Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
“Bill McKibben is desperate. Instead of accepting reality, he continues his magical thinking of wind and solar dominance. But as James Hansen, the father of the alarm, stated: ‘Suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy’.”
“Bill McKibben is desperate. Instead of accepting reality, he continues his magical thinking of wind and solar dominance. But as James Hansen, the father of the alarm, stated: ‘Suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy’.”
It’s an old story in the futile, wasteful decarbonization effort. Should natural gas be part of the solution, displacing diesel oil and coal in home heating and power generation? Or should natural gas be condemned as a “fossil fuel” just like oil and coal. Enter Natural Allies for a Clean Energy Future, a trade/lobbying group espousing “Our Path to a Clean Energy Future.”
Their tag line reads: “Climate progress, along with energy affordability and reliability, starts with renewables and natural gas working together.” But the climate activists want little to do with this pitch. Bill McKibben, wrote:
At Inside Climate News, Kiley Bense has the scoop on how the natural gas industry is buying Democrats to try and influence the energy debate…. Energy “has to be reliable, it has to be affordable,” [former Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter] added, one theme of an argument made throughout the evening that the path to a clean energy future should be built on gas. “It has to be there when people need it. It’s not a sometime thing.”
Continuing,
That messaging is favored by the event’s sponsor, Natural Allies for a Clean Energy Future, a coalition formed in 2020 to “educate and inform about the central role natural gas and natural gas infrastructure play in the clean energy future and as a partner to renewables.” Natural Allies’ goal is to redefine gas as “the most affordable and reliable energy source.”
The fix is in to McKibben.
Natural Allies—whose funders include the fracking company EQT, gas utility Enbridge and Venture Global, a liquefied natural gas provider—woos left-leaning and moderate voters in blue and purple states by hiring Democratic leaders like Nutter to share their message. Nutter’s advisory firm was paid $240,000 in 2024 for his work on behalf of the group, and he sits on its leadership council with other Democratic politicians like former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe and former Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan.
The dreaded word “fossil fuels” is the smoking gun.
Eugene DePasquale, the current chair of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, is the state chairman for Natural Allies. He appeared on the panel alongside Nutter. “It’s always been focused on, ‘How do we convince Democrat officials to stay onside to support fossil fuels?’” said Charlie Spatz, a research manager at the Energy and Policy Institute, of Natural Allies’ mission. “They exclusively exist to influence Democrats, in my opinion.”
The dash-to-gas is on despite the gas turbine shortage from the misdirection of production of industrial wind turbines. Bill McKibben is desperate. Instead of accepting reality, he continues his magical thinking of wind and solar dominance. But as James Hansen, the father of the alarm, stated:
Suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.
The United Kingdom represents less than one percent of global CO2 emissions.
Yet the political class, including academic experts, will not be deterred from social injustice for consumers and self-annihilation of its economy. UK energy statism is tears-in-the-ocean–and for the wrong cause.
“Whilst the government is pursuing a pragmatic approach to the North Sea, we have to accept the geological reality that North Sea gas production has declined by 74% since its peak in 2000 and we have been a net importer of gas since 2004.” – UK Government Report (below)
The United Kingdom represents less than one percent of global CO2 emissions. Yet the political class, including academic experts, will not be deterred from social injustice for consumers and self-annihilation of its economy. UK energy statism is tears-in-the-ocean–and for the wrong cause.
The latest report from the UK Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, titled “Gas System in Transition: Security of Supply (Interim Response),” tries to square the circle between decarbonization and economy. “The UK must decarbonize because of volatile, higher oil and natural gas prices, yet energy affordability is important too.” Such, in the words of UK energy analyst Richard Lyon, is where “the small print stopped agreeing with the press line.”
Consider in three parts the Ministerial Foreword under the UK Minister of Energy, Michael Shanks. It begins:
When we published the Gas System in Transition: Security of Supply Consultation in November 2025, we were clear that the only way to ensure our ongoing energy security, and to protect households from volatile fossil fuel prices, was to accelerate our move to low-carbon energy sources. This was independently verified by NESO, the energy system planner, in their Gas Security of Supply Assessment last year.
The global impact of events in the Middle East this year have further evidenced the urgency and importance of decarbonising our energy system. We have an alternative available to us in the form of home-grown, low carbon energy, and these events have underlined why we must stick with our long-term plan to move to clean energy and away from the price volatility associated with fossil fuels.
And as our country decarbonises, the amount of gas we use will decline, meaning gas will have a decreasing influence on our energy bills, increasing our energy independence and economic security, and protecting consumer bills.
Comment: This summary is disingenuous. A liberated home-grown fossil-fuel sector would offer more, locationally advantaged supply. Buyers can contractually lock-in prices and other terms with local providers, avoiding force majeure risk with international supply. Furthermore, domestic (UK) producers would benefit from the price uptick that otherwise goes to producers everywhere, such as those in the Permian Basin in West Texas.
Supporters of UK policy could respond by saying these benefits are de minimis. But so is the futile quest to decarbonize an economy that contributes so little to global emissions.
Consumer Hedge
“However,” the next thought begins, “because gas is a global commodity, with prices set on the international market, we have all had to pay more to attract the unaffected supply.”
With diminishing output from the North Sea over the past decades, any gas produced from the UK Continental Shelf represents a tiny fraction of global demand and so will not lower prices nor materially boost supply. We have therefore taken measures to help protect British families from the volatile gas market and break the link between gas and electricity prices.
The assets that form our gas system – geological storage, LNG terminals, interconnectors, North Sea infrastructure and the networks that connect them – will all help to make GB more secure and resilient throughout the transition. The aim of this consultation, and the wider ‘gas system in transition’ work is to ensure we are tackling the long-standing challenges and not ignoring them for the next generation.
We set out some of these challenges in our Update to Market 2025 and Gas in Transition consultation alongside our plans to address them. NESO’s GSSA also highlighted risks to our gas security of supply from 2030, driven by the structural decline of the North Sea basin, and pointing to the need for market intervention or investment in the system.
Comment: No, diminished domestic production is political, not geological. Yes, natural gas infrastructure is essential for the UK to limp along and spare, to some extent, energy deterioration.
