Thread by @ShellenbergerMD

Greta Thunberg said “I want you to panic” and nations did. They over-invested in unreliable weather-dependent energy sources & under-invested in reliable energy. Now, global energy shortages are forcing the poor to choose between food & electricity

Overdependence on unreliable energies isn’t the only reason for energy shortages. Post-pandemic economic recovery resulted in higher energy demand. And too little natural gas stored on-site after a colder-than-expected winter played a role. 

michaelshellenberger.substack.com/p/skyrocketing…

But the heavy investment in unreliable renewables made energy supplies more vulnerable to a single commodity’s volatility. Today’s grids mean that high gas prices cause energy price spikes and a return to the dirtiest forms of electricity production, including diesel and coal.

The return to coal was most dramatic in Germany. Electricity from wind was 20% lower in Germany in the first half of 2021 than the first half of 2020, resulting in a 24% higher use of fossil fuels and 28% greater emissions from electricity.

Lack of wind in Britain led its grid operator to ask French electricity giant, Électricité de France, to restart a coal plant in Nottinghamshire. And California requested permission from the federal government to violate air pollution regulations so diesel plants can operate

In 2019, @GretaThunberg called nuclear “extremely dangerous, expensive & time-consuming”
& unnecessary for most nations

Afterwards, Germany and Sweden closed nuclear reactors that could have kept running for decades.

Germany, Sweden, the US and other nations replaced their nuclear plants with fossil fuels, contributing to global energy supply shortages

As a result, what turned out to be “dangerous and expensive” wasn’t nuclear, it was Greta Thunberg & her anti-nuclear climate movement

https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/status/1265657774655983616

This isn’t the first time that pro-scarcity environmentalists created real world scarcity. They have done so in the past

I describe the history of pro-scarcity Malthusians in Apocalypse Never

Since World War II, the pro-scarcity activists have hidden their anti-abundance agenda behind the mask of concern for nature

amazon.com/Apocalypse-Nev…

But it’s obvious that Greta Thunberg and the Malthusian Axis doesn’t care about climate change. If they did, they wouldn’t be replacing nuclear plants with fossil fuels, and opposing the means for poor nations to adapt to it.

As @jordanbpeterson says, “If you don’t understand somebody’s intentions, consider the consequences of their actions.

The consequences of Greta et al.’s actions are panic, energy shortages, and rising carbon emissions.

That said, Greta made clear last year that she hates “the system” more than she fears climate change

https://twitter.com/shellenbergermd/status/1274721964108611584

In 2019 Greta singled out for attack France & Brazil, which get 86% & 79% of their power from zero-carbon sources

Why? Because her real concern isn’t climate change, it’s destroying “the system”

https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/status/1177883356140146688

Americans should be relieved that that global energy crisis occurred before Congress passed disastrous climate legislation, which would have increased energy scarcity and electricity prices even more than unreliable renewables already have

michaelshellenberger.substack.com/p/why-bad-clim…

This is the second time climate legislation failed to positive effect.

In 2010 a failed “cap and trade” bill had a goal of reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels by the year 2020.

Instead, the U.S. reduced its emissions by 22 percent.

Had cap and trade legislation passed in the Senate, emissions would have declined less than 22 percent, because Waxman-Markey so heavily subsidized coal and other fossil fuels.

As the Los Angeles Times reported at the time, “the Environmental Protection Agency projects that even if the emissions limits go into effect, the U.S. would use more carbon-dioxide-heavy coal in 2020 than it did in 2005.”

latimes.com/archives/la-xp…

The climate legislation that @Sen_JoeManchin mercifully killed was authored by a Canadian political scientist, @leahstokes , who had no experience regulating electric utilities, and no business writing legislation for the United States of America

michaelshellenberger.substack.com/p/if-democrats…

Stokes achieved her status by writing a book attacking American utilities that had dared to resist efforts to make the US electrical grid more reliant on weather-dependent energy sources, even though over-investment in them had contributed to blackouts in California & Texas.

Advocates of unreliable renewables are scrambling to explain how over-investment in them, and under-investment in reliable energies, are not to blame for global energy scarcity, which is contributing significantly to inflation, but when you’re read what they write it’s word salad

These are *physical* & *economic facts :

Unreliables make electricity less reliable and more expensive when deployed at scale

Over-investment in unreliables led directly to blackouts in California & Texas

Over-investment in unreliables led directly to today’s energy shortages

Here are the sources which include my testimony to the Senate and House where I predicted the current global energy crisis:

michaelshellenberger.substack.com/p/the-real-rea…

forbes.com/sites/michaels…

environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2021/…

environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2021/…