Putin may be the proximate cause of this crisis, but the reason we were vulnerable was an intentional policy to crush fossil fuel investment
– Juliet Samuel [£]
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Samizdata quote of the dayAugust 27th, 2022 |
 36 comments to Samizdata quote of the day |
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I we are looking at causes shouldn’t we look at why Putin did what he did? Then look at why that happened until we get an answer.
It isn’t like Putin hasn’t told us his reasoning.
Putin is a link in a chain.
Sure but this isn’t about Putin & his motivations, it is about energy policy in the western world.
Had many more countries had more sensible policies and attitudes towards energy (or COVID,China and globalisation,defence,monetary policy and much more!) the strategic context Putin and others would be operating in would be quite different and maybe, just maybe, the actions Putin has taken this year would have been quite different. This doesn’t negate Putin’s responsibility with regards to events in Ukraine, but then Putin’s actions can’t be used by Western elites to negate their responsibility for the shit-show we face right now that extends far beyond Ukraine and Russia.
Western anti fossil fuel madness wasn’t started by Putin, and has nothing to do with him. This is a suicidal madness, cutting out the basis of your existence from under you.
It is pathetic and false to assign blame for the current energy prices and troubles to Putin. It is also the most fashionable pretext.
When the deep state and wokerati were in overdrive trying to blame Putin for Clinton losing in 2016 and for remain losing in the UK the same year, I remember saying to my girlfriend at the time something along the lines (with respect to Volatire): ‘If Putin didn’t exist, it would be necessary for them to invent him’.
They all have Trump Derangement syndrome of course, but I think more widely they have what has been described as ‘Neoliberal Order Breakdown Syndrome‘ (NOBS)
That’s sort of what the article is saying, but the current trouble is indeed Putin related. However, Putin’s ability to cause this was predicated on a couple decades of wilful western eco-lunacy.
As regards western energy policy, Putin is just a positive feedback loop, albeit a large one.
– The west made itself dependent on Russian energy by needlessly restricting other sources, at the behest of an ideology that entrenches itself in power and can be relied on to resist correction.
– Putin saw this western dependency on his supplies all the more easily because the watermelons doing it were the intellectual (often literal) successors of groups the USSR exploited before it fell. (Left stranded for a raison d’etre by that fall, they hid their red hearts in green coats.)
Putin therefore started a war that exploited this western self-inflicted shortage. The Ukraine did not roll over as he expected, leading the west to resist his energy-enforced pressure, leading to the west’s energy situation worsening further. If you look only at the energy-aspects, the picture reduces to a straightforward feedback loop.
Today, maybe another feedback loop is operating? Stories about Europeans having to choose between food and heating this winter, about the likelihood of riots, etc., are surely giving Putin hope that if he can only hang on, better times for him may come through a weakening of western will. We know what the watermelons will demand if things get tough enough that governments face a choice between abandoning the Ukraine and abandoning net zero. We do not know what our governments will do, but we know the watermelons’ power is great. The green ideology is still strong for Putin even if the Ukrainian military realities are not.
It wasn’t so much an overt anti-oil policy so much as NIMBY-ism. Europe was fine with the evil environment-raping oil and gas industry so long as it’s not at home. They’ll still use oil, and all the other pollution producing industries, but they want the moral high ground that comes along with not having producing the stuff locally. They want the benefits without having to deal with how it’s made in the first place.
It reminds me of when the now sober for 13 years Ted Kennedy pushed through some wind power bill, but killed a wind power farm that he could have seen from Cape Cod because it would have been an eyesore. It’s no different. Just put it somewhere where we don’t need to see it and out of sight is out of mind.
NIMBY and willful blindness explains so much of the modern world’s problems.
It’s not only NIMBY-ism – it’s much deeper and critical. It’s anti-energy suicidal madness.
From what I gather, in the USA, the communities where fracking happens get a share of the money made from the resource extraction. In the UK (and I assume most of the rest of Europe) that doesn’t apply and locals therefore are expected to bear the downsides without much compensation. That locals reject fracking therefore maybe NIMBYISM and not great for wider society but is much more understandable, especially when ultimately much of the political and economic elites are lukewarm or hostile to fossil fuels.
I believe that it was Anders Fogh Rasmussen, when Secretary General of NATO, who claimed that Russia was sponsoring the Greens in Europe and North America, with the intent of
* hindering fracking and pipelines (except pipelines connected to Russia) and
* closing down nuclear power plants.
I don’t think that he provided evidence for that; but then, it was probably classified.
In any case, it is evident that the Greens are objectively pro-Putin, and pro-Xi.
