Imagine a land rich in carbon energy, that won’t mine or drill for it. Imagine that land, currently enjoying safe and clean nuclear power, shutting down its reactors. Imagine that land also shutting down its coal plants. Imagine that land struggling to keep up with energy demand by restricting itself to solar and wind power.
Now, imagine that land continuing to import natural gas and petroleum products, because its people need energy. Increasingly, from nations that don’t share a sense of alliance, common purpose, or solidarity, but rather have competing or aggressively hostile attitudes regarding international politics.
Finally, imagine that land deciding that it won’t invest sufficiently in its military, and is reluctant to honor its treaty commitments regarding defense spending. Imagine its leaders assume that another nation, on the other side of an ocean, will always take care of its needs should those aggressors get more aggressive.
Yes, I’m talking about several of our European allies. As did Victor Davis Hanson in a recent column, wherein he echoes a drum I’ve been thumping for a long time. Europe is not only committing continental suicide with its obsession with green energy, it’s providing material support to both the Putin regime and the Iranian mullahs. They are hostages to Russian and Middle Eastern oil and gas, despite having plenty of untapped domestic supply. And, they remain deeply reliant on Pax Americana to keep that hostage situation from getting out of control.
Here’s one instance where I agree (and agreed from Day 1) with Trump. Actually, Trump agrees with me – I asserted (and blogged about) this view way before Trump hit the stage. Europe needs to manage her own shit, and that includes spending more on defense.
Or, barring that, at least stop trodding the path of energy suicide. Whether or not you subscribe to the most dire version of global warming theory, brute-force decarbonization by the West, especially when coupled with an abandonment of nuclear power, is not a solution except in the minds of rich, deluded, detached-from-reality progressives and sheltered virtue-signalers. Without the BRICS nations and the rest of the developing world being all-in (and they never will be – they’re not that stupid), nothing that Europe does will accomplish anything other than inflicting misery and reduced living standards on current and near-future generations.
Meanwhile, America has managed to actually surpass the carbon emissions reductions that were promised in the Paris Accord that Trump (wisely) punted. How? By embracing hydraulic fracturing, for one thing. Natural gas produces a quarter the carbon per unit energy that coal does, and does so with a far, FAR lower particulate (a much bigger public health matter) output. We’re cleaner, we’re lower in carbon, AND we’re energy independent.
Europe’s two-pronged seppuku in energy and defense is joined by a third form of suicide: the elevation of non-native, illiberal (and downright repressive) cultural beliefs of immigrants and refugees over the nations’ established mores and liberties. Supporting religious liberty and celebrating diversity is one thing, deferring to those that call for oppression, segregation, and imposition of restrictive religious covenants is another. But, even if you don’t agree on the cultural front, it’s hard to dispute that Europe’s leaders’ actions regarding energy and national defense are utter head-scratchers, given the precarious position they put her nations in.
As for lessons for American politicians to heed? They’re pretty obvious. Europe needs a good strong push or two to get serious about her self-defense. First step is the pressure to honor NATO guidelines. Second step? Start pulling our troops and positions out of the Middle East, and continue to draw down out of Europe. We neither need nor can afford to continue playing globocop. Third step? Reject all those who call for banning fracking and forcibly decarbonizing our economy in favor of wind and solar. Following Europe’s energy blue print is national suicide.
Europe is already poorer, broadly speaking, than America, in terms of living standards. Not that you’d know this if you listened to our statist politicians and media, who routinely suggest we’d be better off if we emulated the Europeans (or at least their tendentious interpretations of them). Current policies are only going to exacerbate that disparity, and we’d be fools to think they’re an example of better governance.
Europe’s leaders have put her citizens in an untenable situation. By purposely making them dependent on Russian natural gas and Middle-Eastern oil, foreign policy decisions and positions will be forever limited and compromised. Hostage to a delusional approach to global warming mitigation, they’ve self-muzzled any responses they might have to Russian and Iranian aggressions. By short-changing themselves on national defense, they’re dependent on an American populace that may be losing its taste for underwriting European welfare states with American debt. And, by failing to expect immigrants and refugees to appreciate and abide by Western ideas of liberty and liberalism, they’ve sown the seeds of discontent among the citizenry – seeds that have produced the nationalist “far-right” movements that the chattering classes speak of with fear and contempt.
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