We thought we saw the Greens praising all sorts of authoritarian moves to further their agenda. But the website Politico Europe, a publication well-read by elites who are marinated in green politics, has outdone them all by placing Vladimir Putin at the top of his ‘Green annual’, a list of “28 the most powerful behind Europe’s green agenda”.
The Politician vigorously defends Putin’s choice, in such a way that he has convinced me that he is not joking. The magazine claims that the war in Ukraine was great for the environment because it “forced Europe to finally break its addiction to fossil fuels” and helped accelerate the continent’s “green revolution.”
By launching his brutal invasion and manipulating energy markets to keep oil prices high, Putin “has accomplished something that generations of green activists have not,” explains the website Politico .
“Clean energy is now a key European security issue (…) Putin invaded Ukraine after the European Union spent two years laying the foundations of its Green Deal program to zero emissions by 2050. This meant that the political machine for a total overhaul of the European energy economy was already in motion. “
The website notes that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen responded to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine by asking for Europe to “invest massively in renewable energy”, a dubious short-term project given the limitations of wind and solar technology.
I don’t know which is grosser. Support Putin’s murderous attack on Ukraine or applaud Europe’s new green deal, which has led Europe into an energy crisis, with energy rationing, power outages, US$ gasoline 10 per gallon and a return to wood burning for home heating purposes. To avoid blackouts, Germany must keep open nuclear plants that were scheduled to close in December. It is a return to a new form of the Dark Ages in Europe.
Most people applaud Germany for suspending operation of Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. The country already depended on Russia for 50% of its natural gas. But the Politician enters the realm of pure fantasy with his claim that Europe can now overcome energy shortages with “a range of cheap and reliable alternatives (…) that now generate energy at a fraction of the cost of gas.”
But German environmentalists have made it clear that they still see any energy source that isn’t fully clothed in green theology as the enemy. “Fossil fuels and nuclear power are the problem,” Robert Habeck, the leader of the Green Party who serves as economy minister in the Socialist-led government, told his party’s conference last week. He won reluctant party approval for his plan to keep two nuclear plants temporarily open until April 2023 in the event of a severe energy crisis.
Germany’s third remaining nuclear power plant at Emsland, however, will go offline at the end of 2022 as previously planned. The Greens have promised that the government of which they are a part will not agree to anything that would allow any of the plants to acquire new nuclear fuel.
“We have never seen such a huge gap between the needs of Western foreign policy on energy and the complete refusal of policymakers in both Europe and the US to resist the special interest demands of environmental groups who oppose energy development,” James James Lucier, energy analyst at Capital Alpha Partners in Washington, DC, tell me. Now, the Greens are no longer just wrong; they are jeopardizing the future of the Western economy.
Satirist Sonny Bunch says, “Environmentalists are good movie villains because they want to make your real life worse.” We would add that they are also a bit fun because they say the craziest things – like that Vladimir Putin, Ukraine’s environmental destroyer, is somehow a green icon.