3. North Sea Discussion
“Whilst the government is pursuing a pragmatic approach to the North Sea,” the third and final thought of the Foreword begins,
we have to accept the geological reality that North Sea gas production has declined by 74% since its peak in 2000 and we have been a net importer of gas since 2004. The North Sea can therefore no longer be relied upon to meet our energy needs and we will become more reliant on our import infrastructure.
Comment: The North Sea discussion falsely blames geology rather than government intervention for the decline in North Sea production. Back in the 1970s, the U.S. self-sabotaged its domestic oil and gas industry on the false notion of Peak Oil and Peak Gas. Today, UK energy planners want to shift blame from Net Zero policies to the natural market.
Will the UK wake up? Will voters say enought to high bills and a landscape littered with “green” machinery? One can only hope so.
Paraphrasing the Washington Post “Environmental Protections Die in Darkness”, could be a slogan for New York’s Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (CLCPA) monomaniacal emphasis on renewable energy development. Reasonable limits have never been established on wind and solar projects, so developers have been given free rein to build wherever is most convenient and cheap without regard to the environment.
Paraphrasing the Washington Post “Environmental Protections Die in Darkness”, could be a slogan for New York’s Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (CLCPA) monomaniacal emphasis on renewable energy development. Reasonable limits have never been established on wind and solar projects, so developers have been given free rein to build wherever is most convenient and cheap without regard to the environment. If a recent article in the New York Post is any indication, however, that may be changing. I explain the context of solar development in New York in this article.
Background
The CLCPA has been an exercise in political pandering to emotion-driven activists convinced that climate change is an existential threat that can be solved by transitioning to an energy system reliant on wind, solar, and energy storage. I have been writing for years about the lack of a feasibility analysis that demonstrates that relying on renewable energy that does not provide energy all the time, including the times when needed the most, does not work well in New York’s climate and high latitude, and relies on resources that tend to fail at the same time over large areas. Instead of an ordered approach to decarbonization, New York lawmakers enacted a transition plan that consists of building as much wind and solar as possible, as fast as possible, and assumed that it would all work out.
In the first year after the CLCPA was enacted renewable development did not get permitted as fast as the developers and activists wanted. In April 2020, New York lawmakers enacted the Accelerated Renewable Energy Growth and Community Benefit Act that created the Office of Renewable Energy Siting (ORES) to implement a consolidated, expedited siting and permitting process for major renewable energy facilities. Because New York progressive lawmakers know everything, the idea that there should be conditions on development was not included in the law. There was no provision to ask the Department of Agriculture and Markets for recommendations on limits for the taking of prime farmland. The Public Service Commission was not asked if solar developers should have technology mandates like tilting axis solar panels or recommendations not to build solar facilities in the Great Lake snowbelts that get 20 feet of snow a year. The Department of Health did not establish noise limits to protect industrial neighbors of wind turbines. In every instance there have been egregious impacts that the ORES permitting process has ignored as they rubber stamped approvals despite the strenuous efforts of local groups concerned with those impacts.
The more I learn about the permitting process the more I am convinced that most New Yorkers have no clue about these destructive policies. The local grassroots organizations have been knee-capped by this law and have failed to kill projects that cause what I am sure state agencies would agree are unacceptable impacts. Publicity is needed to expose this scandal. The grassroots organizations opposed to unfettered renewable development that has no safeguards usually count themselves lucky to get a mention in a local newspaper or TV station, but their reach is limited. They have not been able to get this issue publicized enough.
There is another egregious impact. I have no doubts that if the lawmakers had asked the Department of Environmental Conservation to recommend limits on destruction of rare and endangered species habitat, they would certainly have demanded limits on fragmenting habitat. That did not happen and it has come to the attention of a social media influencer who is articulate, passionate and mad. She also has a platform.
Alexandra Fasulo
Alexandra Fasulo has a Substack called House of Green with the stated goal “to equip you with the information and stories you need to farm, garden, homestead, futurestead, set up agricultural education businesses, and heal the environment.” Her overall Substack presence (including House of Green and other titles) is listed as having “53K+ subscribers” and ranked around #13 in the Climate & Environment category. Her Youtube channel has 384K subscribers and videos routinely get tens of thousands of views. In her latest endeavor she established a farm and her followers can monitor her homestead progress.
When she found out about the nearby planned 100 MW Fort Edward Solar Project she attended a public hearing. It was a wakeup call. I think her public reach as social media influencer is going to have an impact as exemplified by the fact that the New York Post reached out to her. She gave him the overview and connected him with other people in the article.
Fort Edward Solar
Chadwick Moore’s article describes Fasulo’s initial reaction to the Fort Edard Solar Project at a public hearing:
“There was nearly unanimous opposition to this project. So, I thought it wouldn’t go through. That’s how representative democracy works, right? Wrong.”
I had the same reaction about this project. As shown in the following map that was used in the article, the project is within the Audubon-designated Fort Edward Grasslands Important Bird Area and the NYNHP Raptor Winter Concentration Area. It also surrounds the NYS DEC Grassland Wildlife Management Area on three sides. Note that the developer frequently points out that their project does not surround the Wildlife Management Area on all sides. The idea that fields of solar panels could be permitted adjacent to a wildlife management area is beyond my comprehension.
The Fort Edwards site, in red, is in the middle of a state-recognized wildlife sanctuary.
Grassland Bird Trust/ American Land Rescue Fund
I admire Fasulo because she did not take the rejection of her concerns sitting down. She established a non-profit American Land Rescue Fund to “defend America’s land through law and action.” Because the permitting documents are heavily redacted, she hired independent consultants to assess the environmental impact.
That report, reviewed by The Post, shows the Fort Edwards site sits inside a NYS Department of Environmental Conservation-managed grassland and bird sanctuary “well known for high species diversity of breeding grassland birds and important numbers of wintering raptors including an Endangered and a Threatened species,” the report stated.
The species impacted by the development include the endangered short-eared owl (fewer than 50 breeding pairs remain in the state, per the Grassland Bird Trust), the threatened northern harrier and 15 species of reptiles and amphibians of “conservation concern,” among many others.
Moore goes on to describe 17 other solar projects in Upstate New York that have their own issues.
Each of the 18 sites ORES has selected will have a capacity over 25 megawatts. The agency also has an additional dozen wind projects in the works.
Some of the largest projects are the 4,000-acre (6.25-square-mile), 500-megawatt Cider Solar Farm in Genesee County and the 2,000-acre (3.1-square-mile) Ridge View Solar Farm in Niagara County, as shown on The Post’s map.
