Europeans Mutiny Against Committing Economic Suicide by Green Energy Policy
Irish Energy Expoert: “Greenery as practiced has become a cult, and an anti-business cult at that.”
A couple of days ago, I reported that the head of the United Nations launched a delusional tirade against fossil fuel companies, accusing them of betraying future generations and undermining efforts to phase out a product he called “incompatible with human survival.”
I noted that the rhetoric was a blend of hyperbole and desperation, as the average citizen now recognizes that the harsh and unnecessary rules imposed upon them do not seem to impact elites…like the bureaucrats in the United Nations or World Economic Forum. Those in power, have used climate and the environment to make sweeping rules that allow them to profit.
A new piece in the Times of London supports my assertion. The article provides a great summary of many of the ways Europeans are fighting back against green energy policies. For example, there are details about what is happening in Germany:
Consumer advice bureaus are flooded with anguished and frustrated Germans. Pensioners are terrified they will have to leave their homes because they can’t afford the €30,000 needed to install a heat pump and modern insulation. The draft law actually provides for a grace period but that hasn’t eased the angst. Nor has the promise of heat pump subsidies, the size of which the government has not confirmed.
The state has demanded a sacrifice from its citizens, but can it keep its promises? It says the country can produce half a million heat pumps a year from 2024, reaching a total of six million by 2030, one of its benchmarks on the way to net zero by 2050. But four million will be needed by next year alone. Almost weekly, new factories are being set up, most of them in eastern Europe. The Americans, flush with green subsidies from the Biden administration, are moving into the market. Then there’s the shortage of skilled labour: Germany has to find an extra 60,000 heating engineers in short order. Not forgetting the obstacles thrown up by a bureaucratic planning system that insists, because of tight noise pollution controls, that heat pumps on a terraced house have to be 3 metres (10ft) away from neighbours.
The Greens are taking a hit. They were always the party of risk aversion: against US missiles being stationed in Germany, hostile to nuclear waste storage. Once in government, in coalition with Gerhard Schröder’s Social Democrats, they showed a slightly different face: less pacifist but more bossy. Now they are back in power again, the bossiness has returned. They’re enforcers and voters are starting to punish them. In a local election in the city-state of Bremen, an essentially anti-Green party called Citizens in Anger came out of nowhere to win 10 per cent of the vote.
David Horgan, who has 40 years of high-level experience in the development of natural resources in Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East, recently made the case that Europeans were committing economic suicide by energy policy.
David Horgan reviews the significance of reliable and affordable energy to society, and then summarizes the growing global supply/demand imbalances, describing how investment in reliable supplies is now falling well short of societal needs. He explores links between affordable and reliable energy, economic progress and social well-being. He will consider how counterproductive ideologies are now unfortunately distorting European energy policy. Finally, he shows how Irish energy policy increasingly contributes to high costs, low efficiencies and likely shortages. Accordingly, he will argue that current energy policies, however well-intentioned, are tantamount to economic suicide, and so need urgent objective review.
In his video presentation, Horgan offers insights he has gained as part of his work:
“Greenery as practiced has become a cult, and an anti-business cult at that. It as replaced the parties of the hard left.
I would like to conclude with a reminder about a statement from someone the United Nations welcomed as a climate hero.
Clearly, regular citizens are clamoring for real debate for actual data, sensible policies based on hard science, and an end to eco-tyranny that empowers elite bureaucrats. No wonder the Climate Cultists in power are heating up their rhetoric, and their media minions are spewing out climate panic in a scale that rivals Krakatoa for its potential of destructiveness.
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Comments
“Germany has to find an extra 60,000 heating engineers in short order.”
Whew, good that Angela allowed all those unvetted Muslims into the country in 2015 (and continuing). The 95% of them will no longer be “on benefits” (Euro-ese for being on welfare = not working, though they have been busy doing a lot of crime) now that their top-level engineering skills can be put to good use.
Any engineer, regardless of discipline, should be able to do HVAC. They will probably be using mostly mini-split heat pumps.
I suspect that by “engineers”, they mean mostly technicians. It takes many more workers to install a system than to design it, and HVAC systems are pretty standardized so the fresh design work is minimized.
