Fossil Fuels Persist

The topic has dropped out of consciousness, and fallen off the front pages. After haranguing us with talk about the grand existential threat called climate change, activists have fallen silent about their favorite topic. Perhaps it was all a cynical ploy to manipulate the less-than-educated minds of America’s overgrown adolescent cohort.

Of course, speaking of distractions, the Biden presidency has brought us a series of rolling catastrophes. From the war in Ukraine to the massacre of innocent Israelis to a seemingly intractable inflation to a president who can barely walk across the room without tripping over his feet  to a vice president who has broken all records for incoherent blather-- the American people have lost track of the imminent danger posed by-- the weather.

As though that is not bad enough, the progressive American left, having gone all-in for the war against bigotry, woke up one morning to discover that their favorite oppressed groups-- you know who they are-- are wallowing in anti-Semitic bigotry. 

All that talk about the far right and we see a wave of anti-Semitism wash over the nation-- produced and sustained by the radical left.

Perhaps it was merely to strike a blow against sexism, but we have been implored to take the empty-headed musings of a pathetic twerp from Queens seriously. This caused the administration to declare her Green New Deal to be the final solution to a climate crisis that-- everyone should know by now-- is not really a crisis.

Renewable energy became the administration battle cry, until we all discovered that most of the projects were not feasible or reliable. As for the new rage for electric vehicles, sustained by massive government subsidies, no one really wanted them. They are gathering dust in automobile dealerships. The word “boondoggle” does not do it justice.

Rather than naively accept that fossil fuels must be phased out, lest the planet suffer irreparable damage, you should follow the money. Then you will discover, as George Will explains in his Washington Post column, that fossil fuels are alive and well. They are still ruling the world.

Will wrote this:

The International Energy Agency has its opinion. Darren Woods has his. If you are the betting sort, wager on Woods. He just wagered $59.5 billion.

The IEA, which thinks consumption of petroleum will peak and begin to decline by 2030, says the world is at “the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era.” Woods, ExxonMobil’s CEO, is spending $59.5 billion to buy Pioneer Natural Resources, whose CEO told the Financial Times that, including the natural gas and natural gas liquids with the oil, what ExxonMobil is buying in the Texas-New Mexico Permian Basin is “as big as Saudi Arabia.”

Of course, if you actually grant credence to international institutions you deserve whatever you get. In truth, the free market, led by people who have a vested interest in the energy business, is surely a more reliable barometer of atmospheric pressure.

And ExxonMobil is not alone. Chevron bought Hess petroleum, the better to improve its ability to provide the energy needed in the future.

As for electric vehicle manufacturers, they are no longer planning to flood the nation with cars that no one wants to buy:

Last month, General Motors, bowing to obdurate consumers, announced that its target of building 400,000 electric vehicles (current average price for EVs: $53,000) by mid-2024 must wait. Ford has moved its EV production target out a year.

The writing is on the wall. Even governments are taking notice.

Sweden’s government has cut fossil fuel taxes several times in the past 12 months, taxes that have fueled populism. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, with a general election impending, has announced a five-year delay, until 2035, on banning the sale of internal-combustion cars. Germany, with the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany party gaining strength while denouncing “green fascism,” has said green home-heating rules will be delayed. 

One ignores the fact that a merry band of chicken littles has been running around claiming that the sky is falling … for decades now. Fortunately, they have fallen for the propaganda and have reached peak gullibility, so they will never admit to being wrong:

In 1970, global cooling was supposedly going to disrupt agriculture and other things, the ozone was going to disappear, and acid rain was going to deforest New England. Today, the real U.S. GDP is four times larger than in 1970, but Americans’ activities are emitting about the same number of metric tons of carbon dioxide, even while using much more electricity, and driving and flying many more miles. Why? Better technologies and processes; we learn and adapt.

And then, indignity of indignities, the hysterical plaints about how we are running out of gas and oil, turn out to be nonsense. Will explained:

In 1939, the year a global war powered by petroleum began, the Interior Department said the world had only 13 years of reserves. The postwar boom was thirsty for oil. And in 1951, the Interior Department reported that the world had 13 years of reserves. In 1970, there were an estimated 612 billion barrels of proven reserves. By 2006, after an additional 767 billion barrels had been pumped, proven reserves were 1.2 trillion and growing. (See above: Guyana.)

So, climate change might very well have been a hoax. People are happy to admit that it threatens all life on earth, or, Will concludes, until they discover that going to war against the weather will cost them their gas stoves.

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