I vaguely remember this. Something along the lines Russian intelligence supported Green propaganda and Russian media in the west ran negative articles about fracking and nuclear power. Vaguely remember the left moaning about McCarthyism. Same leftists now believe Trump is a Russian spy and that prostitutes peed on Trump in a Moscow hotel.
I’m not convinced that the people who make decisions in the West have bought into this eco-suicide pact as much as it comes down to the useful idiots have been taught that fear is a virtue by those in charge. The useful idiots might want to get on the eco-cult train, but their masters don’t. Why would they do that though? Take your pick of reasons: opportunities for graft, bring down the West, control of the plebs, simply because they can. All they had to do was talk people into panic. Viruses and wars and governments come and go, but the environment isn’t going anywhere…or is it? That kind of a thing.
If the powers that be were serious about the environmental “crisis” at hand, they would be putting tremendous economic pressure on China, India, all those up and coming nations dumping crap in the air and water and ground like it’s nobody’s business. They aren’t. They put the screws to the West while letting the dumping and strip mining and whatever else go on, just not at home.
“Be afraid, very afraid of destroying the environment, and we’ll do so much to save it if you give us total control. Just don’t ask to see the books and don’t look at how the rest of the world does what it is doing so you can still have all the 21st century toys in your life while being smug because you drive a Prius. But most of all, be afraid and stay afraid.”
I believe that it was Anders Fogh Rasmussen, when Secretary General of NATO, who claimed that Russia was sponsoring the Greens in Europe and North America, with the intent of hindering fracking and pipelines (except pipelines connected to Russia)
It is certainly true that Russia has supported the West’s useful idiots at least since the days of Lenin. How much the Russian support actually accomplishes is a good question, as they are obviously happy to idiots even without the Russian support. I suppose their influence has been at least marginally amplified by the support of Russian money and propaganda.
At least in the USA, the conservative states are the ones that derive much of their power and wealth through activities and resources that supposedly contribute to CAGW. I remain convinced that disempowering those states is more important to the progressives than any benefit to climate.
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), with the iconic peace sign, was that heroic band peace-warriors in the ’60s / ’70s, world-savers who sought to destroy the West’s nuclear capabilities but somehow Russia or its ambitions were never mentioned.
Same kind of thing has happened / is happening with the green lobby which casts curses on the West but Russia, or China, seem to be completely ignored.
Niall almost mentions the green lobby being successors of USSR activist groups in the West.
“… watermelons doing it were the intellectual (often literal) successors of groups the USSR exploited before it fell …”
And the West’s dependency on Russian gas is something I have wondered about.
Old wars run deep and long?
Are people, who should surely know better, really so stupid?
Surely, didn’t world gas prices start to rise substantially after Joe Biden signed executive orders on his first day in office banning fracking on federal land and the Keystone XL pipeline? So rather than the US being self-sufficient it started importing. Along with the bounce-back from Covid, this started the present situation. Over a year later, with gas prices up fourfold already, Russia invaded Ukraine. Then sanctions, and Russia’s response, made a bad situation considerably worse. Now we have demand outstripping supply and ridiculous prices.
The UK, while not using much Russian gas, nevertheless has to import and pay world prices. This knocks-on to electricity because so much is generated by gas.
Dare I suggest that sanctions are now the main problem?
I’d identify as a moderate environmentalist to some degree as I don’t favour despoiling the planet for the sake of it and highly value the countryside and nature. Nonetheless, one obvious thing that gives the game away about the ‘green’ movement as a whole is how they never talk about how green energy is wholly reliant on rare earth materials for manufacturing wind farms, solar panels, electric cars etc. This is clearly because (1) extracting them from the ground is a dirty business and highly polluting and (2) the Chinese have a current monopoly on the resources that are being utilised (other countries have a lot of the minerals but don’t extract them, preferring to outsource the dirty work to the CCP). Basically the environmental impact and geopolitical implications are much more complicated than the virtue signallers claim. Rather than confront this, they just gaslight everyone.
Sure, dare away. Like the article says, Putin is the proximate cause of this crisis.
I would venture he would never have invaded Ukraine, with the aim of eliminating it as a nation and identity, without years of western energy policies giving him the impression the price in energy disruption would be too high for western nations to support Ukraine beyond official grimaces.
And indeed you don’t need to look hard to find people arguing that bringing down energy prices is more important that preventing Russia expanding its imperial borders westwards, with all the geopolitical consequences that would follow (not to mention the non-figurative extermination of Ukraine’s intelligentsia) .