To add insult to injury, many of the multibillion-dollar solar contracts have been farmed out to foreign companies — including Canada’s Boralex, France’s EDF Renewables, and South Korea’s Cypress Creek Renewables, The Post has found.
He describes a smaller project in Copake NY.
A hundred miles south in the bucolic Hudson Valley town of Copake, local resident Sara Traberman has made fighting Big Solar her full-time job. Chicago-based developer Hecate Energy scooped up over 700 acres of productive farmland to install a planned 42-megawatt-capacity solar facility, expected to go online late next year.
Locals were told to expect two years of nonstop construction where 547 dump trucks and 10 pile drivers along with numerous cranes and excavators will swarm the picturesque hamlet from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. — seven days a week.
“It’s about changing the character of this town. It’s a rural, farming community. We just ask that the rules of the town and the view of what the people want for where they live is respected,” Traberman told The Post.
“It’s going to impact tourism, local traffic, the schools. It’s going to be horrible.
Moore also describes a lawsuit against ORES in Montgomery County.
Developers were permitted to gobble up 6,400 acres (10 square miles) — most of it active farmland — for two massive solar complexes near the towns of Canajoharie and Root.
Montgomery County Attorney Meghan Manion told The Post the litigation challenges “the grossly unlawful actions of ORES,” which “deviated from lawful procedure by choosing not to follow their own regulations in granting these [solar] permits.”
While developers cover the cost of construction, locals have to eat revenue losses on property tax for the sites, Montgomery County lawmaker Michael Muhlebeck told The Post. He also said his constituents, who are “97 percent” opposed to the projects, will likely face higher utility costs due to the increased demand that often follows large industrial projects like this.
Issues
The article describes the futility of changing the climate with solar power and explains that solar resources in New York are not strong. According to the New York Independent System Operator summary of renewable performance utility-scale solar facilities provided between 16 and 19% of the maximum possible generation over the last four years. There is a bigger problem. Electric resource planning must be based on the worst-case event. During last winter’s extreme winter weather 18-day episode the daily solar capacity available was less than 10% half the time and less than 5% three days. I also showed that this episode proves that in these events all short-term energy storage would be depleted early, leaving insufficient renewable generation to both meet demand and recharge storage systems. As a result, a new dispatchable emissions-free resource is needed to keep the lights on.
I recommend checking out the article’s map of the 18 solar projects currently under consideration by ORES that extend from far western New York to the Canadian border in the north. All these projects are needed to provide New York City with zero-emissions electricity as part of the CLCPA. Because they are so spread-out transmission upgrades will undoubtedly be required, if not for these projects, then surely for all the other renewable projects necessary.
The experiences recounted in the article indicate that unfettered renewable energy development in New York is causing demonstrable environmental impacts. Given environmental advocacy outrage over environmental impacts of data centers it is disappointing that they have not expressed their concerns over the more extensive impacts of renewable energy development.
At the end of the day this outcome is solely on the lawmakers who supported these laws. They never enabled state agencies to fulfill their missions, and I think you could say they prevented them from doing so in the process. The developers cannot be faulted for taking advantage of the situation and ORES staff is simply following the law. Prior to 2019, the state agencies would have said the environmental impacts f Fort Edward Solar are unacceptable and asked the developer to build their facility somewhere with less impacts.
Conclusion
Montgomery County lawmaker Michael Muhlebeck summed up the scandal:
“New York state has taken more and more from our communities and they’ve literally just shut us down. We no longer have the right to protect our residents. “But there’s a goal that has to be met. And that goal is bigger than our local communities, our wildlife, our wetlands. And they don’t care,” she added.
Publicity is needed to expose this scandal. I hope that the power of social media exemplified by Alexandra Fasulo can bring this to the attention of enough New Yorkers that the policies can be changed to protect the environment and interests of the local communities impacted by these industrial developments. The only way this can be fixed is for legislative change.
Roger Caiazza blogs on New York energy and environmental issues at Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York. Dealing with the RGGI regulatory and political landscapes is challenging enough that affected entities seldom see value in speaking out about fundamental issues associated with the program. He has been involved in the RGGI program process since its inception and has no such restrictions when writing about the details of the RGGI program. This represents his opinion and not the opinion of any of his previous employers or any other company with which he has been associated.
The climate system is a complex, chaotic, coupled system involving the atmosphere, oceans, land, ice, biosphere, and solar/astronomical influences. Human emissions of greenhouse gases (primarily CO₂, methane) exert a warming influence via the greenhouse effect, with water vapor providing the strongest positive feedback. This much is well-established basic physics. However, translating that into quantitative predictions of future climate—how much warming, where, when, with what impacts—reveals substantial uncertainty and complexity that are often downplayed in public and policy discourse.
The climate system is a complex, chaotic, coupled system involving the atmosphere, oceans, land, ice, biosphere, and solar/astronomical influences.
Human emissions of greenhouse gases (primarily CO₂, methane) exert a warming influence via the greenhouse effect, with water vapor providing the strongest positive feedback.
This much is well-established basic physics.
However, translating that into quantitative predictions of future climate—how much warming, where, when, with what impacts—reveals substantial uncertainty and complexity that are often downplayed in public and policy discourse.
Every so often it’s worth stepping back from the daily barrage of nonsensical doom laden headlines and taking stock of where things actually stand. Not where press releases say they stand, not where advocacy groups would prefer they stand—but where the underlying science, data, and institutions genuinely are. Climate science today sits in an unusual position: technically sophisticated, heavily funded, and politically elevated to a degree few scientific fields have ever experienced. That combination brings both uncertainty and, inevitably, complications.
Let’s begin with the science itself.
There’s no question that the observational network is better than it was decades ago. Satellite measurements, ocean buoys, reanalysis datasets—these have added layers of detail that early researchers could only dream about. But improved instrumentation hasn’t eliminated uncertainty; it has simply shifted where that uncertainty resides. Surface temperature records, for example, remain subject to adjustments, homogenization techniques, and ongoing revisions. Each of those steps may be justified individually, yet the cumulative effect introduces a level of opacity that deserves scrutiny rather than automatic trust.
