Once upon a more innocent time, the phrase “brace yourself — winter is coming” was merely a meme-able quote from Ned Stark in “Game of Thrones,” warning of dire times ahead. Now, it could easily be used as an all-too-real portent for the harsh months ahead in Europe, thanks to the shortage of natural gas there.
The easy thing to do is blame the Russians — and, indeed, there’s a lot of blame to be placed at Vladimir Putin’s doorstep. Then again, Europe’s reliance on Russian energy was part of Putin’s calculus when he invaded Ukraine in February. He knew it would inflict dire pain on the West if they were serious about sanctioning Moscow — and assumed they wouldn’t.
He assumed wrongly. Now, the West is about to reap the dire pain that sanctions have wrought.
However, there’s another side to this, as Tucker Carlson noted on his Fox News show on Monday. Europe’s energy woes highlight where the Green New Deal — and other forced energy austerity measures — will take the United States and the world.
As Carlson pointed out, many in Europe are already turning to wood and coal to heat their homes. One Polish man he quoted said: “I remember the communist times, but it didn’t cross my mind that we could return to something even worse.”
“The French government has announced energy rationing this winter. Just the other day, France had so much energy that it exported it to other countries,” Carlson said. It was a net exporter of energy. Now, there won’t be enough heat in France for everyone in the country to stay warm.
“In the U.K., 70% of restaurants are preparing to close to go under. Why? Because when winter comes, they won’t be able to afford to keep the heat and lights on, etc., etc. This is happening across Europe, in every country.”
How did this happen? Carlson said “the answer is extremely simple.”
“There is an energy shortage in Europe. Cheap energy is essential. It is the key to everything that a normal society strives for: prosperity, safety, a longer life expectancy for its citizens. Everything depends on cheap energy, but Europe no longer has it and as a result, things are falling apart very quickly,” Carlson said.
Is the Green New Deal a scam?
He went on to note that “energy costs in Europe are expected to increase by hundreds of percent in coming months.”
“So, it turns out if you don’t have cheap natural gas, you can’t run the continent,” Carlson said.
“Now — if you’ve got a graduate degree and live in a city in the United States, you may be shocked to learn this, you may never have heard this before — you may have believed that fossil fuels were on their way out any day now. And you thought that because the Davos people and our own leaders assured us of that for decades,” he continued.
“They told us that green energy was the future and the future is here. It’s here. As recently as last month, the World Economic Forum claimed that Europe could save ‘one trillion in fossil fuel costs by switching to renewables.’ But it turns out, and this may not shock you, they had no clue what they were talking about. They knew nothing about the subject, the subject they talked about endlessly. “
Now that they’ve been cut off from their main natural gas supplier, Europe is seeing the kind of rationing they haven’t felt in almost a half-century. And that’s the point — at least to the World Economic Forum types who won’t have to suffer themselves but have consigned their people to suffer.
“Anyone with eighth-grade math skills could have figured out in about 10 minutes that we cannot replace fossil fuels with renewables or green energy — and of course, they must have known that. When they told you otherwise, it was just posturing. It was childish and destructive fantasy talk that apparently fooled millions of their citizens — and millions of ours,” Carlson noted.
“The Green New Deal means what it always meant: It means poverty, and the people pushing the Green New Deal must have known that all along.”
Carlson said the Davos crowd doesn’t “actually believe climate change is an imminent threat,” noting the private jets Al Gore flies on and the beachfront property Barack Obama owns.
“So, when the French president announces that his people are facing the end of abundance, he’s not talking about himself,” Carlson said. “He’s not facing the end of abundance. None of them are. Macron and all of them understand they will always be rich and always be protected. They know that for certain.”
But for you, the changeover to solar, wind, hydroelectric and other renewables means enduring many winters like Europe is facing now. They don’t have the one “clean-burning” source of fossil fuel energy that’s left: natural gas. After all, they outsourced that to Russia, thinking Russia was a reliable political actor. And it’s something former President Donald Trump was laughed at for pointing out at the United Nations just four years ago.
“Germany will become totally dependent on Russian energy if it does not immediately change course,” he said in his remarks. “Here in the Western Hemisphere, we are committed to maintaining our independence from the encroachment of expansionist foreign powers. It has been the formal policy of our country since President Monroe.”
At the time, the German delegation was laughing. For all we know, they’re still laughing. They’re not affected, after all.
The German people aren’t laughing. Nor is the rest of Europe.
Scoff at this if you like. I guarantee you that if the same private-jet Davos crowd is allowed to have its way with our energy policy, you won’t be laughing, either.
