“Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had presided over a seven-year anti-oil
industry pogrom, thwarting multiple export pipelines that could have
helped supply countries now dependent on Putin’s blood oil.”
Last year my year-end column, “Fossil fuel follies of 2021,” focused on the bizarre impacts of the Great March Greenward by net-zero zealots intent on replacing the 84 per cent of global energy supplied by fossil fuels with electricity from windmills and solar panels.
Some effects were so ridiculous as to be almost humorous. As 2022 made painfully clear, however, there’s nothing at all funny about the enormous damage currently being inflicted by pursuit of this technically impossible goal.
Germany’s ill-conceived decision to shut down its zero-emission nuclear plants and replace them with unreliable wind and solar power left it no alternative but to import Russian natural gas. Russia’s contemptible invasion of Ukraine left Germany with a classic Hobson’s choice: either help fund the murderous invasion or devastate its own citizens’ economic and personal wellbeing.
Realizing the enormous power that Germany’s need for Russian gas gave him, President Putin cut back gas flows, driving European prices to stratospheric levels.
For the rest of this column: https://financialpost.com/opinion/painful-return-energy-supply-reality-opinion