Climate models, meanwhile, continue to serve as the backbone of long-term projections. They’ve grown more complex, incorporating atmospheric chemistry, ocean dynamics, and land-use changes with increasing granularity. But complexity is not the same as accuracy. Model ensembles still display a wide spread in climate sensitivity estimates, and their historical performance shows mixed skill depending on the metric chosen. Some runs track observations reasonably well; others overshoot warming trends, particularly in the tropical troposphere—a region that was once expected to provide a clear “fingerprint” of greenhouse forcing.
What’s often missing in public discussions is the distinction between hindcasting and forecasting. A model tuned to match past data does not necessarily demonstrate predictive skill. As one often-cited principle in statistics reminds us, fitting known data is relatively easy; predicting unseen data is where the real test lies. Yet much of the confidence conveyed to policymakers rests on scenarios that extend decades into the future, relying on assumptions about emissions, technological change, and socio-economic pathways that are themselves highly speculative.
Then there’s the matter of attribution. The claim that recent warming is primarily driven by human activity is widely repeated, but the degree of certainty attached to that claim varies depending on how it is framed. Detection and attribution studies use statistical techniques to separate human and natural influences, but those methods depend heavily on model output. When models disagree, attribution inherits that uncertainty. It’s a circularity that rarely gets acknowledged in simplified summaries.
None of this is to suggest that greenhouse gases have no effect on climate. Basic radiative physics has been understood for over a century. The question has always been one of magnitude, feedbacks, and the relative importance of natural variability. Solar influences, ocean oscillations, and cloud dynamics remain areas where understanding is incomplete. Clouds in particular—those ubiquitous, ever-changing features of the atmosphere—continue to represent one of the largest sources of uncertainty in climate sensitivity estimates.
Now, pivot to the political climate surrounding all this.
Climate science has become deeply intertwined with policy in a way that few other disciplines have. Funding priorities, institutional incentives, and public messaging are all shaped by the perceived urgency of the issue. Governments allocate billions toward mitigation strategies, international agreements hinge on model projections, and entire industries are being reshaped under the banner of decarbonization.
This creates a feedback loop. Scientific findings inform policy, but policy priorities also influence which scientific questions receive attention. Researchers are human; they respond to incentives like anyone else. When funding agencies emphasize certain outcomes—say, impacts, risks, and worst-case scenarios—it’s not surprising that those areas see the most activity. More mundane questions, such as refining baseline measurements or exploring natural variability, tend to attract less attention despite their importance.
Media coverage amplifies this dynamic. Nuance doesn’t travel well in headlines. A study suggesting modest uncertainty doesn’t generate clicks; a projection of dramatic change does. Over time, this skews public perception, giving the impression of greater consensus and precision than the underlying science necessarily supports. It also discourages open debate, as dissenting views are often framed as obstruction rather than part of the normal scientific process.
There’s also the international dimension. Climate policy has become a central feature of global diplomacy, with agreements like the Paris Accord setting targets that are as much political as they are scientific. Developing nations balance economic growth against emissions constraints, while developed countries grapple with the costs of transitioning energy systems. The result is a patchwork of commitments, many of which rely on optimistic assumptions about future technology and compliance.
One of the more curious aspects of the current landscape is the level of certainty expressed in policy discussions compared to the conditional language found in technical reports. Scientific papers are filled with caveats, confidence intervals, and carefully worded conclusions. By the time those findings are translated into policy recommendations, much of that caution has been stripped away. What remains is a simplified narrative that may be easier to communicate but less faithful to the underlying evidence.
So where does that leave us?
Climate science is neither settled in the simplistic sense often portrayed nor entirely adrift. It’s a field marked by genuine advances alongside persistent uncertainties. The challenge lies in maintaining a clear boundary between what is known, what is inferred, and what is projected. Blurring those distinctions may serve short-term policy goals, but it does little to enhance long-term understanding.
A more productive approach would emphasize transparency—open data, clear methodologies, and a willingness to revisit assumptions. It would also encourage a broader range of inquiry, including studies that test prevailing models against observations without presuming their correctness. Scientific progress has always depended on questioning established ideas, not reinforcing them through repetition.
As for the politics, they’re unlikely to become less intense anytime soon. The stakes—economic, environmental, and ideological—are simply too high. But recognizing the difference between scientific evidence and political narrative would be a good place to start. Without that distinction, it becomes difficult to tell whether decisions are being driven by data or by the desire to appear aligned with it.
In the end, the climate system will do what it does, indifferent to our models and policies. Our task is to understand it as accurately as possible, acknowledging both what we know and what we don’t. That requires a level of intellectual honesty that can sometimes be in short supply when science and politics become so tightly coupled.
She states: “One fact has been concealed for too long: an energy transition that ignores system costs will ruin the country it claims to save.”
Katherina Reiche, Germany’s Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy argues that the Energiewende (Germany’s long-running energy transition) has suffered from “self-deception” by downplaying “system costs” — the broader expenses of integrating intermittent renewables like wind and solar into a reliable grid, including backup capacity, grid upgrades, curtailment (wasted generation), and subsidies.
She states: “One fact has been concealed for too long: an energy transition that ignores system costs will ruin the country it claims to save.”
This is not a blanket rejection of renewables or climate goals.
Reiche supports the transition in principle but calls for a pragmatic “reality check,” prioritizing affordability, energy security, and industrial competitiveness alongside decarbonization.
She has criticized past over-focus on climate protection at the expense of these factors and advocated “technology openness” (including gas plants as backups).
She has also called the earlier nuclear phase-out a “huge mistake,” noting it removed ~20 GW of dispatchable, low-carbon baseload power.
Germany remains committed to climate neutrality by 2045, and Reiche still calls renewables essential.
What’s shifting is the emphasis: affordability, security, and industrial competitiveness now get equal billing with emissions cuts.
Energy systems are complex trade-offs between cost, reliability, emissions, and security.
Germany’s experience shows that good intentions and subsidies alone don’t guarantee an optimal outcome; engineering constraints and system-wide costs matter.
Reiche’s column is a sign of that reality intruding on politics.
When Simon Wakter, Political Adviser to Sweden’s Minister for Energy, posted on X last Wednesday with a simple “Wow, incredible article” and a clapping emoji, he captured the shock rippling through Europe’s energy commentariat. The target of his applause was not some fringe sceptic but Germany’s own Economy and Energy Minister, Katherina Reiche.
