On Tuesday, April 25, 2023, Huw Pill, the Bank of England’s chief economist, warned U.K. citizens that they need to accept that they are poorer and stop pushing for higher wages. “Yes, we’re all worse off” he said, saying that seeking to offset rising prices with higher wages would only fuel more inflation. “So somehow in the U.K., someone needs to accept that they’re worse off and stop trying to maintain their real spending power by bidding up prices, whether higher wages or passing energy costs through on to customers, etcetera.” This was a very somber assessment of the state of the UK economy; and, arguably, of the European Union (EU) economy overall.
For 30 years, the EU bought cheap natural gas from an adversary, Russia, to fuel their economies. The cheap gas allowed them to maintain cost parity with their Asian and US competitors in the world export markets for manufactured goods like machinery, vehicles and chemicals, all energy-intensive manufacturing processes. At the same time, they shut down fossil fuel power plants and even nuclear power plants, although the latter only emits heat and water vapor as byproducts of their operations. In doing so, they abandoned 79 billion tons of domestic coal reserves across the EU, further placing their manufacturing sector at the mercy of foreign energy producers. Then, when the EU placed an embargo on the import of fossil fuels from Russia due to the latter’s invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin, Russia’s President, administered the coup de grace: he cut off the supply of Russian gas to the EU from the Nord Stream One pipeline. Parties unknown sealed the fate of the EU when they blew up the undersea pipeline, ensuring that the supply of cheap natural gas to the EU had ended.
Why did the EU commit economic suicide by basing their economy on the supply of energy from an adversary? Why did they reconfigure their power grid to eliminate electricity production from coal, an energy source that was abundant, reliable, economic and domestically produced? Why did they shift to less reliable and uneconomical sources for the production of electricity like wind and solar voltaic cells, and in the process, eliminate millions of jobs in their domestic energy sector and adversely impact their balance of trade? Who was responsible for these bad decisions and why did they make them?
For the past 30 years, politicians throughout the EU kowtowed to the green parties and ecoterrorists in their countries by declaring war on the carbon atom and the hydrocarbon bond based on the fraudulent man-made global warming hypothesis. Many politicians in Europe joined the global warming chorus with full-throated support; it assumed the element of noblesse oblige. In 2018, British Prime Minister Theresa May stated: “There is a clear moral imperative for developed economies like the U.K. to help those around the world who stand to lose most from the consequences of man-made climate change.” The implication from the Prime Minister’s remarks: those who don’t support the fraudulent hypothesis are immoral.
Today, energy costs in the UK have trebled from just two years ago and rampant inflation throughout the EU is at a level not seen since the 1970s. The price advantage manufacturers once enjoyed in international markets is gone, in the process smashing the continent’s once-harmonious labor relations as unions throughout the EU in every economic sector from transportation to manufacturing to healthcare, strike for higher wages to offset higher energy and food costs. As global trade cools, Europe’s heavy reliance on exports—which account for about 50% of eurozone GDP versus 10% for the U.S.—is becoming a weakness. Unfortunately, there is no quick fix for the problems the EU faces. Coal mines have been closed, coal fired power plants have been shuttered and it will take years, perhaps decades, to turn things around. In the interim, the EU runs the risk of devolving into a third world power, both economically and militarily. It did not have to be this way. If the populace and political leaders in the EU had not allowed themselves to be fooled by the pseudoscience that underpins the fraudulent global warming hypothesis, their standard of living would not have been destroyed.
In my book titled “Global Warming: The Great Deception-The Triumph of Dollars and Politics Over Science and Why You Should Care”, I cite published, peer-reviewed scientific research, employing the first principles of the relevant scientific fields of thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, atmospheric physics and spectroscopy to prove that CO2 does not cause global warming. I use publicly available data from the world’s temperature databases to prove that there has been no significant global warming of the Earth’s atmosphere, oceans or land mass as the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere increased, thereby falsifying the global warming hypothesis. I use publicly available information to demonstrate that the motivation of the UN IPCC, certain world politicians and global investment firms is to gain financially by promoting the fraudulent hypothesis. It is all about the money and political power. Science has been sacrificed on the altar of political opportunism for economic and political gain.Will American politicians and the American electorate learn from the EU’s mistakes? At present, it sure doesn’t look like it. Democrats and the Biden administration are rushing headlong to join their European colleagues in embracing the fraudulent man-made global warming agenda. President Biden cancelled the Keystone Pipeline and suspended the leasing of federal lands in the US for oil and gas exploration. He directed the US EPA to issue guidelines that would effectively eliminate the operation of fossil-fuel fired power plants and cars with internal combustion engines in the US in ten years or less. He directed the US Fish and Wildlife Service to declare the most productive lands for the production of oil and gas in the Permian Basin in the US to be off-limits for oil and gas production, in order to preserve the habitat of the Greater Eastern Prairie Chicken. Republicans are afraid to oppose these efforts from fear of being called “deniers” or opponents of “science.” Meanwhile, global investment firms are licking their chops at the prospect of billions of dollars of fees from managing ESG investments and selling carbon credits and offsets. Is the US destined to suffer the fate of the EU?
Guy K. Mitchell, Jr. is the author of a book titled “Global Warming: The Great Deception-The Triumph of Dollars and Politics Over Science and Why You Should Care.” It placed #3 on the “Wall Street Journal’s” Top Ten Best Selling Book list in April 2023. www.globalwarmingdeception.com