The Green Energy Cult is Killing the West

Years ago, I wrote a post about how cheap air travel to Europe was ruining America. My point was that the Americans visiting Europe were confusing what they experienced as a tourist with the reality of life in Europe. These progressive American fans of two-hour lunches and 6 months of maternal and paternal leave didn’t have a clue about how average Europeans lived. Indeed, a couple of years later, the Foundation For Economic Education came out with a study that showed the poorest 20% of Americans were better off than the average European. Basically, the average European suffers from high taxes, high prices, tiny homes and cars, and, increasingly, less freedom. But tourists sipping tea in London or shopping in Paris rarely, if ever, see this, or understand it if they do.

Nonetheless, with little understanding of economics or history, they decide that America must become Europe. Socialism, Obamacare, and gay marriage are just some of those European imports that Americans have to deal with today.

We are seeing something similar play out on a grander, global scale—or at least in the West, where prosperity has dulled the brains of much of the population.

Naturally, I’m talking about the green energy hoax. Here in the West, we have people so spoiled by prosperity that they have the luxury of pining for a time when we weren’t poisoning our earth with fossil fuels or risking apocalypse with nuclear power.

On both sides of the Atlantic, you have a perfect mix of brain-dead green energy cultists and fascist elites who seek to harness the power of that cult to control everyone. That’s a toxic combination because energy controls pretty much everything.

The reality is that inexpensive, reliable energy is the single biggest driver of prosperity in all human history. And it’s not even close. Inexpensive, reliable energy drives virtually everything that we Westerners enjoy: Our food, iPhones, transportation, heating and cooling of homes, televisions, hospitals, schools, movies, plumbing, video games, Starbucks, and the Zambonis at hockey games! Everything.

It’s not that energy didn’t exist previously. It did. But the difference is that it was inefficient, hard to get, and expensive. The first significant source of fuel for humans was wood. That lasted for tens of thousands of years. Although the first recorded use of coal was in China between the 4th and 3rd millennia BC, in Europe, for two thousand years, coal remained an insignificant source of energy. Change came in the 17th century because England had felled most of the easily accessible trees and was in need of energy. With the advent of large-scale mining, coal rapidly became the most significant source of energy in Europe.

This would be the status quo for the next 300 years until the first successful oil well, drilled in Titusville, Pennsylvania in 1859. Over the following decades, tens of thousands of wells would be drilled and, by 1900, the US alone would be producing 20 million barrels of oil a year. That oil was first used to produce kerosene for heating and lighting homes, then gasoline for automobiles and, eventually, powering electricity plants as well, although coal was the dominant fuel for powering electricity production well into the late 20th century.

In the latter half of the 20th century, nuclear power emerged as a viable vehicle for producing electricity and was joined by fracking-driven natural gas early in the early 21st century.

Of course, renewables had been around for centuries, first with windmills and watermills, then hydroelectricity and, eventually, solar. Renewables always remained a small sliver of the power generation, however, only becoming slightly material in recent years due to heavy regulation and subsidies.

But now, for the first time in human history, we have a segment of the population, largely Western liberals, who want to restrict the use of inexpensive and reliable energy.

For the last 400 years, mankind has been marching forward in the direction of increasing the amount of energy we consume. As a result, lifespans have increased dramatically, prosperity has flourished, technology and sciences have advanced dramatically, and lives have become exponentially more varied.

Believe it or not, all of that is held together by a tenuous electricity grid. Not sure? In 2019 the Air Force said the following about an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) attack:

A successful EMP attack on the U.S. could lead to a nationwide blackout of the electric power grid and a shutdown of critical infrastructure reliant on the grid, including, but not limited to, communications, transportation, food and water supply, and sanitation. Such a shutdown could last as long as a year, and without such critical infrastructure, a large fraction of the America could die from starvation, disease, or the effects of general societal collapse.

That gives some indication of how dependent Americans are on energy. But it’s probably not going to be an EMP that cripples America and the West. It’s going to be the fiction of green energy.

