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The West’s Green Energy Delusions Empowered Putin

Published

3 years ago

15 minute read

This article submitted by Michael Shellenberger

While we banned plastic straws, Russia drilled and doubled nuclear energy production.

How has Vladimir Putin—a man ruling a country with an economy smaller than that of Texas, with an average life expectancy 10 years lower than that of France—managed to launch an unprovoked full-scale assault on Ukraine?

There is a deep psychological, political and almost civilizational answer to that question: He wants Ukraine to be part of Russia more than the West wants it to be free. He is willing to risk tremendous loss of life and treasure to get it. There are serious limits to how much the U.S. and Europe are willing to do militarily. And Putin knows it.

Missing from that explanation, though, is a story about material reality and basic economics—two things that Putin seems to understand far better than his counterparts in the free world and especially in Europe.

Putin knows that Europe produces 3.6 million barrels of oil a day but uses 15 million barrels of oil a day. Putin knows that Europe produces 230 billion cubic meters of natural gas a year but uses 560 billion cubic meters. He knows that Europe uses 950 million tons of coal a year but produces half that.

The former KGB agent knows Russia produces 11 million barrels of oil per day but only uses 3.4 million. He knows Russia now produces over 700 billion cubic meters of gas a year but only uses around 400 billion. Russia mines 800 million tons of coal each year but uses 300.

That’s how Russia ends up supplying about 20 percent of Europe’s oil, 40 percent of its gas, and 20 percent of its coal.

The math is simple. A child could do it.

The reason Europe didn’t have a muscular deterrent threat to prevent Russian aggression—and in fact prevented the U.S. from getting allies to do more—is that it needs Putin’s oil and gas.

The question is why.

How is it possible that European countries, Germany especially, allowed themselves to become so dependent on an authoritarian country over the 30 years since the end of the Cold War?

Here’s how: These countries are in the grips of a delusional ideology that makes them incapable of understanding the hard realities of energy production. Green ideology insists we don’t need nuclear and that we don’t need fracking. It insists that it’s just a matter of will and money to switch to all-renewables—and fast. It insists that we need“degrowth” of the economy, and that we face looming human “extinction.” (I would know. I myself was once a true believer.)

John Kerry, the United States’ climate envoy, perfectly captured the myopia of this view when he said, in the days before the war, that the Russian invasion of Ukraine “could have a profound negative impact on the climate, obviously. You have a war, and obviously you’re going to have massive emissions consequences to the war. But equally importantly, you’re going to lose people’s focus.”

But it was the West’s focus on healing the planet with “soft energy” renewables, and moving away from natural gas and nuclear, that allowed Putin to gain a stranglehold over Europe’s energy supply.

As the West fell into a hypnotic trance about healing its relationship with nature, averting climate apocalypse and worshiping a teenager named Greta, Vladimir Putin made his moves.

While he expanded nuclear energy at home so Russia could export its precious oil and gas to Europe, Western governments spent their time and energy obsessing over “carbon footprints,” a term created by an advertising firm working for British Petroleum. They banned plastic straws because of a 9-year-old Canadian child’s science homework. They paid for hours of “climate anxiety” therapy.

While Putin expanded Russia’s oil production, expanded natural gas production, and then doubled nuclear energy production to allow more exports of its precious gas, Europe, led by Germany, shut down its nuclear power plants, closed gas fields, and refused to develop more through advanced methods like fracking.

The numbers tell the story best. In 2016, 30 percent of the natural gas consumed by the European Union came from Russia. In 2018, that figure jumped to 40 percent. By 2020, it was nearly 44 percent, and by early 2021, it was nearly 47 percent.

For all his fawning over Putin, Donald Trump, back in 2018, defied diplomatic protocol to call out Germany publicly for its dependence on Moscow. “Germany, as far as I’m concerned, is captive to Russia because it’s getting so much of its energy from Russia,” Trump said. This prompted Germany’s then-chancellor, Angela Merkel, who had been widely praised in polite circles for being the last serious leader in the West, to say that her country “can make our own policies and make our own decisions.”

The result has been the worst global energy crisis since 1973, driving prices for electricity and gasoline higher around the world. It is a crisis, fundamentally, of inadequate supply. But the scarcity is entirely manufactured.