I don’t believe Putin would have invaded Ukraine if we had not offered them a place in NATO. He would, of course, weight everything up and didn’t think we would kick ourselves in the groin by setting sanctions because he, and anyone sensible, this excludes politicians, seen our reliance on their oil and gas.
That is certainly the RT narrative, but it is absolute nonsense, indeed arse-about-face. Putin did not invade Ukraine because it wanted to join NATO, he invaded Ukraine because it was not in NATO, which is not the same thing at all. It was always his intention to erase Ukraine, not as a reaction to the actions of the west but because of the expansionist (they would say ‘restorative’) geopolitical wishes of the Kremlin.
Just look at what Russian think tanks & official media have been saying about Ukraine for more than a decade. It was never about NATO, it was always about ‘restoring’ Russia to its ‘historic borders’. Manifest destiny. And that included the Baltic States & out on the not that wild wing of Russkiy Mir advocates, Finland, Moldova and even much of Poland as well.
I suspect that the international establishment are, privately, delighted by Mr Putin’s vicious invasion of the Ukraine. They now have a scapegoat, “Russia”, for the consequences of their own “Net Zero” policies and wild government spending.
Even in the United States, the supporters of the Biden/Harris government (which is really controlled by Mr Obama and like minded people) are shoving down the Memory Hole the fact that under President Trump the United States produced its own food and energy.
There is a Russian saying that covers this – “first they smash your face in, then they say you were always ugly”.
The governments of the West have made Western countries dependent on Russia – now they pretend that Western countries always were dependent on Russia, and that Russia is the cause of all the crises that is really caused by “New Zero” policies and wild government spending.
Surely, didn’t world gas prices start to rise substantially after Joe Biden signed executive orders on his first day in office banning fracking on federal land and the Keystone XL pipeline?
I distinctly recall paying $2.09/gallon the Friday after Election Day in 2020, but I can’t find the receipt.
I got a new-to-me car in January 2021, and the first time I filled it up, a few weeks later, I paid $2.37 a gallon. The price went up throughout 2021.
“If the powers that be were serious about the environmental “crisis” at hand, they would be putting tremendous economic pressure on China, India, all those up and coming nations dumping crap in the air and water and ground like it’s nobody’s business. They aren’t. They put the screws to the West while letting the dumping and strip mining and whatever else go on, just not at home.”
This is my argument too. As you say if the Western Elites making the Net Zero type decisions were absolutely 100% convinced about climate change, and the critical necessity to get global CO2 emissions down, otherwise we all fry, then they would be taking action of a monumental nature. On a par with what happened over covid. In that case there was a totally real (but irrational) fear that a new plague was upon us, and therefore previously unheard of actions were required, right away, and were implemented, within weeks. So when the elites believe something is really dangerous, they act. They are not acting over climate change in a way that suggests they do believe in it, because their actions will make no difference whatsoever, even if you take their own projections as true. If the West eliminated all their CO2 emissions it would have practically no effect on CO2 emission in the long term, and virtually no effect on global temperatures in 2100.
So one has to conclude that the end point is something other than anything to do with climate. Of course there will be True Believers within governments who have been brainwashed into thinking its all real, but they are just the Useful Idiots, for those who really pull the strings. My feeling is once the people who started all this get what they want (control over everyone and everything via control of energy), the Useful Idiots will be dispensed with. No more need for XR or the like. Environmentalists will go the same way as the Working Class have. Once the darlings of the Left, now excoriated as reactionary bigots.
If our betters really believed their climate change spiel about rising waters and rising temperatures, they wouldn’t be buying beach front property.
Obviously
I quite remember that suddenly protests were authorized, statues toppled…despite the plague. So was it really thought by them to be a plague or a propaganda manufactured one?
The hot hot fire of antiracist zeal kept the virus away from those folk. Totally safe.
“Racism is the true pandemic of our time” or some such mealy-mouthed excuse.
I’m not saying that Putin wouldn’t have invaded at some time in the future. I think that eventually it would have at sometime. IMO it was them talking about joining NATO that triggered it. Once they were in NATO they had a new set of friends who would have automatically been involved in any future trouble. Then coupled with the West’s weakness with Biden, Johnston etc. it was his last opportunity before it became too late.
There was a close to zero chance of that actually happening due to German & Hungarian opposition.
Yes, I think that is correct. Clearly BoJo turned out to be very strong on Ukraine but that was not obvious beforehand. And as it happens, the undead Biden was less important than the institutional pressures in the USA to do something. To quote myself from a while back:
“…the reason we were vulnerable was an intentional policy to crush fossil fuel investment”
And they’re still at it.
