Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
The countries of the West are slowly destroying their manufacturing, mining, and fossil fuel producing industries by way of well-meaning but ultimately destructive “environmental” regulations. I put “environmental” in quotes because many of the regulations have much more to do with the green fantasies of the wokerati than to do with the environment.
At the heart of the problem is the fact that most developing countries have little to no environmental regulations. So when e.g. smog regulations cause German factories to close and relocate to say Nigeria, the smog in Germany decreases but the global smog increases.
But since it can’t be seen from Germany, the Germans get to feel all noble and pat themselves on the back about the clean German air.
And when so-called “greens” prevent the opening of new cobalt mines in the US, it means that children in the Congo are sentenced to virtual slavery to build our windmills and electric vehicles … but hey, the greens say, you can’t see the kids from my house …
I hadn’t thought about it, but the same is true about the Biden Crime Family’s insane war on US oil and gas production. In this regard, there’s an interesting study from the Institute for Energy Research entitled The Environmental Quality Index. From the release:
The contradictions of this approach are most apparent in the case of the United States, the largest producer of both oil and natural gas in the world. Reductions or limitations on domestic U.S. oil production must be made up elsewhere in the remaining major oil producing countries, which have far lower environmental standards than the U.S. This paper seeks to quantify that environmental gap by creating an environmental quality score, weighted by production, for oil and gas production in countries around the world using the well-known Environmental Performance Index (EPI) produced by Yale University. The results show that purely as a matter of environmental protection, replacing U.S. domestic production with foreign supply would be an overwhelmingly negative tradeoff.
The major points highlighted by this analysis are:
- For the 20 largest oil-producing countries outside the United States, the average EPI environmental score, weighted by liquid fuels production, is 39. When compared to the U.S. EPI score of 51.1, it means the average barrel of non-U.S. petroleum is produced in a country with an environmental score that is 23.6% lower than that of the U.S.
For the 20 largest non-U.S. natural gas producers, the average EPI environmental score weighted by production is only 38.6. So compared to the 51.1 EPI score of the U.S., the average billion cubic feet of natural gas is produced in a country with an environmental score that is 24.5% lower than that of the U.S.
The United States, the world’s largest producer of both oil and natural gas, is only outranked on environmental quality by 3 of the top 20 oil producers and 3 of the top gas producers. None of those countries produce even one-quarter of the volumes of oil or natural gas coming from the U.S. Indeed, all oil production from countries scoring higher on environmental quality amounts to only 35.7% of U.S. production, and that from gas-producing countries is only 33.4% of U.S. production. The sheer size of U.S. production combined with its excellent environmental standards means that U.S. production disproportionately reduces the environmental harms of oil and gas production on a global scale.
Sadly, these days the liberals, Democrats, and “greens” are all into the feelz, and they run from the ugly facts listed above like vampires running from garlic …
My very best regards to everyone,
w.
Same Old Same Old: When you comment, please quote the exact words you are discussing. This lets us all know just who and what you are responding to.
Thanks.