The global energy shortage is worsening
Western leaders are doing nothing to ease it but revel in it and will make it worse
There is nothing more dramatic to illustrate the global energy shortage than the price of natural gas in Europe. For people who are used to metrics based on barrels of oil equivalent (Boe) the TTF price of US$70 per million BTU is equivalent to US$427 per Boe. United Kingdom and European citizens are paying ten times as much for natural gas as North Americans.
Most natural gas in United Kingdom and Europe is used to fuel electricity generation. The cost of electricity in these jurisdictions has risen tenfold in just two years. That pretty well kills any fuel cost savings from use of an electric vehicle (EV).
Europe’s climate nutters have had to turn back to coal to keep the lights on. That has driven up the price of coal enormously.
Energy finds its way into the prices of pretty well all foodstuffs which are typically transported by ships, rail and truck. The rampant inflation destroying incomes and livelihoods worldwide is exacerbated by high energy prices.
I am indebted to Energy Minute for these charts. I can think of no clearer way to illustrate how the specious “climate change” alarms that have been promoted by governments for political gain has inflicted massive damage on the citizens they are supposed to represent.
CO2 is harmless but the “climate change” policies have driven investment out of fossil fuels and are the direct cause of the global shortage that is getting worse every day. Short term efforts to relieve the high prices like the Biden Administration’s withdrawal of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve just sweep the growing shortage further out in time, and the high interest rates now needed to curb the out of control inflation rate just make the situation worse. Sure the high rates will reduce economic growth and take the steam out of fossil fuel prices for a period, but nothing coming out of Whitehall, Brussels, Washington or Ottawa will do anything to increase the supply of fossil fuels and post-recession demand will see prices rise again, likely to even higher levels.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) projects tight oil markets into 2023. Ask yourself where the oil needed for the post-recession demand growth will come from.
I don’t think there has been a time in history when more world leaders have been so deluded and shared a common delusion. The “climate change” charade has governments spending trillions of dollars on so-called “renewables” and incessantly telling their electorates that this will be their salvation when reality is that renewables are incapable of powering the world’s energy needs, those needs will keep growing as lesser-developed countries develop. The shortage of fossil fuels artifically created by policy, primarily U.S. and Canadian policy to be clear, will just get worse. Perhaps the reason for the mass delusion is the international institutions created post-WWII like the United Nations, the World Health Organization, the World Economic Forum and the International Red Cross have all been corrupted by socialists who see “climate change” alarms as the rallying cry for a post-national new world socialist order.
Those institutions level of confidence they can pull off this mass delusion indefinitely is demonstrated by their leaders openly admitting the climate change alarm has nothing to do with “environment” but is a way of redistributing the world’s wealth.
Justin Trudeau is among the worst of the world leaders advancing this nonsense. Canada is one of only two jurisdictions with the ability to ease the global shortage yet our Liberal government cancels pipelines, puts barriers up to prevent energy projects from being approved, and regularly vilifies the industry and its participants with so-called “green” ideology. I don’t know what is “green” about it other than the greenbacks that are being transferred to the elites through these inane policies.
The American energy industry is similarly capable of expansion but Joe Biden is just as bad as Trudeau, canceling Keystone XL and other key pipelines, canceling “fracking” on Federal lands, and squandering billions of taxpayer money on so-called “climate initiatives” which do nothing to climate but throw gasoline on the inflation fire he has helped create. Trudeau recently said the global shortage he helped create (and blames on Putin’s invasion of Ukraine) will accelerate Canada’s “transition” to a “green economy”. It is hard to imagine a sillier statement by a Prime Minister. Emphasizing “renewables” in the face of today’s fossil fuel shortage will only make the shortage more severe.
This gets a lot worse before it gets better, and it won’t get better until we change leadership in most Western democracies and return common sense to policy by electing leaders who do not suffer from the “climate change” delusion.
Upton Sinclair
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
As long as we call these left-wing radicals "Liberals" and give them the benefit of doubt ("nice guys, but sometimes they overdo it"), these radicals (Trudeau, German Greens) will continue to grab power and destroy freedom. The goal is socialism, to make people poor, so they beg for state help and do not dare to defend their freedom anymore.