Europeans—led by figures like Greta Thunberg and European Green Party leaders, and supported by Americans like John Kerry—believed that a healthy relationship with the Earth requires making energy scarce. By turning to renewables, they would show the world how to live without harming the planet. But this was a pipe dream. You can’t power a whole grid with solar and wind, because the sun and the wind are inconstant, and currently existing batteries aren’t even cheap enough to store large quantities of electricity overnight, much less across whole seasons.

In service to green ideology, they made the perfect the enemy of the good—and of Ukraine.

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Take Germany.

Green campaigns have succeeded in destroying German energy independence—they call it Energiewende, or “energy turnaround”—by successfully selling policymakers on a peculiar version of environmentalism. It calls climate change a near-term apocalyptic threat to human survival while turning up its nose at the technologies that can help address climate change most and soonest: nuclear and natural gas.

At the turn of the millennium, Germany’s electricity was around 30 percent nuclear-powered. But Germany has been sacking its reliable, inexpensive nuclear plants. (Thunberg called nuclear power “extremely dangerous, expensive, and time-consuming” despite the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change deeming it necessary and every major scientific review deeming nuclear the safest way to make reliable power.)

By 2020, Germany had reduced its nuclear share from 30 percent to 11 percent. Then, on the last day of 2021, Germany shut down half of its remaining six nuclear reactors. The other three are slated for shutdown at the end of this year. (Compare this to nextdoor France, which fulfills 70 percent of its electricity needs with carbon-free nuclear plants.)

Germany has also spent lavishly on weather-dependent renewables—to the tune of $36 billion a year—mainly solar panels and industrial wind turbines. But those have their problems. Solar panels have to go somewhere, and a solar plant in Europe needs 400 to 800 times more land than natural gas or nuclear plants to make the same amount of power. Farmland has to be cut apart to host solar. And solar energy is getting cheaper these days mainly because Europe’s supply of solar panels is produced by slave labor in concentration camps as part of China’s genocide against Uighur Muslims.

The upshot here is that you can’t spend enough on climate initiatives to fix things if you ignore nuclear and gas. Between 2015 and 2025, Germany’s efforts to green its energy production will have cost $580 billion. Yet despite this enormous investment, German electricity still costs 50 percent more than nuclear-friendly France’s, and generating it produces eight times more carbon emissions per unit. Plus, Germany is getting over a third of its energy from Russia.

Germany has trapped itself. It could burn more coal and undermine its commitment to reducing carbon emissions. Or it could use more natural gas, which generates half the carbon emissions of coal, but at the cost of dependence on imported Russian gas. Berlin was faced with a choice between unleashing the wrath of Putin on neighboring countries or inviting the wrath of Greta Thunberg. They chose Putin.

Because of these policy choices, Vladimir Putin could turn off the gas flows to Germany, and quickly threaten Germans’ ability to cook or stay warm. He or his successor will hold this power for every foreseeable winter barring big changes. It’s as if you knew that hackers had stolen your banking details, but you won’t change your password.

This is why Germany successfully begged the incoming Biden administration not to oppose a contentious new gas pipeline from Russia called Nord Stream 2. This cut against the priorities of green-minded governance: On day one of Biden’s presidency, one of the new administration’’s first acts was to shut down the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada to the U.S. in service to climate ideology. But Russia’s pipeline was too important to get the same treatment given how dependent Germany is on Russian imports. (Once Russia invaded, Germany was finally dragged into nixing Nord Stream 2, for now.)

Naturally, when American sanctions on Russia’s biggest banks were finally announced in concert with European allies last week, they specificallyexempted energy products so Russia and Europe can keep doing that dirty business. A few voices called for what would really hit Russia where it hurts: cutting off energy imports. But what actually happened was that European energy utilities jumped to buy more contracts for the Russian oil and gas that flows through Ukraine. That’s because they have no other good options right now, after green activism’s attacks on nuclear and importing fracked gas from America. There’s no current plan for powering Europe that doesn’t involve buying from Putin.

We should take Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a wake-up call. Standing up for Western civilization this time requires cheap, abundant, and reliable energy supplies produced at home or in allied nations. National security, economic growth, and sustainability requires greater reliance on nuclear and natural gas, and less on solar panels and wind turbines, which make electricity too expensive.

