Rex Murphy explains how the demise of nations works in his piercing National Post editorial Even green zealots fear the cold more than the evils of natural gas.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

The Germans, among others, aren’t smirking now

Forgive the phrase, but it is appropriate — Vladimir Putin has the European Union — Germany in particular — over a barrel. . . Over several barrels come to think of it.

The virtue states went green, but contented themselves with getting the slack, the dirty oil and gas stuff they so deplored, from reliable Russia.

And when a certain American President — the sagacious readers of the Post will divine whom I mean, and it is merely to forestall trauma in readers of other journals that I withhold his name (hint: there was a hotel in Toronto that featured his name as a brand and rhymed with “plump”). When that President warned German authorities that it was a risk and a very bad move to set up a dependency on Vladimir Putin for an essential resource, in public — the scene is available on YouTube — half of them smirked and the other half laughed.

There is a small moral here. Advice worth following does not need to come from lips you approve of. The quality and worth of advice may, on occasion, be independent of the character (or what you presume to be the character) of the person offering it.

They are not smirking now. Germany, in the warm haze and fuzzy thinking of “progressive” thought, broke the bank on their master green plan, the great Energiewende, to “get off” planet-destroying fuels (and nuclear) which proved to be a massive multi-billion-dollar mess and a failure.

This even before Mr. Putin unleashed his legions on Ukraine. Putin’s current leverage was founded on their previous policies.

Contrary to the sooth-sayers of the IPCC and the Eco-Nostradami, great economies can’t be flipped on a Davos dream, and the German winter of 2023 will be unmoved by replays of An Inconvenient Truth. Or shoreline rants from a most intemperate David Suzuki. Anger does not become an elder about to board a sea plane.

As a footnote to the Energiewende opera, be it noted at the end of September the German government announced is spending US$195 billion, to cap natural gas prices for households and businesses.  That’s a bigger price tag than the US$172 billion the UK government was expected to spend to finance its own price cap. Germany went green with a vengeance and now has to mail out checks to its citizens to compensate for the folly.

And before turning to the distressed UK, one line from Forbes, quoting Foreign Policy, has quite a punch: “Electricity prices, in fact, have tended to be highest in places with the greatest share of renewable energy.” Dear Lord, who could have guessed? It’s a good thing they didn’t impose … an escalating carbon tax.

Great Britain has dropped its second prime minister in mere weeks. As in Germany, it’s all about energy, all about the mindless embrace over the last years of green ideologies, until fear of a cold winter causes an impressively swift rearrangement of concerns about energy.

It has just reversed its stand on fracking. During its green-virtue phase, fracking — the most efficient technological advance in the search for the most basic energy resource — was termed a pure evil.

It was banned by law. It was a blasphemy against Mother Earth and Bill Nye. Now that winter closes in, and energy prices that were once mere Honda Civic (used) are now going all Rolls Royce (customized), fracking is a good thing, a necessary thing. It has received an official vote of approval from the House of Commons, UK.

On our side of the world under the increasingly — let’s choose a kind word — drifting leadership of Joe Biden, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve — intended as a backup for the most drastic emergencies, has been raided once again. OPEC turned him down on his request to increase oil flow. Let us recall that the Biden presidency began with shutting down a great Canadian source of oil, the Keystone XL.

It is a wonderful consideration that when Reality (capital R) speaks, all poses and postures, all voice-hushed bleating of virtue-speak platitudes take a stay. I wonder if our deputy-prime minister is still pulsating the message that all this reminds us of “how important climate action is.” And how carbon taxes are so very necessary in the present moment.

How did we get here?

It is the speeches and the campaigns against oil and gas, the sermons from the jet-set di Caprio’s, the dim-witted tirades of such as Neil Young against Fort McMurray, much and more than Putin, have brought this crisis on. People who have never seen a COP meeting, never could have dreamt of going to Davos, never mind been able to afford such a folly, that will bear, and perhaps not be able to bear, the cost of the winter to come.

Thank heaven, reality and its sister common sense is having a minute
at the microphone of the world’s attention.

As an ending point, would it not have been a great thing, if a moderate country, of magnificent and vast geography, had taken advantage of its so-plentiful natural resources, encouraged and supported its energy industry, built pipelines, guaranteed supply, could now — at this crisis moment — offer so many of its allies, real support and immediate remedy?

We would be in a place to issue this pronouncement: “Canada says to hell with Putin, we have what you need, and we can send it now.”

But no. Under the current net-zero fascinated government, energy was deemed an enemy, due for shut down as soon as possible, and what we now offer a tormented world is a windmill-driven, not yet started, dubious in the extreme, futuristic hydrogen plant in Stephenville, Newfoundland. If you have tears, weep them now.

The countries whom the gods would destroy they first make green.

See also Net Zero = Pro China + Pro Russia

via Science Matters

October22, 2022

Nations the Gods Destroy They First Make Green | Science Matters (rclutz.com)