Who’s got the energy for this stupidity?
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There is no excuse for advanced economies to experience a shortage of electricity, or of energy generally. The world has more than ample supplies of fossil fuels. And, if you buy the global warming hype, nuclear energy is the obvious alternative, although that implies universal use of electric vehicles that are devastating to the environment.
Nevertheless, an electricity crisis is upon us. From the U.K.: “Energy could be rationed ‘for years.'”
Europe faces years of energy rationing without Russian gas, the boss of Shell has warned. Ben van Beurden said it was a “fantasy” to think that Europe’s energy crisis would be resolved soon and he warned that if Moscow were to cut off all supplies, life would be “very hard”.
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Gas prices for Britain for this winter closed on Friday at a record high of 827p per therm, more than 16 times higher than the average prices over the decade pre-crisis. Soaring wholesale gas and power prices have already fed through to record household bills, which are due to increase by 80 per cent to £3,549 a year from October.
The current crisis in Western Europe is due in part to the threatened cutoff of Russian natural gas. But countries like Britain and Germany are vulnerable to such a cutoff because they fecklessly failed to provide for their own energy self-sufficiency. That was an incredibly stupid policy, but one that is now being pursued by the Biden administration despite having the Western European example before it.
And this, from Doonberg:
In the United Kingdom, a grassroots protest movement has broken out in response to the ongoing energy crisis. With the bill from its failed national policies coming due, ordinary citizens are organizing campaigns to ensure they are not the ones left holding the bag. The mission of Don’t Pay UK is to gather at least one million commitments from Her Majesty’s loyal subjects to simply stop paying their energy bills as of October 1, 2022. At the time of this writing, Don’t Pay UK has passed 130,000 signatures. We expect that number to grow.
In reading a recent profile of the movement by Euronews Green, we were struck by the framing of the crisis by some of the movement’s organizers. This quote and the photo we have reproduced below caught our attention (emphasis added throughout):
“Lewis Ford, an organiser from Hull, agrees the movement is ‘a lot about solidarity’, especially for those forced to choose between heating their home and feeding their family.
‘We’re already talking about the idea of setting up warm banks, which is an absolutely preposterous idea,’ the 31-year-old IT consultant tells Euronews Green. ‘We're one of the richest nations. So, it’s not like there’s no money, it’s the fact that the money is being kept in one space.’”
Sadly for Mr. Ford and the well-intended but totally naïve young woman holding out hope that the unicorn concept of “cheaper cleaner greener” energy is actually a thing, they are both victims of insidious propaganda. As reality will soon demonstrate, if a country can’t afford to keep its citizens warm during the winter, then that country is poor, not rich. And if the proposed solution to this crisis is to double down on the same crazy policies that caused it in the first place, then we should expect the problem to get worse, not better.
“In the past week, forward-year prices for baseload power in Germany skyrocketed to over €1,000 per MWh before crashing by more than a third a day later. The same contract was selling for €45 per MWh less than two years ago.”