The first and most obvious thing that should be done is for President Biden to call on German Chancellor Scholz to restart the three nuclear reactors that Germany closed in December. A key step in the right direction came on Sunday when Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck, the economy and climate minister, announced that Germany would at least consider stopping its phaseout of nuclear. If Germany turns these three on and cancels plans to turn off the three others, those six should produce enough electricity to replace 11 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year—an eighth of Germany’s current needs…

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After 15 years as a TV reporter with Global and CBC and as news director of RDTV in Red Deer, Duane set out on his own 2008 as a visual storyteller. During this period, he became fascinated with a burgeoning online world and how it could better serve local communities. This fascination led to Todayville, launched in 2016.

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“HELL WILL RAIN DOWN”: Trump unleashes U.S. military on Yemeni Houthis

Published on March 16, 2025

By

MXM logo MxM News

Quick Hit:

President Trump ordered a massive military assault on Iranian-backed Houthi forces in Yemen on Saturday, vowing to unleash “overwhelming lethal force” after months of attacks on American and allied vessels in the Red Sea.

Key Details:

  • Trump announced the strikes in a Truth Social post, stating, “Today, I have ordered the United States Military to launch decisive and powerful Military action against the Houthi terrorists in Yemen.”

  • He criticized former President Joe Biden for failing to contain the Houthis, saying his response was “pathetically weak” and emboldened the group’s ongoing attacks on commercial and military vessels.

  • The U.S. Navy’s USS Harry S. Truman carrier strike group, along with three destroyers and a cruiser, launched the assault, targeting radars, air defenses, and missile systems used to disrupt shipping lanes.

Diving Deeper:

President Trump escalated U.S. military action against Iran-backed Houthi rebels on Saturday, ordering airstrikes on targets in Yemen in response to the group’s repeated attacks on Red Sea shipping. Trump, in a Truth Social post, declared that the U.S. military would not tolerate continued aggression and vowed an overwhelming response.

“The Houthi attack on American vessels will not be tolerated,” Trump wrote. “We will use overwhelming lethal force until we have achieved our objective.” He directly warned the Houthis, stating, “YOUR TIME IS UP, AND YOUR ATTACKS MUST STOP, STARTING TODAY. IF THEY DON’T, HELL WILL RAIN DOWN UPON YOU LIKE NOTHING YOU HAVE EVER SEEN BEFORE!”

The strikes, carried out by U.S. Central Command, targeted missile sites, drone launch facilities, and command centers used by the Houthis to strike commercial and military vessels in the Red Sea. U.S. warships and carrier-based fighter jets participated in the mission, marking a significant escalation in efforts to protect international shipping routes.

Trump also issued a direct warning to Iran, demanding that its support for the Houthis “must end immediately.” Addressing Tehran, Trump wrote, “Do NOT threaten the American People, their President…or Worldwide shipping lanes. If you do, BEWARE, because America will hold you fully accountable and we won’t be nice about it!”

The strikes come after more than a year of escalating attacks by the Houthis, who have targeted over 100 merchant vessels, sunk at least two, and killed multiple sailors since the Israel-Hamas war began. Trump pointed to Biden’s failures in handling the crisis, noting that “it has been over a year since a U.S.-flagged commercial ship safely sailed through the Suez Canal, the Red Sea, or the Gulf of Aden.”

With Trump’s order, the U.S. is making clear that hostile actions in the Red Sea will not go unanswered. As military operations continue, all eyes will be on whether the Houthis and their Iranian backers heed the warning—or face even greater firepower from the U.S. military.

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EU leaders escalate war rhetoric with Russia in stark departure from Trump’s peace push

Published on March 7, 2025

By

From LifeSiteNews

By Frank Wright

Germany’s leading academic authority on its army has said that Europe’s depleted armed forces would be “washed away” by Russia in weeks, and that it could take at least 15 years before Germany was ready for war.

Last night’s European Council summit responded to Donald Trump’s moves to end the war in Ukraine with a commitment to massive European rearmament.

The EU Council published a statement that, “In 2025, it will provide Ukraine with EUR 30.6 billion” and “increased military support” to Ukraine and proposes “a new EU instrument to provide Member States with loans backed by the EU budget of up to EUR 150 billion” in support to “non-EU members” to rebuild “defense.”

