Over the last few weeks I have been making the point on Twitter and to television audiences that Europe empowered Putin to invade Ukraine by becoming dependent on him for energy. You can watch one segment here:
Many people were surprised to learn that Europe produced more natural gas than Russia 15 years ago. Then, two things happened. First, Russia built nuclear plants so it could export its natural gas abroad, rather than use it at home to produce natural gas. Second, Europe reduced its natural gas production, including from fracking, under pressure from climate activists. It now turns out that some of those anti-fracking activists were funded by Putin.
The head of NATO, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and a French professor have all documented funding from Russia for anti-fracking activism in Europe.
The strong response to my tweets shows just how badly the news media have misinformed the public on energy and environmental issues, as I documented at length in Apocalypse Never.
Michael Shellenberger @ShellenbergerMD
Britain could have increased fracking for nat gas but didn't. Why? Because Russia pumped $95M into anti-fracking advocacy. Noted the head of NATO, Russia “engaged actively with environmental organisations... to maintain Europe’s dependence on Russian gas” https://t.co/4SfrNJcaJv https://t.co/ciQFu2KV8RNow, as we collectively face global economic recession, blackouts, and food shortages due to high oil prices, many people are coming around to nuclear. That includes solar power advocate Elon Musk, who has finally adopted the position my colleagues and I have been making since 2016: we must keep operating our nuclear plants, and re-start the ones that shut down.
You might have heard the fear-mongering about nuclear plants in Ukraine. We pushed back against it on Twitter and helped prevent a new panic.
Michael Shellenberger @ShellenbergerMD
@energybants Join the conversation with @energybants and other nuclear engineers https://t.co/Iuv8XkrdzrMusk even comes out in support of our view that we need more, not less, oil and gas production.
A journalist who used to work for one of the world’s largest newspapers messaged me last week to say, “Suspect you are having a few people mention you were very right of late?”
I told her it felt nice to be vindicated. But it’s hard to feel happy when so many people are suffering, not just in Ukraine, but globally, due to high energy prices.
As I described at length in Apocalypse Never, energy and food should be abundant and cheap. They are what allows for our remarkable prosperity. When they aren’t abundant and cheap it’s because somebody doesn’t want them to be, for financial, political, or ideological reasons.
It took a crisis for people to realize all of this. “Only a crisis,” wrote the economist Milton Friedman, “produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.”
That’s what Environmental Progress has done since 2016. We developed alternatives to existing policies and kept them alive until the politically impossible — nuclear energy — became the politically inevitable.
While we many never banish anti-human Malthusianism to the landfill of bad ideas, we can continue to marginalize it, and hold it responsible for the damage it causes.
Change is coming. We are clearly entering a new era, not just a post-post-Cold War period, but likely a post-post-War era, too. Whether that’s good or bad is up to us. Environmental Progress and I will continue fighting to make sure it is a period of abundance, not scarcity.
You remind me of the one eyed man in the land of the blind, Michael.
I bought five copies of your book "Apocalypse Never" and gave four to some of my very well educated friends.
Seems even well educated people can become blind to reality.
Only one of my friends read your book from front to back and agreed with me that your book contains information that should be shouted from the roof tops of modern college and university campuses.
Back in the 70s I worked for a mid-sized newspaper in Maine and wrote more than a score of articles about the hot topic of the day . . . our energy "crisis."
My managing editor was a fellow who exchanged the top position at Philadelphia's major daily for the more measured pace at the Bangor Daily News. He became a powerful force in terms of promoting in depth reporting in Maine.
Thus, he had convinced our publisher to let me take two months off from my normal duties to cover the latest crisis du jour.
I learned back then much of the information you are reporting today.
Like you, I started off as a young man worried about how polluted were the once pristine rivers and crystal clear skies in Maine.
I am now an old man who worries about the foibles that have overtaken our nation.
But I am glad to see a revival of voices in the wilderness. I pray that such voices will grow more powerful, Michael.
The whole thing sickens me and has for years. to watch society become imprisoned in a box by conspiracy minded environmental activists was and is sickening to watch. Worse now are corporations are fully on board with destroying our society by making energy costly and non-abundant. The US has lost 3M barrels of oil per day since Biden took office. How did these energy idiots ever get control? We must not only sweep any energy idiots out of power, they can never hold power again. At the pinnacle is Greta. Anyone that worships at the alter of Greta should be put on a list and publicly shamed. Greta herself is but a pawn. All the puppet masters that used her should be called out.