OPINION:
Environmentalists attending the United Nations’ annual climate conference are facing a steep challenge — and it’s not rising temperatures. Rather, it’s persuading the world community to cut back further on fossil fuel usage at a time when energy shortages could make this winter particularly deadly. Despite the current craze over “green” ideology, smart policies can only be ones that ensure human survivability.
Representatives of 190 nations who flocked to Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh resort town for the U.N. COP27 climate summit arrived forewarned. The conference chairman, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, had already lowered expectations that nations would remain steadfast in embracing the U.N. goal to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. “It is more fragile, because of the impact of the current global situation,” he told the Guardian.
Indeed, since last year’s climate conference in Scotland, the “global situation” has devolved, with a worldwide pestilence giving way to a shockingly destructive Eurasian war. In particular, Vladimir Putin’s callous scheme of shutting off natural gas for Europe in the hope of crushing resistance to his Ukraine invasion has served as a jarring reminder that modern civilization crumbles without sufficient energy to operate it.
In Germany’s Westphalia, a wind turbine farm is being dismantled to make room for a lignite coal mine expansion. With no Russian gas to keep Germans warm this winter, the decision was quickly made to swap clean but intermittent wind for carbon-based but reliable coal. If officials had “given in to the demands of the fossil fuel industry,” as one critic characterized the move, they did it to keep citizens alive. Who can blame them?
In Britain, 10% inflation is worsened by an average increase in household energy bills of 80%, with more hikes to come with the onset of cold weather. Unsurprisingly, newly minted Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has announced that he’s skipping the U.N.’s anti-carbon confab. “I just think, at the moment, it’s right that I’m also focusing on the depressing domestic challenges we have with the economy,” he says.
Those challenges include the likelihood of cold-caused death owing to energy poverty. A 2015 study published in the European Journal of Public Health found that between 2002 and 2011, Britain averaged 29,000 excess deaths due to winter cold. The loss of Russian gas is expected to multiply the loss of life.
President Biden has preceded his appearance at COP27, slated for Nov. 11, with threats to impose a windfall profits tax on U.S. oil companies. They have indeed reaped record revenue on the current high fuel prices. Mr. Biden has only himself to blame, though: His relentless war on fossil fuels has made supplies so dear that he has begged OPEC, unsuccessfully, for more oil.
The president is a vocal proponent of the U.N.’s climate agenda, but Americans aren’t listening. A recent Gallup survey places climate change dead last among top voter concerns heading into the midterm elections.
With life-sustaining energy in short supply, only the coldhearted would choose “green” ideology over human survivability.
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