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The Climate War will never be the same: it was a lame Cold War substitute until real War returned

Ted Nordhous argues powerfully that Climate Change is simply not the main event anymore, and the climate punters are shellshocked.

Russia’s War Is the End of Climate Policy as We Know It

by Ted Nordhous, Foreign Policy

Tactical exercise with the withdrawal of the Topol mobile ground-based missile system in the Serpukhov branch of the Strategic Missile Forces Military Academy

Tactical exercise with the withdrawal of the Topol mobile ground-based missile system in the Serpukhov branch of the Strategic Missile Forces Military Academy

Virtually overnight, the war in Ukraine has brought the post-Cold War era to a close, not just by ending Europe’s long era of peace, but by bringing basic questions of energy access back to the fore.

If recent months have demonstrated anything, it is that war, insecurity, and economic crisis are merciless teachers. Climate advocates and their political allies have often engaged in the policy equivalent of smoking one’s own supply: They have confused the subsidy-driven growth of renewable energy with evidence that the world is ready to rapidly transition off fossil fuels. Hence, they discouraged the production of oil and gas wherever they could and chronically underinvested in other sources of clean energy, such as nuclear power. But while there has been technological progress, the global economy is still very far away from fully replacing fossil fuels.

Climate Change was the filler hob-goblin between the real threats

The issue of climate change burst into the global debate just as the Cold War was coming to an end. As one existential threat seemingly receded, another came into view. For much of the international community, particularly the United Nations and its agencies, climate change also became much more than an environmental issue, offering an opportunity to reshape the post-Cold War order to be more equitable, multilateral, and politically integrated.

And offering the UN a reason to grow, to be bigger, richer, more powerful. There were nice jobs, annual junkets and the feeling they were superheroes.

The political junkies will flex with the times, but the religious zealots won’t:

Much of the climate commentariat—politicians and policymakers, academics and think tank analysts, journalists and activists—appears shellshocked by the violent return of energy geopolitics and fossil fuel shortages.

The 1970s energy crisis left a long term mark:

In response to the energy crises of the 1970s, the United States, rich in both fossil fuel resources and technological capabilities, invested in almost every energy source imaginable. It accelerated the development of coal deposits across the U.S. West, built rail links to bring coal to the Eastern Seaboard, and invested huge resources in the development of unconventional oil and gas production, including shale gas, oil shales, and coal-based synthetic fuels. It also made foundational investments in the commercialization of solar panels, wind turbines, and energy-efficient technologies ranging from LED lighting to combined-cycle gas turbines to fuel-injection engines.

The West hobbled itself in so many ways. Not only by cutting off our own baseload power, but lecturing the developing world, holding them back, and not helping them build the infrastructure they needed. That left the door open to others to fil that role.

Resentment runs deep. For decades, Western environmental and other NGOs, often with the tacit or direct support of governments and international development institutions, have broadly opposed large-scale energy and resource development, from dams to mines to oil and gas extraction.

China and Russia, by contrast, have no such qualms and have leveraged investments in energy, resource extraction, and infrastructure to advance their geopolitical interests. Their intent is to create dependency in ways that advance Moscow’s and Beijing’s economic priorities while creating international leverage. Since the Ukraine invasion, the efficacy of this strategy is now plain for all to see.

The world reduced carbon intensity a lot faster before the UN got involved:

Facts on the ground told a different story. The carbon intensity of the global energy system fell faster in the 30 years before the first major U.N. climate conference than after it—a result of rising energy efficiency, the spread of nuclear power, and the changing composition of the global economy. After 1997, when the Kyoto Protocol was adopted, both total and per capita emissions rose faster than before.

Read it all: https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/06/05/climate-policy-ukraine-russia-energy-security-emissions-cold-war-fossil-fuels/?mc_cid=2f77b4a409

By , the executive director of the Breakthrough Institute.

h/t Benny Pieser and NetZero

Photo mil.ru

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