“People think nothing could have been done to prevent Russia from invading Ukraine, but that’s absurd”

Thread via Michael Shellenberger

People think nothing could have been done to prevent Russia from invading Ukraine, but that’s absurd: if Putin thought the costs of invasion outweighed the benefits, he wouldn’t have done it. He’s a rational actor not a madman. And today it’s clear Putin calculated correctly.
 
After Russia invaded, a few people demanded that Europe stop buying its natural gas, but European utilities snatched up long-term Russian contracts, and the White House said, “Our sanctions are not designed to cause any disruption to the flow of energy from Russia to the world.”
 

 
People who believe that nothing could have been done to prevent Russia from invading Ukraine thus imply that Russia’s chokehold over European energy supplies was inevitable, but it wasn’t. Europe could have easily increased, rather than closed, nuclear plants and natural gas
 
Britain could have increased fracking for nat gas but didn’t. Why? Because Russia pumped $95M into anti-fracking advocacy. Noted the head of NATO, Russia “engaged actively with environmental organizations.. to maintain Europe’s dependence on Russian gas”
 

 
Europe could have kept operating and expanded its nuclear power plants but instead, under pressure from climate activists, including Greta Thunberg, shut them down
 

Here is Greta's statement, which she says she re-wrote to reflect her opinion, and here is the data that contradicts her pic.twitter.com/GJVt8nGYHO

— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) March 28, 2019

 
Climate activists even forced nuclear-heavy France to throttle its nuclear plants so order to use more industrial wind energy. The result was significant outages over the last few weeks at a time when French nuclear plants were needed most.
 

 
Efforts to make Europe less energy independent, and thus more dependent on Russian gas imports, were led by powerful banking interests in coordination with climate activists and center-Left parties around the world.
 
Not satisfied with their successful efforts to make Europe dependent on Russia, global elites have sought to deny poor African nations abundant energy
 
All of this happened in plain sight at Davos, the European Commission, and U.N. conferences
 

The United Nations is using a talking dinosaur to urge poor African nations to not use fossil fuels while providing information to global elites about which airports in which they can land their private jets for next week’s climate change meeting pic.twitter.com/EolYI97c2t

— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) October 30, 2021

 
The ideological justification for energy scarcity long predates climate change. In the 1960s, radical Left activists abusing their authority as scientists claimed that the world was running out of energy, despite the fact that nuclear proved that energy supplies are infinite.
 
The reason pro-scarcity “greens” attacked nuclear was because it debunked the idea that we faced resource scarcity and environmental degradation from overpopulation.
 
Infinite nuclear energy meant infinite fertilizer, freshwater, and food
 
Pro-energy scarcity greens hid their motivations. When asked if he had been worried about nuclear accidents, a Sierra Club anti-nuclear activist said, “No, I really didn’t care because there are too many people anyway … I think that playing dirty if you have a noble end is fine”
 
Bankers & renewables companies promote energy scarcity. Three of the largest donors to climate causes are billionaire financial titans Michael Bloomberg, George Soros & Tom Steyer, all of whom have big investments in renewables and fossil fuels.
 
Shadow bank BlackRock has long promoted renewables. Its senior climate official Brian Deese heads the White House National Economic Council
 
Biden’s “Build Back Better” talking points echoed BlackRock’s pitch for “climate resilient” infrastructure
 
Biden and Democrats would like to see the whole of the US follow the California model
 
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California saw electricity prices rise 7x more than the rest of the US over the last decade, is experiencing blackouts, and intends to shut down its last nuclear plant
 

To avoid blackouts for 2.5M Californians, Gov. ⁦@GavinNewsom⁩ issues emergency declaration allowing for burning of diesel, even as he moves forward with his plan to shut down Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, which provides power for 3M https://t.co/kd2Tgzm3yQ

— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) August 22, 2021

 
The goal of Western elites is energy scarcity
 
The cost of that scarcity is to empower tyrants like Putin who can invade nations like Ukraine with little cost
 
Western elites are thus Putin’s useful idiots
 
They are the ones now saying nothing could have prevented invasion
 
What the US, Canada, Europe, Japan, South Korea, Australia and other Western allies must do is obvious and urgent: we must massively expand nuclear energy and oil and gas production. This will lower energy prices and reduce exposure to Russian use of energy as a weapon of war.
 
The public needs to understand that Russia could not have taken Ukraine had the West expanded energy production rather than throttled it by closing nuclear plants and reducing oil and gas production.
 
We need @JoeBiden @SpeakerPelosi @GOPLeader @SenSchumer @LeaderMcConnell to take immediate bipartisan action to keep nuclear plants operating and expand oil & gas production for domestic use and export to our allies in Europe & Asia.