The extraordinary announcement comes two days after EU Chief Commissioner Ursula von der Leyen, an elected MEP appointed to the powerful leadership position by other MEPs, proposed to “rearm Europe” with the release of up to 800 billion euros ($867 billion) in funding. Details on how the money will be raised are set to be finalized later in March.

European and British statements on this issue directly contradict and defy moves towards a durable peace made by the Trump administration. They have also been met with stern rebukes from Russia.

Reuters reported two days ago that Trump had vowed to “end this senseless war” and “stop the killing”:

Trump also said he had been in “serious discussions with Russia” and had “received strong signals that they are ready for peace.”

“Wouldn’t that be beautiful?” he said. “It’s time to stop this madness. It’s time to halt the killing. It’s time to end this senseless war. If you want to end wars you have to talk to both sides.”

Trump is attempting to return the Western world back to the traditions of international diplomacy before and during international conflicts to save lives and prevent unnecessary massive destruction.

This is a major turn away from the top priority given to military power in recent decades. That appears to have been driven by globalist forces, including giant military-industrial complexes, moneylenders, and globalist investment companies like Blackrock who greatly profit from continuous war.

The Russians responded with “concern” over the “remilitarization” of Europe, with spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying the “confrontational rhetoric and confrontational thinking” from Europe goes against efforts to reach a peaceful resolution to the Ukraine conflict.

France – nuclear escalation?

On Wednesday evening French President Emmanuel Macron made a direct address to the French nation in which he described Russia as a “threat to France and Europe” and said he had decided “to open the strategic debate on the protection of our allies on the European continent by our (nuclear) deterrent.” France is the only nuclear armed member state in the EU.

“If he considers us a threat, gathers a meeting of the chiefs of staff of European countries and Britain, says that it is necessary to use nuclear weapons, to prepare for the use of nuclear weapons against Russia, this is certainly a threat,” Lavrov stated.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly emphasized Russia has no intention of invading any other nation or trying to resurrect the Soviet Union. It has been having trouble enough trying to protect endangered Russian-speaking Ukrainians in Eastern Ukraine for the past three years.

There has been no evidence indicating Russia is planning or even capable of invading and conquering other nations, but it has been forced to prepare to repel possible attacks in response to increasing hostility and unwillingness to dialogue from Western globalist leaders.

Reliable analysts have emphasized that the CIA and other deep state entities in the U.S. and Europe, in order to justify their massive military spending and Russian regime change goal, are the ones who have been spreading false rumors that Russia has expansionist objectives.

Putin referred to Macron’s comments with a warning from history:

Some people still can’t sit still. There are still people who want to go back to the times of Napoleon, forgetting how it ended.

In a further sign that the U.S. is pursuing peace independently of the Europeans, Trump has suspended all military aid to Ukraine and cut off U.S. intelligence sharing, moves which dramatically reduce the war fighting capability of the Zelensky regime.

The EU-led initiative to fund European rearmament comes days after U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer called for a “coalition of the willing” to send troops to Ukraine and continue the supply of arms – whilst talk increases of Zelensky himself being replaced.

“We have to learn from the mistakes of the past, we cannot accept a weak deal which Russia can breach with ease, instead any deal must be backed by strength,” Starmer said, while failing to mention any nations actually willing to join his initiative. So far, none have – though suggestions have been made.

Western nations have been the ones breaching one agreement after another with Russia. Some of those are the promise to not expand NATO “one inch eastward” at the time of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, plus the April 1,2022 Ukraine/Russia initialed agreement in Istanbul to end the Ukraine war, among others.

Starmer’s claim to place “boots on the ground, and planes in the air” did not attract any pledges of support from any European nation. A U.K. deal was signed agreeing to a “loan” of over £1.5 billion ($1.94 billion approx.) to permit Ukraine to purchase British missiles, which have not yet been manufactured and could not in fact be aimed or fired without U.S. intelligence and guidance systems.

Starmer’s bold statements produced a stern response from Russia, whose chief diplomat reminded the world that any placement of NATO troops in Ukraine would be seen as a declaration of war.