In 2011, Angela Merkel announced that Germany would shut down all 17 of its nuclear reactors. Last year, the last three were shuttered. In 1990 Germany generated 25% of its electricity from nuclear; now it’s finally zero. And it shows.

While harassing citizens to conserve energy, Germany has gone from a net exporter of energy to a net importer. In addition, in 2010, German GDP growth was ahead of every single nation in the EU and double the average. By 2022, it was half the EU average and, over the next six years, it’s predicted to be dead last in the EU and behind only Belarus and war torn Russia and Ukraine on the continent. This is all in pursuit of the goal of cutting CO2 emissions 65% below the 1990 level by 2030.

On this side of the pond, we have California banning the sale of gasoline-powered cars by 2035 and a wave of blue states lining up behind them. This at the same time the state is asking existing electric car owners not to charge their cars while leaning on fossil fuels to stave off the return of rolling blackouts.

The reality is that the green energy revolution is a fiction. Green energy is incapable of providing the energy requirements developed nations require and the green energy movement is a cult. In fealty to that cult, Western nations are wasting hundreds of billions of dollars every year on “green energy” programs—most of which fail. Between 2020 and June of 2023, Western nations spent $1.34 trillion on green energy “investments“ while private companies spent tens of billions more annually.

Basically, for no discernable benefit, and arguably with many negative consequences, Western nations are setting fire to 2% of their GDP annually and expect to burn even more going forward. That would essentially mean that GDP would have to grow at 2% annually just to tread water, an unlikely prospect in the face of tightening energy supplies and skyrocketing costs.

And this is all because people with no understanding of science, economics, or history operate under the illusion that civilization is a virus on the pristine earth. Western civilization as we know it will not survive the economic suicide of the green revolution.

Perhaps that’s why Western elites are inviting into their countries tens of millions of third-world “migrants” who aren’t familiar with inexpensive and reliable energy. At some point, those who do remember them will become the minority, and the elites can finally drop the fiction of concern.

Collapse of Civilization: Lessons Voters Might Take From Roman Britain

“Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it,” said George Santayana. He could well be describing modern leftists, careening back into the dark ages of post-Roman Britain.

At the end of the 2^nd century AD Britain was a fully developed province of the Roman Empire.  It was as Roman as any city in the Empire. While still largely rural, Roman Britain developed towns and cities that mirrored those found in Italy or North Africa and connected them with a spectacular roadway. They had majestic villas, sprawling estates, baths, plumbing and of course aqueducts.  The Romans brought industrial sophistication to mining, unprecedented architectural capabilities and improved agriculture.  The province was awash in imported goods from around the Empire: Wine from Gaul, olive oil from Hispania, pottery from North Africa, and philosophy teachers from Greece; all the while exporting precious metals, agricultural products, shellfish and salt across the Empire.

One of the extraordinary things about the Roman Empire was the unprecedented, widespread prosperity it created from the Pillars of Hercules to the Levant and virtually everywhere in between. While there had always been a market for fine goods such as silk and porcelain and exotic foods, the Romans brought those goods to the masses. By building roads, ports, transportation hubs and funding the trade necessary to support the Legions, the Romans drove economies of scale and created a mass market for goods that had formerly been available only to the rich but had become inexpensive across the Roman world.  In doing so they created a cosmopolitan empire so thoroughly Roman that people from what are today Morocco and Britain and Germany and Israel likely spoke some version of the same language and would have found familiar products available regardless of where they were in the Empire.

Back in Britain, three hundred years after Caesar first invaded the untamed island in 55 BC the province was a sophisticated, shining example of all of the Empire had to offer. It was not to last however… In less than a century after the Romans abandoned the island for good in 410 the population collapsed, the economy collapsed, cities became ghost towns or disappeared and chaos reigned. Londinium, whose population peaked at 60,000 in the 2^nd century, dropped below 20,000 and saw more than 75% of its buildings dismantled with the materials carted off into the countryside.

In less than a century Roman Britain went from a rich, flourishing cosmopolitan province with bustling urban centers and goods from across the known world to an economic and cultural backwater where modern architectural, plumbing and farming techniques seemed to have disappeared along with most of the import of goods. 

