Archives par mot-clé : Green movement

better to know...?, climate-debate

When German Environmentalists and Putin’s Government Had a Burning Love Affair

by D. Godefridi, Sept 8, 2022 in GatestoneInstitue

  • In 2011, the German Baltic Sea Nature Conservation Foundation was established as a result of an agreement between three of Germany’s leading environmental organizations – WWF, BUND and NABU – and the company Nord Stream, which is a subsidiary of the government of Vladimir Putin.
  • These environmental organizations were, moreover, at the same time fiercely opposed to German civil nuclear power, to the exploitation of shale gas in Europe and to the import of American gas via the construction of liquefied petroleum gas terminals in Germany.
  • Those were three issues where the views of the environmental organizations were totally congruent with those of the Russian Federation. This meant betting everything on “red” — as in a casino — but in this instance, on Russian gas.
  • Right after these contractual commitments by Nord Stream AG, the environmental organizations withdrew the lawsuit they had initiated against Nord Stream…
  • The German press reported last month that, inspired by the success of the first foundation, the same State of Mecklenberg-Western Pomerania was setting up a new foundation as recently as January 2021, the Mecklenberg-Western Pomerania Foundation for Climate and Environmental Protection, this time endowed with 192 million euros from the Russian government.
Those were… issues where the views of the environmental organizations were totally congruent with those of the Russian Federation. This meant betting everything on ‘red’ — as in a casino – but in this instance, on Russian gas. Pictured: The corporate headquarters of Gazprom Germania, the German unit of Russian natural gas company Gazprom, photographed on March 30, 2022 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
…
better to know...?, climate-debate, Fracking

How The Green Movement Empowered Putin’s Invasion Of Ukraine

by C. Feldman , Feb 2, 2022 in ClimateChageDispatch

Whatever you think our obligations to defend Ukraine at the moment, you must concede that the green movement in Western Europe and the United States made his actions possible. [bold, links added]

They also made any non-military reaction toothless and unpersuasive. It has been the equivalent of a poker player discarding a royal straight flush and then trying to bluff his opponents with the pair of deuces remaining in his hand.

Only with dumb opponents is he likely to take the pot. And Russian President Putin is definitely not dumb.

Indeed, the weak sanctions proposed by the West to induce the Russians to pull back were so unimpressive the Russian stock market, which has been collapsing, rose 6.5 percent after President Biden announced them.

Mr. Biden did follow Germany in not certifying Nord Stream 2, but that’s just a temporary, paper contract issue. It’s not a long-term or permanent shutdown. He basically hit a couple of banks tied to the Donbas region.

The GDP for the whole of Ukraine is about $160 billion, maybe. The GDP of Donbas is less than $6 billion and the GDP of Lugansk is $1 billion, also maybe. Delaware’s GDP, just to pick a random comparison, is $76 billion. So, to call Mr. Biden’s sanctions small beer is understating it.

And the reason he cannot actually do much more short of war is that he and the leaders of western Europe—bamboozled by the prospect of “climate change”—have made themselves poorer and weaker by eviscerating conventional fuel production.

While they without ample reason were discarding a very good hand, Russian president Putin was improving his by exploiting and selling to us and Europe his nations’ fossil fuels.

….