In a guest column for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Reiche delivered a verdict that would have been career-ending heresy only a year ago: “One fact has been concealed for too long: an energy transition that ignores system costs will ruin the country it claims to save.” To anyone who has watched Germany’s Energiewende — that totemic experiment in decarbonisation-by-decree — unfold like a slow-motion train wreck, Reiche’s words land like a thunderclap from the Establishment itself.
Here is a senior CDU Minister in Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Government openly admitting that two decades of Green-inspired fantasy have saddled the continent’s industrial powerhouse with hidden costs now running, according to estimates she cites, at €36 billion a year and climbing towards €90 billion. Grid expansions, backup power for intermittent wind and solar and the sheer inefficiency of trying to run a modern economy on the weather: all of it, she says, must stop being airbrushed out of the official narrative. The self-deception, she warns, is over.
This is not mere technocratic tinkering. It is the first major public crack in the ideological edifice that has dominated German — and by extension European — energy policy since the anti-nuclear, beatnik ’68ers’ generation seized the cultural high ground. Rupert Darwall chronicled the phenomenon with great precision in Green Tyranny: how a handful of German Greens, personified by the sneaker-wearing Joschka Fischer swearing in as Hesse’s environment minister in 1985, exported their peculiar red-green blend of anti-capitalist zeal and romantic environmentalism across the continent and beyond.
That gospel found a ready audience in the Anglosphere. In the summer of 1988, NASA scientist James Hansen delivered his now-infamous testimony to the US Congress, declaring that “the greenhouse effect has been detected and is changing our climate now”. The moment was theatrical, the science shaky, but the political effect electric. It fused with the inchoate ideas already circulating among Western intellectuals: Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb (1968), which prophesied mass famine that never came; Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962), which launched the modern environmental movement on the back of exaggerated claims about DDT; and E.F. Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful (1973), the manifesto of ‘Buddhist economics’ that preached reducing human demand rather than raising living standards. As the great Chicago economist Frank Knight observed, economic progress consists not in suppressing desires nor even in satiating them but in their “ever greater refinement and multiplication” — a direct antithesis to Schumacher’s call for ascetic material restraint as spiritual virtue.
This European ideological curse of environmental misanthropy spread among the young urban intelligentsia of the developing countries through the educational curricula and mass media and the vast number of students studying in the progressive universities of the West, from Canada to Australia, Ireland to Italy and New York to California and Florida.
The spread of Europe’s green gospel was enthusiastically supported by Left-wing billionaire foundations which sprouted thousands of “grassroots NGOs” in Asia, Africa and Latin America. These so-called grassroots NGOs were handy to provide a moral cover for grifting renewable-energy lobbies seeking rents from the public purse. Local ‘Bootleggers and Baptists‘ coalitions arose across the developing countries that derived mutual benefits in Europe’s carbon colonialism. To complete the circle, captured agencies such as the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the IMF imposed anti-fossil-fuel constraints as a condition for aid and public finance to poorer African and Asian governments.
At the root of it all lay Europe’s long love affair with Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s “noble savage”, the fantasy that the simple, low-energy lifestyles of Tahitian natives represented a purer existence than the artifice of industrial civilisation. When Voltaire received a copy of Rousseau’s book The Social Contract, he replied:
I have received your new book against the human race, and thank you for it. Never was such a cleverness used in the design of making us all stupid. One longs, in reading your book, to walk on all fours. But as I have lost that habit for more than 60 years, I feel unhappily the impossibility of resuming it.
Perhaps the German intelligentsia never saw the thrust of Voltaire’s rather disdainful response to Rousseau’s love affair with Pacific Islanders.
What began as German domestic posturing metastasized into EU-wide dogma with Angela Merkel’s fateful 2011 decision to shut the country’s nuclear plants after the Fukushima incident in Japan. The results were as predictable as they were catastrophic. Germany, once the engineering envy of the world, now imports electricity when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. It has destroyed its nuclear industry — 20 gigawatts of reliable, low-carbon baseload — only to watch coal-fired plants, including the dirty lignite variety, roar back to life.
Fritz Vahrenholt, one of the few credentialled German voices who has consistently refused to drink the Gaia Kool-Aid, pointed out in an interview last week that the country sits atop enough domestic gas reserves for 25 years of secure supply. Yet it refuses to exploit them, crippled by what he calls the “German disease” of nature worship.
The March 2026 closure of the Strait of Hormuz by Iran’s IRGC merely administered the coup de grâce to an already terminal patient. Qatar’s force majeure on LNG shipments removed nearly 20% of global supply overnight. European gas prices spiked and power prices followed as German storage levels plunged.
Suddenly the same political class that had spent years lecturing voters about the moral imperative of Net Zero found itself quietly dusting off moribund lignite coal plants previously earmarked for closure. A ‘renaissance for coal’ is how analysts describe the spectacle. The prior government’s solemn pledge to phase out coal by 2030 now reads like a bad joke told at the expense of German households and manufacturers.
In a move that highlights the severe economic strain of the Middle East conflict, the German Government is reportedly considering a ‘renaissance for coal’ to prevent a total energy meltdown. … While Germany has spent years pushing for a 2030 coal phase-out, the current energy crisis has forced a pivot toward energy security over climate targets. Reports indicate that several lignite units, previously held in safety reserve, may be returned to full market operation.
Conservative leader Alice Weidel, riding a surge of popularity for the conservative-populist AfD party that is now second only to the ruling CDU/CSU coalition, has forthrightly stated that under an AfD-led government, the Net Zero movement would be rejected:
We must also declare the climate crisis over. The whole thing is, as the American President so nicely puts it, a hoax – it is a complete scam. … We must immediately end the failed Energiewende. We must also immediately cut back and eliminate the waste of resources and the subsidies for so-called renewable energies.
German Energy Minister Reiche is not alone in her seeming Damascene conversion. Chancellor Merz has repeatedly called the 2023 nuclear shutdown a “serious strategic mistake” that left Germany vulnerable to import shocks and deindustrialisation. Even EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, that high priestess of the Green Deal, stood before a nuclear summit in Paris on March 10th and confessed that “reducing Europe’s nuclear sector was a strategic mistake”. Reliable, affordable, low-emission power had been sacrificed on the altar of ideology, she effectively admitted — 15 years too late for the German utilities that had already been forced into insolvency or foreign ownership.
Yet these deathbed ‘repentances’ cannot disguise the deeper truth: the entire red-green project was always a triumph of wishful thinking over engineering reality, favouring Rousseau’s imaginations of noble savages in the South Pacific over Voltaire’s rather commonsensical rejection of being told that walking on all fours was heavenly.
