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.

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