When historians look back on this chaotic and turbulent period, they will find that few individuals inflicted as much damage on the environment and promoted the interests of the "dirty fossil fuel" lobby as Greta Tunberg, who by shaming and forcing "serious" politicians to pivot toward green energy at a time when there was nowhere near enough green capacity to replace existing sources of energy, sparked what may be the most spectacular self-own in history. And today, the WSJ, Bloomberg and Reuters all wrote about it.
We start with the WSJ which concedes what was obvious to most long ago (see "Will ESG Trigger Energy Hyperinflation" from last June), namely that "an energy-starved world is turning to coal as natural-gas and oil shortages exacerbated by Russia’s war against Ukraine lead countries back to the dirtiest fossil fuel."
Yes, contrary to the intentions of Green fanatics everywhere, their push to accelerate away from "dirty" fossil fuel has not only backfired spectacularly, but also exposed the hypocrisy and empty promises of so many virtue-signalers, as "from the U.S. to Europe to China, many of the world’s largest economies are increasing short-term coal purchases to ensure sufficient supplies of electricity, despite prior pledges by many countries to reduce their coal consumption to combat climate change."
Adding insult to injury, the global competition for coal which is now also in short supply after years of declining investment in new mines and resources, has driven benchmark prices to new records this year. Spot coal prices at Australia’s Newcastle port, a key supplier to Asia, topped $400 a ton for the first time last month.
Hilariously, the push for coal is being led by Europe, ground zero of the "green movement" which finally realized that one can't burn fake virtue or melt posing in front of camera in the winter to keep warm, and is boosting coal purchases to ensure it can keep power flowing to homes and factories after Russia cut gas supplies to the continent. Germany, which not long ago promised to eliminate coal as a power source by 2030, is among the nations now importing more. Economy Minister Robert Habeck called the increased reliance on coal bitter but necessary. Spoiler alert: Germany will not eliminate coal as a power source by 2030, if anything it will be more reliant on it than ever unless it also restarts its nuclear power plants which it, idiotically, shut down not long ago.
Never one to admit it was dead wrong, however, Europe has a response to everything: “Right now the sentiment is that more coal is better than more Russia,” said Alex Msimang, a London-based partner at law firm Vinson & Elkins LLP specializing in the energy sector.
Whatever dude.
Propaganda aside, coal is enjoying a renaissance the likes of which it has not seen since the industrial revolution. In addition to soaring coal power use in the US (after the sector was left nearly for dead under Obama), China, the world’s biggest coal consumer, is expanding production of the fuel and its use in power generation, spooked by shortages last year that caused electricity cuts and outages throughout the country, energy experts say.
India is also leaning hard on coal as energy demand increases. The nation’s coal-power generation hit a record in April, said Rahul Tongia, a senior fellow at New Delhi-based think tank the Centre for Social and Economic Progress.
The best part: the global green lobby is about to be silenced forever.
The resurgence of coal, which emits around double the carbon dioxide as burning natural gas, further threatens to set back international efforts to keep global temperatures under 2 degrees Celsius from preindustrial levels, and preferably close to 1.5 degrees, by the end of the century.
That is the goal that more than 190 nations agreed to pursue under the 2015 Paris Agreement to avoid the most dangerous potential consequences of global warming. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that emissions, which continue to rise, would need to be drastically reduced by the end of the decade to meet the goal.
Then again, with the west especially skilled at deluding itself, who's to say the lies won't continue. Indeed, as the WSJ notes, climate activists and forecasters say they are concerned about a rise in coal use, but see it as a short-term phenomenon in the West and are more worried that the Ukraine war and other geopolitical events are spurring new natural-gas investments that could operate for decades.
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