The West’s punitive climate policies — layered atop self-inflicted energy sanctions on Russia — have boomeranged with spectacular precision. Entire sectors of German manufacturing have decamped to jurisdictions unburdened by the climate industrial complex. Energy-intensive industries that once powered the Mittelstand now eye the exits, while households stare at electricity prices that remain among the highest in the developed world.
Following the recent elections in Baden-Württemberg, the exasperated pseudonymous commentator Eugyppius remarked that: “Stupid people in Baden-Württemberg hand massive electoral victory to the Greens so they can continue to sacrifice their industry to the weather gods.” For the German Greens and their socialist allies, of course, the stupid people are the working- and middle-class majority who are ‘climate deniers’. Never mind that they are cost-of-living realists who notice when their heating bills triple, when German industry bleeds jobs and when the same politicians who preached energy poverty as virtue now scramble to fire up the dirtiest coal plants to prevent blackouts.
The polling numbers tell the story with merciless clarity. Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is now routinely polling at 25–27% nationally, ahead of or level with the CDU/CSU in several surveys. In western states long considered immune to its message, AfD has doubled its vote share in Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate. Its platform could not be clearer: man-made climate change is a ‘scam’, the entire Net Zero apparatus a vehicle for crushing industry and sovereignty.
Enter the ‘far Right’
This is not fringe muttering; it is the explicit rejection of the Energiewende that Reiche herself is now edging towards. The pattern repeats across Europe. In France, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally leads Presidential polling by framing the Green transition as “ultra-ecological fanaticism” that punishes farmers and motorists while enriching the Davos set. Britain’s Reform UK under Nigel Farage mocks Net Zero as “Net stupid Zero” and surges on promises to drill domestic resources. Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, though more circumspect in office, has little patience for Brussels’s eco-mandates and has quietly prioritised energy security over emission targets. Even a section of British Conservatives, once captured by the same delusions, have begun to row back on timelines that threatened to bankrupt households.
What unites these movements is not they are led by ‘far-Right’ extremists, as the legacy press hysterically insists, but a straightforward recognition that ideology has collided with physics and economics. German households — those not among the young urban Greens steeped in deep-ecology dogma — are fed up. They have watched their country destroy its nuclear fleet, subsidise intermittent renewables to the tune of hundreds of billions of Euros and then beg Qatar and the United States for LNG while quietly reopening coal mines. The same elites who imposed these costs now express shock that voters are turning to parties promising relief.
The Hormuz shock has merely accelerated a reckoning that was already baked in. Ireland’s riots and protests over energy-driven cost-of-living pain offer a grim preview of what happens when governments refuse to admit their role in manufacturing the crisis. Dublin is quietly backing down without ever conceding the policy errors that made energy poverty inevitable. Berlin, Paris and Brussels are engaged in the same contortions: walking back punitive green measures while pretending the original strategy was sound.
History’s reckoning
Yet there is a larger historical arc at work. The German Greens’ capture of energy policy was never really about climate; it was about power — cultural, political and economic. It represented the final victory of a post-1968 worldview that equated industrial civilisation with original sin. BRICS nations and the Global South have no intention of sacrificing development on the altar of Western guilt. China builds coal plants and nuclear reactors with equal enthusiasm; India refuses to apologise for using its own coal.
Only in Europe did policymakers convince themselves that virtue-signalling could substitute for watts. Reiche’s epiphany, however partial, is therefore welcome. So too are Merz’s and von der Leyen’s belated acknowledgments. But rhetorical corrections will not suffice. Germany must confront the full cost of its ideological detour: the lost nuclear capacity, the stranded assets, the industrial hollowing-out and the political polarisation that has handed AfD its strongest hand since its founding.
The question is whether the Establishment possesses the courage to follow where basic economics and common-sense leads — towards a pragmatic energy mix that includes nuclear revival where feasible, domestic fossil resources where necessary and an end to the ruinous subsidies that have enriched renewables rent-seekers while impoverishing citizens.
Fifteen years after Merkel’s nuclear panic and decades after the Greens first infiltrated the corridors of power, reality is reasserting itself with the cold logic of physics and markets. The fevered dream of a weather-dependent utopia is dissolving under the pressure of rolling blackouts, price spikes and voter revolt.
What comes next will hopefully be a return to something more honest: an energy policy grounded in engineering, not eschatology. For a country that once prided itself on Sachlichkeit — sobriety and realism — the awakening cannot come soon enough. The alternative is not climate salvation but national decline. Germany, and Europe with it, stands at the threshold. The only question remaining is whether its leaders will step through it before the lights go out for good.
Dr Tilak K. Doshi is the Daily Sceptic‘s Energy Editor. He is an economist, a member of the CO2 Coalition and a former (and cancelled) contributor to Forbes. Follow him on Substack and X.
The crisis doesn’t undermine fossil fuels’ material benefits—it spotlights why they remain indispensable and why pretending otherwise is a luxury we can no longer afford. Pragmatic abundance, not ideological phase-outs, is the path to security and prosperity.
The crisis doesn’t undermine fossil fuels’ material benefits—it spotlights why they remain indispensable and why pretending otherwise is a luxury we can no longer afford. Pragmatic abundance, not ideological phase-outs, is the path to security and prosperity.
Recent calls for a more realistic shift from “decarbonization” to “low carbon” suggest that discomfort with ideology-driven climate policy is finally beginning to surface in public debate. For years, climate discussions in many countries have been dominated by abstract targets, slogans, and numerical commitments. Yet behind these lofty ideals lies a deeper and more practical question:
Have we come to understand energy far too narrowly?
Tensions in the Strait of Hormuz in early 2026 have made that question impossible to ignore.
Today, under the banner of decarbonization, energy is often treated as if it were synonymous with electricity. Public discussion tends to focus on how to generate electricity without carbon emissions, how quickly electric vehicles can replace conventional cars, or how far renewable electricity from wind turbines and solar panels can expand. These are important questions, but they are not the whole picture. From the perspective of a chemical engineer, reducing the energy debate to electricity alone is equivalent to seeing only half of civilization.