Most of the people living on the island in the middle of the 4^th century probably assumed, like much of America in 2022, that the advances of civilization move only in one direction, upward.  They expected to continue to enjoy inexpensive food and pottery and clothing from elsewhere in while selling their wares in return.  The government would continue to provide protection and would maintain the ports and roads that facilitated trade. 

When those things didn’t happen life in Britain became a far darker experience.  Cities disappeared, warlords set up fiefdoms and invaders came from seemingly everywhere. Farming techniques were lost, building techniques were lost, trade collapsed and citizens were forced to become self sufficient as numerous petty would be “kings” set up trade and travel barriers and goods from the Continent became scarce.  The opposite of economies of scale and free trade took hold and Britain became far less prosperous as goods became more expensive, countless products and varieties of products simply disappeared and staples had to be produced locally.

It’s here where Santayana’s missive becomes relevant. Given that the history of post Roman Britain so clearly demonstrates the fragility of civilization’s advances, we might want to pay attention.  The reality is, our world, far more tenuously than the Britain of 1700 years ago, is but X bad decisions away from an agrarian, subsistence economy with no electricity, no gas, little trade, few economies of scale and most certainly no security or safety. 

Go through a day and see how many things we rely on that we couldn’t replace if a disaster occurred.  Imagine a blackout.  How many things would that loss of electricity impact?  Not only the lighting in our homes, but the refrigerators, phone chargers, garage door openers as well.  Outside our homes there’s even more: Elevators.  Gas pumps. Plumbing.  Street lamps & stop lights. Virtually everything in a hospital. Cell phone towers. Police switchboards and dispatches. Train signals and countless other things.

Then there’s the social aspects of such a crisis.  Rules and laws would go out the window, and it wouldn’t take long. During the New York City blackout of 1977 crime surged, with looting, vandalism and arson rampant (over 1,000 fires were set) while police arrested 3,776 people in the largest mass arrest in the city’s history.  The chaos cost over $1 billion in today’s dollars, and the lights were off for less than 24 hours!  Now jump forward to the BLM / Antifa riots of 2020 and the defunding of police.  Not only was there chaos and mayhem, there were murders, assaults, and rapes nationwide and communities literally burned to the ground. Then there is the mass looting and random violence that has occurred since 2020 and seems to be growing worse every day… and through all of this we still had electricity!

Of course electricity is only one element of what keeps our society civilized.  There’s gasoline, there’s trade, there’s what used to be a widespread respect for the rule of law.  Imagine no diesel fuel.  Trucks wouldn’t be able to deliver food and store shelves will go bare.  You probably have enough food in your kitchen for your family to last a few days or maybe a week at most. Then what? Are you going to grow wheat on your windowsill or in your backyard?  Is the neighborhood stray cat going to be your family’s next meal? Do you have a cow for milk? Not to mention medicines, building materials, gasoline for your car… the list of goods delivered via diesel is endless. 

One of the downsides of trade, division of labor and economies of scale is that most of us are dependent on others to provide for us those things we don’t produce for ourselves… which is to say, almost everything.  Our society is based on a trade system where we get paid to do some things and we pay others to do the things we don’t. It’s a well oiled machine… until it’s not.    

And that’s the point.  The climate alarmists who want to do away with fossil fuels have no concept of the ramifications of that folly. The equity cultists who want to eliminate the police and “reform” the justice system don’t care about the consequences of that absurdity. 

Just as the razor thin layer of atmosphere surrounding the earth sustains life on earth, our modern society thrives thanks to plentiful, inexpensive energy and a respect for the rule of law.  Inexplicably, those are the two primary targets of the Democrats who are currently in charge of wide swaths of the United States.  Indeed Californians regularly endure the absurd manmade disaster of rolling blackouts while Illinois is about to essentially decriminalize crime.  Neither is necessary…

When Americans step into their well lit, safe and private voting booths on November 8^th they’d do well to think of those 5^th century Britons who were about to careen into a darkness from which it would take almost a millennia to emerge, and vote accordingly.