Speaking ahead of yesterday’s EU-led Ukraine summit, Lavrov told reporters in Moscow, “We see no room for compromise,” explaining that sending European troops to Ukraine would mean the “undisguised involvement of NATO countries in a war against the Russian Federation. It’s impossible to allow this.”

Responding to Macron’s televised address, Lavrov added that Macron wished to “fight Russia,” explaining the thinking behind the French president’s outburst:

They said directly “We need to conquer Russia, we need to defeat Russia.”

He [Macron] apparently wants the same thing, but for some reason he says that we need to fight Russia so that it does not defeat France.

Rhetoric and reality

The reality of European and British military capability is simply not reflected in any of these statements. Reports over the last few years have consistently shown that there is in fact no realistic European military power to confront the Russians.

Germany’s leading academic authority on its army has said that Europe’s depleted armed forces would be “washed away” by Russia in weeks, and that it could take at least 15 years before Germany was ready for war.

Speaking at a Berlin defense conference in November 2023, German historian Sönke Neitzel told military chiefs that in the case of a war with Russia, Germany’s soldiers “can only die” in a war they will certainly lose:

We are going to stand by the coffins at the soldiers’ graves and we are going to be asked: “What have you done?” We will have to explain to the mothers and the fathers why the soldiers could not fulfill their jobs. And at the moment we can only die gallantly if there’s a war.

Neitzel warned that men will be sent to certain death by their political leaders:

It’s very clear: if our armed forces are going to fight, they will die without drones, air defenses, without enough supplies. Are we now clear enough on our message [to Germany’s leaders]? They are going to die and it’s your responsibility.

In an updated report published March 7, Bloomberg reports that Europe’s “undersized and fragmented” forces would run out of ammunition within days and cannot manufacture sufficient gunpowder.

“Europe’s Defenses Risk Faltering Within Weeks Without US Support” the report says, noting that, “If attacked, Europe’s ammunition stockpiles could run low within days and rearming will take years.”

A report from the U.K.’s Guardian noted last week that the EU “spends more on Russian oil and gas than financial aid to Ukraine,” saying it had purchased “22 billion euros of fossil fuels” in 2024, against “19 billion in aid” to Kiev.

Real war not realistic

Why are EU and British leaders talking war with no realistic chance of fighting one? U.S. moves to scale down and possibly withdraw from NATO spell the end of the alliance, of course, but the wider implications are obvious for the remaining liberal-globalist governments.

Britain, France, Germany, and the EU itself are led by a political establishment whose only hope of unity is in forging a war coalition in a battle they cannot win. As the “Russianist” Professor Gilbert Doctorow has noted, this spells doom for a liberal coalition which has decided to oppose the United States.

“We have moved on from observations of people like myself from the sidelines saying that the leadership in Europe is not living in the real world but they’re living in a bubble,” Doctorow told Judge Napolitano this week.

“What we have now is the end game – and they have created it for themselves.”

The Ukraine war was never going to be won, and a new war between Russia and the liberals of Europe likewise has no basis in military reality. The moves by these failing states is a desperate bid for unity and relevance in a world which no longer corresponds to their values.

Alone among 27 EU member states in opposing increased arms supplies to Ukraine is Hungary. Its leader, Viktor Orbán, famously defined the values of the liberal order as “LGBT, open borders, and war.”

To protect itself from the widespread rejection of these “values” and the globalist agenda they project, the British and EU liberals have implemented totalitarian restrictions on free speech – and even thought and prayer – and have effectively suspended democracy in refusing to respect the results of elections while dramatically increasing digital surveillance and censorship efforts to maintain control of a narrative which has parted company with reality.

The EU initiative to do so is ridiculously called “The European Democracy Shield.”

 

As Doctorow told Judge Napolitano, it can only be a matter of time before the pro-war parties without an army part company with political power, too. The outbreak of peace is fatal to them, as these leaders have all invested their political capital in the black hole of crime and corruption which is another ugly dimension of reality to the failed proxy war in Ukraine.

Leaders like Von der Leyen, Macron, and Starmer do not fear the lights going out all over Europe. They fear the illumination of the darkness they have used their nations’ wealth to fund in Ukraine, which has been defended by years of outrageous lies. Having fought so long to keep their nations in the dark, the European liberal order is panicked into talk of Armageddon by the fear of the lights coming on at last. It is the end of their world that is nigh. Not ours.

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