The world is on fire, and not in the way climate alarmists would have you believe.
For years, the governments of wealthy democracies sold the fantasy that wind turbines and solar panels could replace coal, oil, and natural gas. Now, with war in Eastern Europe, explosions in the Middle East, and the global oil market once again under stress, the mirage of “green abundance” has evaporated.
These conflicts, involving major oil and gas suppliers such as Russia and Iran, scream one undeniable truth: Relying on foreign energy is a gamble no nation with indigenous resources should risk.
Politicians have subsidized industrial wind installations in the North Sea and solar panels in the Mojave Desert for more than two decades. They claimed solar and wind were cheaper, even as electricity prices skyrocketed under the rule of so-called “renewable” champions such as Germany, California, and the U.K.
But these technologies don’t produce energy when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow. This simple fact, known to every farmer and engineer, was ignored by bureaucrats who’ve never drilled a well nor kept a furnace fired through the winter.
Western economies closed or minimized domestic production of oil, natural gas, and coal, leaving them vulnerable to energy disruptions and dependent on imports from geopolitically unstable regions.
When Russia invaded Ukraine, Europe’s dependence on Russian gas left its citizens facing an industrial collapse and a winter of misery. It was a strategic blunder of historic proportions, born from an arrogant belief that energy security could be ignored.
When Iran rattles sabers in the Strait of Hormuz or Russia shuts off gas to Europe, prices soar. These are not abstract geopolitical games. They hit your wallet, your home, and your way of life.
The tensions in Iran and elsewhere give OPEC leverage. It lets cartel countries manipulate global supply while the West sits idly, clinging to net-zero dogma. When supply tightens, prices jump. The poor suffer most. And for what? A theoretical reduction of a few tenths of a degree in temperature 80 years from now by people who can’t predict weather more than a week out?
And what is the response of politicians in the West? Tap their domestic fossil fuel energy sources? No. They continue to vilify desperately needed hydrocarbons.
The greatest tragedy is that this vulnerability was a choice — a self-inflicted wound driven by an absurd climate agenda. While our leaders chased green phantoms, they commanded us to ignore the vast oceans of wealth beneath our feet.
Consider the United States’s energy treasures. The Permian Basin of Texas holds tens of billions of barrels of recoverable crude and includes the prolific Spraberry, Wolfcamp, and Bone Spring fields. In the Northeast, the Marcellus Shale dwarfs all other natural gas fields in the world, having in-place reserves equal to the top ten conventional gas fields combined.
Then there’s the Powder River Basin, stretching across Wyoming and Montana, holding the largest coal deposit in the country. Alaska’s North Slope, too, contains vast untapped oil.
Likewise, the Canadian province of Alberta holds the globe’s third-largest proven oil reserves, behind only Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. That’s more than 160 billion barrels, mostly in oil sands. Alberta’s output not only fuels North American economies but also reduces the power of OPEC’s cartel-driven pricing.
In Asia, Indian officials confirmed a major offshore discovery in the Andaman Sea, with possible reserves comparable to Guyana’s transformative oil discovery.
These are reminders of why we ought to be reinvesting in exploration.
Trillions of dollars that should have been spent on exploration, on building new pipelines, on upgrading refineries, and on developing the next generation of extraction technology have instead been funneled into subsidized wind and solar projects that cannot stand on their own. The result is a looming supply crisis.
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By starving the fossil fuel industry of capital, we have guaranteed a future of tighter supplies and higher prices. We have created the conditions in which energy shocks are made.
For resource-rich nations, the answer is clear: Drill and mine at home. Every blackout, every gasoline price spike, every supply disruption is a caution against outsourcing the work on which our survival depends.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Fairfax, Virginia.