AFR: Net Zero “Strangling” Oil and Gas Producers

One thing I think I know about the elite overlords…they are hypocrites to the core. So I really doubt that if oil and gas prices rise and investment in exploration looks to be profitable, that the fossil fuel companies will have trouble finding somebody who wants to invest. All the green virtue signalers will have subsidiaries lending the money.

I haven’t seen much written about laziness of thought and it’s contribution to this conundrum.  We are clearly at a turning point. 

Western wealthy society is collectively trying to blow out the flame of cheap reliable energy and has no replacement in the wings. Wind and solar have been around long enough to prove their inadequacy and ridiculous expense but haven’t yet fully disclosed their massive environmental cost to western society. Battery backup is more a feeble joke than a real possibility. Developing countries will pay lip service to the prevalent climate religion but, not surprisingly, will continue to use any and all resources they can afford to develop. We should encourage rather than inhibit their efforts.

The consequence for wealthy, energy intensive economies is almost certainly going to be some form of collapse in production and services. It is not a consequence only for the West because we are primary providers of many key staples to developing economies, most notably food. As a prime example, the pointless diversion of 40% of the corn crop to fuel ethanol in the US was a major contributor to food price rises in North Africa and the subsequent civil strife the progressive wing-nuts like to call the Arab Spring. Only a zealot could see increasing hunger and civil war as a benevolent outcome.

Out world is interconnected and our decisions will clearly affect others. But for the wealthy nations and those who lead them the collapse will be an immediate and painful exercise in rethink and adaptation. It won’t matter how many political, religious, celebrity, child zealot, environmental and journalistic voices are unified in the chorus of climate change and the green new deal. Reality will bite and bite hard. There will be poverty, cold, hunger and almost certainly civil strife. Politicians and other policy makers will be seen as the enemy. Fellow civilians will be seen as competitors for resources rather than neighbors. All forms of tribalism will emerge and grow.

The socialists who are naively driving us down this path, and who dream of a world without competition where equity and collectivism rather than merit and individual effort are the measures of success will soon be plunged into a world where only the ability to compete, produce and innovate are valuable. Merit and ability will be everything. 

All of this seems obvious from history and from the fundamentals of how our society works. Basic economic principles, social dynamics and the laws of physics cannot be suspended for any form or religion or belief system. So why are we on this path? How can so many people in positions of influence, power and awareness be so wrongheaded in their decisions about our future? How can they stand on the railway track watching the approaching train and believe it is the light of a golden future?

Perhaps it is because success breeds laziness of thought. When generations grow up in a society that makes all necessities easily available, when idleness becomes not a luxury but an industry to entertain the masses, when decisions you make every day bear no real existential consequence, and when society collectively comes to worship image over substance, then perhaps the natural outcome is society that has lost the motivation to think deeply and logically about their decisions and actions. 

What is easy becomes the most natural decision. Consume now, pay later. More entertainment, less work. In the end believing something that you actually know to be completely without foundation becomes the lazy and easy answer to everything. 

For those of us who have not yet surrendered to lazy thought, and I believe that is most who visit and contribute to this site, there may be nothing more to do now but to plan for lives in a changed and excitingly dysfunctional world. There may be no way back but forward. The turning point may be long past and we may now be on the roller coaster of at least partial energy system collapse. What we can do is to make contingency plans for how we respond and how we rebuild the energy based society we have enjoyed so long, once the idiots have been properly punished by the citizens they failed and removed from public life.

The Earth will of course be saved. It was never at risk. The climate will continue to change – most likely toward the colder rather than warmer in the near term, and the environment will adapt as it always has to small and large changes in the driving forces we humans understand only a little.