Western energy policy is a gas

I’m not going to quibble with the need to save our planet. All things considered, it’s a nice planet and, if it’s in danger, it deserves to be saved.

And I’m even prepared to accept, against all evidence, that fossil fuels present just such a danger, one from which our planet needs saving. What I find hard to get my head around is the logic of it all.

Looking at the energy policies of just two European countries, Germany and France, one finds much of what misogynistic Russians call ‘women’s logic’, meaning, misogynistically, no logic at all.

Both countries, especially France, have large deposits of shale gas that they refuse to explore for fear of endangering our planet. Fine, I understand: natural gas is the work of the devil.

However, both countries have either shut down their coal mines and, more important, nuclear power stations or have undertaken to do so soon. Considering that nuclear energy hasn’t caused a single death in the West, it’s hard to understand what the problem with it is.

After all, nuclear is by far the safest form of energy, of those that can realistically be expected to fuel a modern economy. It hurts me no end to admit this, but neither wind nor sun can do that – at best, they can only complement the amount of energy produced by realistic means.

Then again, most Western countries are phasing out vehicles powered by fossil fuels. Instead, they are saving the planet by switching to electric cars powered by batteries. Presumably, the planet would thank them if it could talk.

But here’s the rub: our planet is quite large. In addition to Western countries, whose burning concern is saving our planet, it also houses any number of downmarket places, or even whole continents, where the burning concern is saving their people’s lives.

Those countries understand that the two objectives may be in conflict and, when they clash, survival wins every time. That’s why those countries, some of them quite large, such as China, India and Russia, continue to produce and use oodles of hydrocarbons, such as coal, oil and gas.

Moreover, some of them stubbornly hold on to their nuclear power stations, where the safety levels aren’t quite up to Western standards. And since we all share the same planet, a meltdown in a low-rent part of the world may well produce radiation sickness in wealthier neighbourhoods. If you don’t believe me, talk to the Swedes who found themselves downwind from Chernobyl.

Logically, if we all share the same planet, we also share the same atmosphere. If it’s true that carbon monoxide poisons the atmosphere, then our planet doesn’t care where CO₂ is produced, in Britain or China. The supposed effect is the same. We are all going to be fried by global warming (and ‘global’ is the operative word).

Regarded in that light, Germany’s eagerness to get the Nord Stream 2 pipeline going strikes me as incomprehensible. Whether or not those Russian pipes carry atmospheric poison is debatable. Yet there’s no doubt that pumped through them will be large amounts of political poison.

But forget about politics. Let’s concentrate on the good of our planet.

Currently, Germany gets 49 per cent of her natural gas from Russia. Yet the new pipeline, which will bypass the Ukraine and Eastern Europe to pump directly into Germany, will double that proportion.

I don’t get this. It’s an article of woke faith that burning fossil fuels is steadily turning our planet into a fiery hell. And it’s actually the burning of them that’s diabolical, not getting them out of the ground. 

Hence, I must file a ringing protest on behalf of our planet. For Germany, France and Britain don’t seem to be in any hurry to stop burning fossil fuels. They only want them to come from elsewhere – even at a vast political and strategic cost.

Will someone please explain to me the logic of it all? Our planet doesn’t care where the gas that’s poisoning it was extracted from the ground. It only cares about the amount of CO₂ dumped into it.

I can see that, from the standpoint of politics (that dread word again), Britain, Germany, France and their friends feel good about themselves. They make all the right noises about saving the planet and brainwash their populations accordingly, while continuing to perform dastardly violence on our planet that’s supposed to be creaking at the seams.

The same goes for electric vehicles. These are powered by large batteries using rare metals. In addition to driving up the costs, these metals are quite toxic to those who mine them, to the areas surrounding the mines and consequently, over time, to our planet.

Here Western countries practise the same NIMBY attitude. Most of the world’s cobalt is produced in the Congo, most of the lithium in South America, and about half of all manganese in South Africa and China.

Since those miners, many of them children, don’t vote for Western politicians, our leaders don’t care about their mortality rates. But what about our planet? When the number of electric vehicles reaches, say, nine digits, so much unhealthy stuff will have to be dug out that the planet will suffer even more than it is already.

One has to conclude, mournfully, that the West is displaying most refreshing hypocrisy. It has devoured its own canard of global warming so avidly that it has instantly entered the West’s gastrointestinal tract. But, by way of reflux, all we are getting is meaningless twaddle.

People’s brains have been scoured so thoroughly that they are expected to believe that the fuel used by the German economy doesn’t harm our planet if it comes from Russia and not, say, from France, which has Europe’s largest deposits of shale gas.

But the dumbing-down PR campaign has been won. Not only do people accept the climate hoax as reality, they are also prepared to overlook the gaping holes in the intellectual trousers of the ecofanatics.

Propaganda corrupts, ladies and gentlemen, and total propaganda corrupts totally.