Lomborg on Pain at the Pump

At the New York Post, Bjorn Lomborg correctly blames green policies for the recent sharp increase in energy prices. Specifically, he reminds voters of (1) policies that discourage investment in fossil fuels that have combined with (2) those assuming that "green" energy can take a load it simply isn't ready for:

To fight for windmills is to tilt at them. (Image by Rocky Masum, via Wikimedia Commons, license.)

While Western governments are blaming Russia’s war on Ukraine, prices were already rising because of climate policies designed to choke fossil-fuel investment. Since the 2015 Paris agreement was inked, the world’s 1,200 biggest energy corporations have slashed capital investment in oil and gas by more than two-thirds. Huge price rises are the inevitable result of forcing more energy out of an increasingly starved system.

The climate-policy approach of trying to push consumers and businesses away from fossil fuels with price spikes is causing pain with little climate payoff...

[S]olar and wind are still only capable of meeting a fraction of global electricity needs. Even with huge subsidies and political support, solar and wind delivered just 9% of global electricity in 2020. Heating, transport and vital industrial processes account for much more energy use than electricity. This means solar and wind deliver just 1.8% of global energy supply. And electricity is the easiest of these components to decarbonize: We haven’t yet made meaningful progress greening the remaining four-fifths of global energy. [links omitted and bold added]

These are very important facts, and I think it is even more important to note that Biden is on board with high energy prices -- except for the inconvenience they pose him at the polls.

There is much with which I disagree in the rest of the piece, but Lomborg's main point -- that government policies pushing "green" energy have been a disaster -- is much needed in today's political debate.

-- CAV