BoJo is quote in today’s DT as saying “Don’t give up on green energy”.
Maybe they won’t listen until it’s hempen rope and lamp posts. And it may come to that, if predictions of a £6000 price cap next year turn out to be true
After more than six months of this war it is hard to tell what is going on – people arrive in the capital of Ukraine and walk about in front of the cameras, and Mr Putin makes no effort to kill these people. The President of Ukraine even poses for photographs for “Vogue” magazine – why has the Russian military not killed him? It is not hard to find out where the President of Ukraine is a lot of the time.
Even the gas and electrical power supply to the Ukraine is still running – even though Mr Putin could order it cut off at any time.
Does Mr Putin want to win this war? Or is the war being conducted as some sort of distraction for the failure of the “Net Zero” and wild government spending policies of various countries?
Paranoid thoughts. Perhaps Mr Putin is just an idiot (or very ill) and does not realise that he could destroy the Ukraine by cutting off its gas and electricity. Indeed he does not even seem to know that he could blow up dams and drown some major location in the Ukraine.
“Paul never attribute to conspiracy what can be explained by incompetence”.
Fair enough – Ockham’s razor comes into play, Mr Putin is an idiot (or very ill).
The courage of the Ukrainians is to be highly praised – but they do seem to be being helped by the fact that they up against a useless opponent, Vladimir Putin.
The details of war are very complicated, but the basic principle is simple – destroy everything you can not control, and kill all the enemy you can kill (burn them, drown them, poison their water supplies, cut off their food and have them starve, spread disease among them, whatever it takes – even the ancient Egyptians and Hittites understood this), that way you win. Like the fool Robert McNamara before him, the incompetent Vladimir Putin does not seem to understand this. By they way…. this is why war is a BAD THING and should be, if possible, avoided.
Julius Caesar boasted that he had killed a third of the population of Gaul (modern France) men-woman-and-children, and sold another third into slavery – it was not surprising that the remaining third gave up fighting and submitted to Rome. Cato the Younger was critical of the lack of morality of this – but most Romans supported Caesar, although they accepted that, morally speaking, Cato was correct.
It was a bit like public celebrations – public fornication, people being forced to fight to the death for the entertainment of the population, people being thrown to wild beasts (to be ripped apart and eaten) also for the entertainment of the population….. (and so on). It was generally understood that the first part of such public events (the formal rituals and so on) would be conducted when Cato the Younger and others of like mind were present, and the “fun” stuff only done when they had left and gone home.
But Mr Vladimir Putin is not Cato the Younger – he does not have moral objections to certain forms of conduct (Mr Putin has a long record of committing murder). He just seems, at least now, to lack the intellect to work out what to do in order to win.
I suppose one answer is that Mr Putin has to pretend to adhere to Christian morality – he murders people, but he does not boast about it (indeed he denies having people murdered).
It he behaved in the manner I describe above, his pretence (false pretence) of morality would collapse.
He can murder people (and so on) – but only on such a scale that he can deny he is doing it.
The population is not like that of Pagan Rome – who flung their own unwanted babies on rubbish heaps to be eaten by rats.
You are welcome to make suggestions 🙂
This particular suggestion is dubious. At the moment, Putin seems to be sending to Europe less gas than asked for. It might be a bluff that Putin cannot keep up for long, but it would be foolish for Europe not to act on the assumption that Putin has the upper hand wrt energy.
So, removing sanctions seems pointless. Europe would be better off putting pressure on the “Biden” admin to get fracking and to build pipelines.
Why’s it up to Biden, or the Americans in general? Let’s do our own fracking. While the U.S. and Canada probably have more overall untapped natural resources, there must be viable seams in Wales, Scotland, Silesia and other traditional coal mining areas, more than enough to supply European gas demands for a few decades (assuming, of course, that the government doesn’t do stupid things like subsidise CO2 production from natural gas).
I don’t believe Putin would have invaded Ukraine if we had not offered them a place in NATO.
Ukraine is ineligible to join NATO and will remain so until it resolves its border dispute with Russia. To prevent the Ukraine from joining NATO, Russia had to do……absolutely nothing.
Indeed he does not even seem to know that he could blow up dams and drown some major location in the Ukraine.
I’ve wondered about that myself. I suspect it may have to do with his new-found allies in India and Brazil. Making a move *too* atrocious could lose him his support in the third world and leave him with just China, North Korea, and Iran as allies. And maybe not even China, if Putin becomes more trouble to them than he’s worth to them.