Fossil fuels are not merely inputs for electricity generation. They are also indispensable raw materials for the modern industrial world. In addition to supporting transportation systems, more than 6,000 products that sustain daily life—including clothing, medical equipment, fertilizers, plastics, synthetic fibers, housing materials, detergents, packaging, and countless industrial components—owe their existence to the material benefits of fossil fuels. Oil and natural gas are not simply burned; they are transformed into the feedstocks from which modern life is built.
This distinction is crucial. When policymakers and activists speak as though the problem can be solved simply by replacing fossil-fuel-based power generation with renewable electricity, they overlook the material foundation of modern civilization. Electricity alone cannot replace the petrochemical chains that support medicine, sanitation, food production, logistics, communication devices, transportation, and housing. Even a society that succeeds in electrifying much of its transport and power system would still face the question of how to secure the immense range of materials now derived from fossil resources.
That is why the petrochemical industry deserves far more attention than it usually receives in climate discussions. Fossil-fuel feedstocks are processed into basic petrochemical products such as ethylene and propylene, which then branch out into thousands of derivative products. This vast network of transformation supports not only clothing, food, transportation, and housing, but also the medical and sanitary systems upon which public health depends. In every sense, it forms part of the very fabric of modern civilization.
Once we understand this, it becomes obvious that a disruption in fossil-fuel supply would mean far more than higher gasoline prices or temporary pressure on power generation. If supplies were seriously interrupted, the consequences would reach into nearly every corner of daily life. The clothes we wear, the medicines we take, the smartphones we use, the fertilizers that sustain agriculture, and even the containers and packaging that transport food and medical goods would all be affected by shortages of raw materials.
The modern world is not merely powered by fossil fuels; it is materially structured by them. This is why recent tensions in the Strait of Hormuz have such profound significance.
The issue is not limited to geopolitics, tanker traffic, or fluctuations in energy prices. The Strait of Hormuz is one of the most critical chokepoints in the global energy system, and instability there exposes just how vulnerable advanced societies remain. When supply routes are threatened, what is at stake is not only energy security in the narrow sense, but also the continuity of the material systems that sustain ordinary life.
In the spring of 2026, the gap between ideology and reality became visible all at once. Tensions in the Strait of Hormuz, together with the stark reminder that some countries, such as Japan, rely on finite imported fossil-fuel supplies measured in days, were not merely statistics.
They were a warning about the fragility of everyday life itself. Numbers like these may appear dry and technical, but behind them lies a simple truth: if supply chains are strained for long enough, the effects will be felt not only in fuel markets but across the full range of goods on which modern society depends.
What had long been obscured under the rhetoric of decarbonization was suddenly illuminated by crisis. The “thickness of civilization” became visible again. By this I mean the dense, interconnected, and often invisible material network that supports human well-being: industrial chemistry, manufacturing, transportation, sanitation, communications, healthcare, agriculture, and construction. These are not marginal or optional features of modern life. They are its substance. And this crisis revealed that more than 6,000 products essential to daily life could be placed at risk at the same time.
None of this means that environmental problems should be ignored, or that societies should abandon efforts to reduce waste, improve efficiency, and pursue cleaner technologies. But it does mean that energy policy must begin from a more honest understanding of reality. A civilization cannot be sustained on slogans. Nor can policymakers responsibly design the future while pretending that fossil fuels are nothing more than a dirty legacy to be discarded. They are also part of the material infrastructure of life as we know it.
The real challenge, therefore, is not to deny this dependence, but to manage it wisely. A mature energy policy should aim not at simplistic moral purity, but at resilience, prudence, and realism. It should ask how societies can preserve the quality of life, maintain stable supply chains, reduce unnecessary waste, and use limited resources intelligently. It should also recognize that technological transition takes time, and that forcing change without regard for material realities can produce shortages, instability, and needless harm.
To face reality is not an act of resignation. On the contrary, it is the most sincere and forward-looking course of action. It means acknowledging the tension between ideals and practical necessity, while continuing to take steady and responsible steps. From that starting point, we can begin to redesign energy policy in a way that is both sustainable and humane—one that respects the environment without forgetting the material foundations of civilization itself.
Ronald Stein, P.E. is a CO2 Coalition engineer, energy consultant, speaker, author of books and articles on energy literacy, environmental policy, and human rights, and Founder of PTS Advance, a California based company.
What’s New!
The CO2 Coalition has released its new episode of the Climate DebriefPodcast featuring Jim Steele. Watch the full video on YouTube here!
In a press conference following an emergency European Commission meeting, the EU President directly linked the ongoing Iran conflict (which has disrupted oil and gas flows via the Strait of Hormuz) to Europe’s energy costs. She highlighted a €22 billion ($25.7 billion) surge in the bloc’s fossil fuel import bills in just 44 days and used the moment to reaffirm the EU’s long-term decarbonization push.
In a press conference following an emergency European Commission meeting, the EU President directly linked the ongoing Iran conflict (which has disrupted oil and gas flows via the Strait of Hormuz) to Europe’s energy costs.
She highlighted a €22 billion ($25.7 billion) surge in the bloc’s fossil fuel import bills in just 44 days and used the moment to reaffirm the EU’s long-term decarbonization push.
She stated: “We are paying a very high price for our global dependency on fossil fuels, and the grim reality for our continent is fossil fuel energy will remain the most expensive option in the years to come. Therefore, our strategy to decarbonize has not only been confirmed in the last years, but is growing in importance day by day.”
“We are paying a very high price for our global dependency on fossil fuels, and the grim reality for our continent is fossil fuel energy will remain the most expensive option in the years to come. Therefore, our strategy to decarbonize has not only been confirmed in the last years, but is growing in importance day by day.”
She also pushed for member states to coordinate on energy prices, lower taxes on electricity (to favor it over fossils), accelerate an “electrification strategy,” and use tools like the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) to support the shift.
She also announced:
Member states must coordinate on energy prices, gas storage, and oil stock releases.
The Commission will present a dedicated electrification strategy (with a new electrification target) before summer.
Calls to lower taxes on electricity and accelerate the shift away from fossils.
This echoes earlier comments from EU officials (including energy commissioner Dan Jørgensen and executive vice president Teresa Ribera) framing the crisis as validation for faster renewables, “homegrown” clean energy, and reduced fossil imports—similar to the response after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
The conflict has spiked global oil and gas prices (gas up sharply, oil affected by Hormuz disruptions, a key chokepoint for ~20% of world oil).
