OUT ON A LIMB: Of Course, We Should Blame the Greens for the Energy Crunch.

Shortly after he entered office, Joe Biden shut down oil and gas leasing on federal land and directed executive agencies to eliminate spending that serves to subsidize fossil fuel industries. Even as benchmark crude prices increased, Biden’s policies forced developers to abandon transit pipelines such as the Keystone XL pipeline, among others. The activist class is so dead set against pipelines they’re even opposed to the idea of transit networks that would store greenhouse gases in underground facilities. The technological marvels that produced the fracking revolution—the developers of which quickly became the world’s “swing” energy producers that could stabilize the global market in the event of a supply shock—have been handcuffed. No wonder speculative long-term investors in the development of energy sources are spooked.

The intended consequence of these policies was to create artificial energy scarcity and incentivize alternative fuel producers to enter the marketplace. “If you restrict the supply (of oil and gas), you alter the market and you create a better environment for more sustainable fuels,” New York University professor Max Sarinsky told the Associated Press. This was all part of the plan, to the extent there was a plan.

So, yes, there’s a lot of blame to go around if what Friedman forecasts to be a dark, cold, and scary winter materializes. No small share of that blame should be apportioned out to the central planners who sought to kneecap the existing energy market in favor of an insufficient alternative. Friedman calls these the “nice” greens. But if the intended consequences of their policy preferences result in engineered hardships for the developed world and increased geopolitical influence for despots and theocrats abroad, that doesn’t seem so very “nice” to me.

So is it fair to ask if Biden is on the payroll of Putin? As Walter Russell Mead wrote in 2017:

If Trump were the Manchurian candidate that people keep wanting to believe that he is, here are some of the things he’d be doing:

Limiting fracking as much as he possibly could
Blocking oil and gas pipelines
Opening negotiations for major nuclear arms reductions
Cutting U.S. military spending
Trying to tamp down tensions with Russia’s ally Iran.

“Yep,” Glenn added in late 2019. “You know who did do these things? Obama. You know who supports these things now? Democrats.”