Many Muslims have engineering degrees. At least in theory, they could draw up the plans for how to fit a heat pump into an existing house. But from everything I’ve heard of Arab Muslims, the educated ones absolutely won’t take tools in their hands and make those plans a reality. They didn’t go to college to do the hard and dirty jobs. They might supervise much less educated Muslims who are generally happy to get the work, but two things will make them far less efficient than an American team: Muslim bosses are supervising from a distance rather than getting in there and _showing_ how to do the job, and in the Arab culture, bosses try to maintain their position on top by keeping their knowledge secret rather than spreading it to their underlings.
We really shouldn’t be surprised at the reluctance of the the average European to bear the costs of the policies promulgated by the political coalitions they voted for. When we look at the situation it isn’t so much a disagreement about the thrust of the policies as it is about who pays.
The average European lives a heavily subsidized life in comparison to the average American. They have low cost medical care, often free to the consumer. They have nice pensions and an extravagant social safety net compared to the USA. Of course they also have high tax rates which do bite a broader swath of people than our tax system. However, they are not used to being hit directly in the pocket book for policy implementation, only indirectly via taxes which are largely borne by a small segment not the wider public.
The bottom line, IMO, is that the average European would continue to be all in on the same green party/allied party lefty environmental nonsense if the State was picking up the tab to retrofit their homes and business. Instead b/c business and property owners are going to get hit financially they are pushing back. It isn’t out of some epiphany and change in viewpoint; it is due to direct financial consequences. Very similar to how our ‘Sanctuary Jurisdictions’ haven’t changed their tune about border policy and illegal immigrants; hen it was border communities in Red States dealing with it they could be ‘noble and virtuous’ but when they had folks in their front yard and the accompanying costs it was suddenly a problem.
They have committed cultural suicide with the mass moslem immigration.
In one generation, Germany and Sweden will be moslem majority countries.
And we with our Latin soulmates, about 40 million
Dont forget the Somalians! Minnesota is doing Great with that crowd of about a million!
What happened to all the Norwegians in Minnesota
I’m think they moved to Northern Wisconsin
The US needs more cheese-heads.
Hispanics have an average IQ of 87, though as you go south that drops considerably. Somalians average 68, and they have a high reproductive rate.
Our public policy should be to bring people to America who have at least an average IQ of 100. Dumbing America down lowers our competiveness.
BS
They are destroying the Netherlands, absolutely destroying it, killing the farm animals and plowing the farms under for mass housing of illegals
Well, who needs farms when we have fake chicken meat in the pipeline – and Soylent Green if these people could do what they really want – reduce population.
The raw materials for fake meat still comes from farms. But the Greens and other “progressives” are mostly city folk that subconsciously think food is manufactured in the back room of supermarkets.
Mutiny is a disturbing word choice. It suggests that the writer, at least subliminally, accepts that citizens have surrendered their rights and free agency, much as a sailor in the Navy has, and as a matter of course must obey all commands of the State. I am finding many of today’s so-called conservatives are just yesterday’s liberals.
A lot of today’s conservatives are classical liberals. Today’s liberals are not really liberal anymore. They have become….something else. Liberals of 80 years ago would not recognize them as such.
A lot of the people I know who are calling themselves liberals range from left to far-left to outright Maoist.
But since the word refers specifically to Europeans, I’ll allow it.
The US has reduced pollution by a lot in the past decades, which is good, but nobody asked me to join a suicide cult. The eco-nuts keep going overboard.
The problem is that there is no end point. They have all of the low hanging fruit (e.g. smog in cities), but if they declare victory, those folk will lose funding, power & prestige. They can’t let that happen. With Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant closing down, the local groups are now complaining about sand blowing in from the beach due to people driving there. They would prefer it being a 10+ mile walking beach (if they allowed even that) rather than having one of the last driving beaches in California. The fact that studies have show that the blowing sand is not from the area driven on is immaterial.
It isn’t about ecology/saving the world/etc, it is really about money & control.
NGOs always mission-creep.
Something like 40 years ago, I read an essay claiming that the author could find only two activist organizations who achieved their goals and then disbanded, instead of creeping on to a broader mission. One was the Committee to End Pay Toilets in America, and I don’t remember what the other one was.
back in the 70’s there was a discount department store named Zodys, They changed their bathroom tal
To quarter entry. Someone left a pile in one of the sinks.
2nd para: “Those in power, have used climate and the environment to make sweeping rules that allow them to prof”
Guessing “…profit” ?