Europe, still reliant on imports despite post-Russia diversification (more US LNG, etc.), faces its second major energy crisis in four years. Short-term effects include higher bills for households and industry; longer-term risks involve prolonged market tightness if infrastructure damage lingers.
EU leaders have discussed reviving 2022-style measures (price caps, demand reduction, stock releases) while insisting the long-term fix is decarbonization via wind, solar, nuclear (with some renewed interest), and electrification—not ramping up domestic fossil production or long-term fossil contracts.
Critics note this has left Europe exposed repeatedly because of restrictions on its own oil/gas/coal/nuclear development under the Green Deal and related policies.
EU President Uses Iran War To Double Down On Plan To ‘Decarbonize’ Continent
European Union President Ursula von der Leyen said Monday that the conflict between the United States and Iran “confirmed” the EU’s plans to “decarbonize” the continent. The Daily Caller has the story.
President Donald Trump announced the Strait of Hormuz would be closed to ships that paid Iran a “toll” for passage through the maritime chokepoint early Sunday, with the blockade starting at 10:00 a.m.
Monday Eastern time. Von der Leyen said in the statement that Europe was “paying a high price” for its need for fossil fuels, citing the situation in the Strait of Hormuz.
“The Strait of Hormuz is essentially closed, and immediately citizens feel the impact at the gas station, in the supermarket and on the household bills. So what we are seeing in the Middle East is not some distant crisis, but in a world in which everything is connected, the effects are direct and they are immediate and this is, as I said, the second fossil fuel crisis in just a few years,” von der Leyen said. “
There’s one thing that all these events make clear we are paying a very high price for our overdependency on fossil fuels and the grim reality for our continent is fossil fuel energy will remain the most expensive option in the years to come.”
Oil prices have climbed from the market’s $67.02 close on Feb. 27, closing at $104.73 on Monday, an increase of more than 50% since the start of Operation Epic Fury. Von der Leyen urged Europe to continue on its course of shedding reliance on fossil fuels.
The European Green Deal (EGD) is the European Union’s flagship growth strategy, launched by the European Commission in December 2019 under President Ursula von der Leyen.
It aims to transform the EU into the world’s first climate-neutral continent by 2050, while making the economy more sustainable, resource-efficient, and competitive. It touches nearly every sector: energy, transport, industry, agriculture, buildings, and finance.
Climate neutrality by 2050: Net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (no net addition to the atmosphere after accounting for removals).
2030 interim target: At least 55% reduction in net GHG emissions compared to 1990 levels (raised from an earlier 40% goal via the “Fit for 55” package).
2040 target: 90% reduction (added via amendment to the European Climate Law in 2026).
Broader goals: Cut pollution, restore biodiversity and ecosystems, shift to a circular economy (reuse, repair, recycle), decouple economic growth from resource use, and ensure a “just transition” that leaves no person or region behind.
The European Climate Law (2021) makes the 2050 neutrality goal legally binding and requires progress reviews.
In summary, the Green Deal is an ambitious, economy-wide transformation plan centered on rapid decarbonization.
An open letter from “more than 65 leading UK scientists” (reported by the Financial Times on 2 April 2026 and signed by figures such as Bill McGuire and Richard Allan) urging the UK to abandon all new North Sea oil and gas licences is a textbook case of ideology masquerading as science.
An open letter from “more than 65 leading UK scientists” (reported by the Financial Times on 2 April 2026 and signed by figures such as Bill McGuire and Richard Allan) urging the UK to abandon all new North Sea oil and gas licences is a textbook case of ideology masquerading as science.
The letter, published as a Google Doc and framed by the FT as the “scientific establishment speaking with one voice,” claims that further extraction “will threaten lives and livelihoods,” that ~90% of reserves are already gone, that new production won’t affect prices or energy security, and that renewables are the “cheaper solutions we have already, that we know work.”
Tilak Doshi’s critique (published 9 April 2026 on Substack and widely reposted on sceptical outlets) correctly dismantles this as selective climate advocacy dressed up as impartial expertise.
The letter asserts:
Extracting remaining North Sea hydrocarbons “will threaten lives and livelihoods.”
~90% of reserves have already been extracted; new production won’t meaningfully affect global prices or UK energy security.
Renewables offer “cheaper solutions we have already, that we know work.”
Additional drilling adds unnecessary emissions amid record-hot years and risks undermining global climate goals.
These points echo broader “keep it in the ground” advocacy and align with net-zero timelines assuming rapid decarbonization.
The Financial Timesreported on Good Friday that “more than 65 leading UK scientists” had signed an open letter, published as a Google Doc, urging the Government to abandon new North Sea oil and gas drilling in favour of renewables. “Here is the scientific establishment speaking with one voice,” the FT tells us, warning against the supposed folly of extracting what remains of Britain’s hydrocarbon resources and to choose renewables that, according to the scientist-signatories, provide both energy security and “cheaper solutions [that] we have already, that we know work”.
Also on Good Friday, Catherine McBride OBE — co-author of the recently published report for the Great British Business Council on Britain’s climate policy-induced de-industrialisation and a plan to reverse it — published a Substack article on X titled ‘What the Greens, most MPs and the FT don’t understand about the North Sea oil and gas‘. Ms McBride and her co-authors have little time for the sheer illiteracy of the Greens and mainstream media in economic and energy issues related to the UK government’s punitive taxes on North Sea oil and gas production.
The open letter from the 65 “scientists” declares with solemn authority: “Extracting North Sea fossil fuels will threaten lives and livelihoods.” It asserts that “around 90% of North Sea oil and gas has already been extracted”, that additional production “is unlikely to move prices”, and that the world already possesses “more global reserves of oil and gas than we can safely burn if we are to limit global temperature rise to below 2°C”.
Of course, the usual fire and brimstone warnings of climate damnation apply if we refuse to abide by ‘the Science’.
We will soon exceed the ambitious 1.5°C Paris goal. Any overshoot pushes our climate further out of balance, threatening catastrophic tipping points, including ones that could plunge the UK into a much colder climate in which we would struggle even to grow our own food.
As per the usual climate sermon, warnings of Armageddon are followed by promises of salvation: “As climate scientists, we urge leaders to look to the cheaper solutions we have already, that we know work.”
It is curious that the letter refers to “tipping points” that could plunge the UK into a much colder climate which they say would destroy British agriculture. