticized rival car companies’ ambitions, calling them “happy talk” and saying that their forward-looking statements usually have an asterisk that says “if conditions permit”.
"What has to change is that we have to mature a little bit, and we have to stop doing wishful thinking," he said. "A real discussion is that these are the constraints in the development of resources in the world, both material resources and charging infrastructure and renewable power… If that is true, how do we reduce the total amount of carbon dioxide that will accumulate? That is a mature discussion, not a kind of dream discussion."
According to Automotive News, Gill Pratt was inspired to dig deeper into the battery question by his own family’s experience with a Tesla Model X, which has over 300 miles of range, but the car is typically driven less than 30 miles a day, which means 90 percent of the battery is “dead weight”."
London borough to BAN most vehicles from 75 percent of its roads in green agenda push - "Controversial Low Traffic Neighbourhood measures are set to result in a London borough banning most vehicles from 75 percent of its roads. Hackney Council have sanctioned plans to put three quarters of its street into LTNs in “the country’s most ambitious plan” to tackle toxic air. The borough already has the highest number of schemes in London, with around half of its road covered by traffic management measures."
How soon before all of their roads are covered?
Meme - "World Economic "Fonies"
Davos: IF THEY WERE SERIOUS ABOUT REDUCING CARBON EMISSIONS THEY'D STOP MEETING EVERY YEAR. *WEF jets, presumably private*"
Meme - "Watching your paper straw dissolve as a politician takes a day trip on their private jet"
Meme - "I'm not particularly fond of people who fly in private jets to a meeting were they discuss how to take away my car and feed me bugs...but that's just me."
Net Zero sail-powered cargo ships that transport … coal | The Spectator Australia - "‘What if we could build a ship that could transport cargo across the globe without needing any fuelling? What if we could make the ultimate zero-emissions seagoing vessel to reduce greenhouse gases?’ Now, I know what you’re thinking… Didn’t Captain Cook navigate a Net Zero transport vessel when he took to the south seas on his first voyage of discovery aboard the HM Endeavour departing from Deptford on July 30, 1768? Sailing ships have existed since at least 3,000 BC and, if the Sydney to Hobart yacht race is anything to go by, we haven’t forgotten about wind power... It’s essentially a ship version of a hybrid car. Speaking of cars, the shipping company came to my attention in April of 2022 when they called it quits on transporting second-hand electric vehicles to New Zealand due to the instability of lithium batteries... The ‘sail’ on the Shofu Maru is expected to lower the ship’s emissions by 5 per cent across its three-week Japan-Australia route. Maybe. The fixed sail has a few drawbacks, such as obstructing the view and (presumably?) changing the way the ship behaves in rough seas... At some point, you’d have to wonder when the container ship becomes a carrier for the huge sails rather than a transport vessel for goods... Japan is building sail-powered ‘environmentally friendly’ cargo ships so that it can transport Australian coal back home to run ‘stable and reliable’ power stations. Australia is dismantling its coal industry. It’s no wonder Japan sought a personal assurance from Anthony Albanese to make sure he wouldn’t to anything stupid, like destroy the mining sector because a Greens MP looked at him the wrong way. How can Australia kill off coal and gas when Japan is 65 per cent reliant on our coal and 36 per cent reliant on our gas?... Western Europe is in the middle of a wind drought – severely impacting the efficiency of its wind power. It’s not every day, but wind speeds have dropped 15 per cent on average in 2021, making it one of the ‘least windy periods in the UK in nearly 60 years’. To put that in perspective, wind energy went from 18 per cent of the UK market in 2020 to only 2 per cent in 2021. This trend continued through 2022 with Sky News dubbing it the beginning of a ‘global stilling’. More colourful publications call it the ‘global terrestrial stilling’. Scotland recorded gas ramping up its market percentage from 42 per cent to 61 per cent to cover the wind gap. UK experts now predict that wind speed will drop between 2 and 3 per cent by 2050. Others go much higher... why are we pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into an energy grid reliant on an unreliable source? The answer offered by wind companies is, ‘we must invest more in batteries’ – which is a little disingenuous. By the time you build the forests of lithium required to survive your average wind drought, planet Earth would have been better off with a large-scale reforestation project and a couple of new coal-fired plants. Wind droughts exist on the ocean, just as they do on land, and they are a significant problem for the eco-shipping industry. Cities need acres of backup battery, so how do cargo ships carry a second propulsion system? Everything takes up space that is meant for cargo and, by extension, profit. These wind droughts were part of the reason that sailing ships started using hybrid forms of propulsion to drive propellers – especially as the Age of Sail shifted from exploration into trade. The comparative inefficiency of wind eventually killed off sail entirely. The shipping industry is exploring ‘rigid sail’ options in part to cultivate its public image in a climate-virtue-obsessed world... We should always be striving to make technology more powerful and efficient, the question is, are we going forwards or backwards? Sometimes it feels as though the Net Zero mantra is forcing bad solutions onto industries in pursuit of political praise rather than allowing market adaptation to progress into fields that make more sense from an engineering perspective."
Yager: 2022 – the year fossil fuels once again became a preferred source of reliable, affordable energy - "Global coal consumption is rising again because it meets the cost and availability requirement created by energy shortages and rising prices. On December 16, the International Energy Agency reported, “The world’s coal consumption is set to reach a new high in 2022 as the energy crisis shakes markets.” For energy, the biggest single change in 2022 is the remarkable shift in public attitudes towards fossil fuels. The global energy complex is under assault by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the exposed shortcomings of wind and solar, years of underinvestment in fossil fuels, and rising inflation and interest rates. But for the past ten years, there has been an all-out crusade against fossil fuels. Oil company CEOs were branded climate criminals. It was morally reprehensible to own fossil fuel company shares or loan money to oil, gas or coal producers. Elections were won in Canada, the US and in Europe on pledges to replace fossil fuels. No cost was too great, because the cost of doing nothing thus permitting unchecked climate damage was greater. What happened? How did the channel change to rapidly? Why after years of public and political attacks on the source of over 80 per cent of the world primary energy, has affordable energy on demand now become more important than where it comes from? Price, the most fundamental driver of economics and human behavior. The November 2022 global survey from public opinion research firm IPSOS titled “What Worries The World” tells the story... Two years ago was the peak of the “oil is dead” mantra, and when many bright ideas for a fossil fuel free future were concocted. In a post-pandemic world, multiple voices claimed we must Build Back Better, ensure a Resilient Recovery, engineer the Great Reset. The plan was to use government policy and borrowed money to create jobs through the large-scale replacement of fossil fuels. Coined the “energy transition,” it was achievable and inevitable thanks to incredible advances in renewable energy cost and supply. Canada – the world’s fifth largest combined oil and gas producer – could lead the charge with minimal disruption thanks to a new federally-funded retraining program for displaced oil workers. This was called a Just Transition. What happened? The invisible hand of Adam Smith punched the world in the nose. The only part of the demise of fossil fuels that was successful was reduced supply. As the economy recovered, consumers learned the hard way that low carbon energy sources were terribly oversold in terms of reliability, and demand for fossil fuels outstripped supply. Prices for fossil fuels rose at the same time that inflation and interest rates reduced disposal income. As demand grew, fossil fuel shortages were reflected in the price. When Russia – one of the world’s largest oil, gas and coal suppliers – invaded Ukraine, the gravity of the situation escalated immediately. What the IPSOS survey dramatically illustrates is the number one concern for the world as 2022 ends is the rising cost of everything. We’ve been told repeatedly that continued fossil fuel consumption will cause serious climate disruptions. No expense today will exceed the cost of future damages. However, the more pressing issue today is still being alive in 2050 because of the rising cost of everything, including energy. Worrying about what the temperature, storm intensity or chemical composition of the atmosphere may be in 28 years has become an unaffordable luxury. So fossil fuels are once again what they have always been – reliable and affordable sources of energy."
