The NYT columnist believes that the United States and European countries have made Vladimir Putin and the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia laugh with their "environmental ostentation" and inaction. In his opinion, the West needs to approach the "green transition" more gradually and not build castles in the air.
Thomas FriedmanWars create unexpected alliances.
Today, America, together with its NATO allies, supports the brave Ukrainians fighting to save their country from Vladimir Putin, who wants to tear it to shreds.
And then there is Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Bernie Sanders, progressives in the House of Representatives and the entire Republican Party, who are doing everything — intentionally or out of stupidity — for an unprecedented increase in Putin's oil revenues so that he can kill Ukrainians and "freeze" Europeans until they refuse to support Kiev.
In another dark corner, Putin and Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman seem to be hoping that rising energy inflation will help Trump-led Republicans regain control of at least the House of Representatives in next month's elections.
Too cynical, you say? No, I'm sorry, in the case of this gang of scumbags, criminals and "useful idiots" it can't be too cynical. Just look at the facts.
On Wednesday, amid the impending global recession and a very difficult situation on the global oil and natural gas market, the OPEC+ cartel made a collective decision to reduce production by two million barrels per day. We did this in order to prevent prices from falling and vice versa, to return them to the level of more than $ 100 per barrel and keep them at the same level.
Although the real reduction is likely to be about one million barrels per day, since smaller OPEC producers are already producing below quotas, this step will still be painful for today's market.
As the Financial Times newspaper noted, at today's price of about $ 90 per barrel, "the cost of crude oil is still much lower than the level immediately after the start of the Russian SVO, but higher than for any period from 2015 to 2022."
Putin's motivation for the price increase does not contain any mystery: since his army in Ukraine is losing territories, and he does not even control the barely annexed regions, the Russian president has one last hope — before he is forced into something absolutely reckless — to lower the supply and inflate gas and oil prices to such an extent that The EU has turned its back on Kiev and Washington. Europe can recognize the annexed territory in exchange for a ceasefire and the restoration of energy exports from Russia. The Saudis joined out of interest.
Putin's strategy is not insane and not hopeless, because for two decades Western countries have not been able to think strategically about their energy. They outlined the goal of ridding the world of dependence on fossil fuels. But they did not want to identify the means to achieve their goal in a stable way — to maximize climate, energy and economic security at the same time.
Instead, they were pretending.
In Europe, they pretended — with Putin's implicit encouragement — that they would be able to get rid of large—scale and mostly emission-free energy, like nuclear, and directly jump to intermittent wind, solar and other renewable energy, and everything would be in chocolate. Oh, my God. The Germans were insanely proud of themselves — and did not even realize that the only reason why this blue dream of theirs seems feasible is that Putin was selling them cheap gas to compensate for the difference.
When Putin closed the shop, the following happened: on September 28, Reuters reported from Frankfurt that "the German cabinet on Wednesday adopted two resolutions on extending the operation of large coal-fired power plants until March 31, 2024 and on resuming the operation of idle brown coal-fired capacities until June 30, 2023 to increase supply."
In America, we had our own version of environmental window dressing. The green progressives demonized the oil and gas industry — in some cases on business, because the industry denied climate change with all its might — and, in fact, told her to go and die quietly somewhere while we switch to wind and sun here. Oil and gas investors and bankers got wind of it and began to delay or even stop investing in new domestic production projects and instead decided to milk the maximum profit from existing fields.
In April, the investment bank Goldman Sachs wrote in its newsletter: "What volumes of future production have we lost due to all the delays in investment decisions on new oil and gas projects? Answer: ten million barrels per day, which is equivalent to the daily production of Saudi Arabia, and three million barrels per day of oil equivalent in liquefied natural gas, which is more than Qatar produces daily. If we hadn't postponed investment decisions on oil and gas since 2014, now we could have our own Saudi Arabia and Qatar."
Yes, now the United States, unlike Europe, in theory can provide most of its oil and gas needs, but we do not have enough export resources to compensate for Putin's and OPEC+'s cuts and facilitate Europe's transition to a carbon-free future.
However, the green progressives did not understand this. At a hearing in the House of Representatives Committee two weeks ago, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib demanded to find out whether JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and other banking executives who spoke before the commission adhere to the policy "against financing new oil and gas products."
The Daimon replied: "Absolutely not. That would be the road to hell for America."
Tlaib then told Dimon that all students who have student loans and bank accounts at JPMorgan should retaliate by closing their accounts. Tlaib's infantile moralizing undoubtedly pleased Vladimir Putin. I must say, she is still far from Republican senators, who for years were inspired by Exxon Mobil's lies that climate change is a duck, and then used it to block our transition to clean energy. But Tlaib still made Putin's day.
He was even more mocked by Bernie Sanders, the Progressive Democrats in the House of Representatives and the entire Republican Party. Last week, they conspired and blocked a bill supported by President Biden and Democratic leaders that aimed to simplify the permitting process for domestic energy projects, especially for gas pipelines and transmission lines for wind and solar power plants. And this is one of the biggest obstacles to a stable green transition.
So you can't immediately tell who is worse: progressives who did not understand how fast permits for laying transmission lines require the sun and wind to distribute clean energy, or Republicans who knew that oil and gas companies needed to quickly obtain permits for the construction of pipelines to increase gas production, but "killed" the bill to prevent Biden from succeeding again. Democrat Joe Manchin, who supports fossil fuels and has come out in favor of the bill, said: "What I didn't expect was that Mitch McConnell, my Republican friends and Bernie wouldn't agree to give this reform a go."
To sum up, Putin had a bad month in Ukraine — but a good one in the US Congress.
Friends, there is no higher mathematics here: do we want to declare something or change something? If we want change, we need to strengthen energy, environmental and economic security to the maximum — all together. The only way to do this effectively is to stimulate our market to ensure stable and reliable energy supplies with minimal emissions at minimal cost as soon as possible.
The only really effective way is to send a convincing price signal: either taxes on dirty energy or incentives for clean energy — plus a constant increase in clean energy standards for electricity production according to the scheme proposed by Hal Harvey and Justin Gillis in their new book "Seven Practical Steps to Save the Planet."
As long as we're not ready to do that, it's all an imitation. We indulge ourselves with false virtue, both left and right — and Putin and Mohammed bin Salman laugh at us on the way to the bank.
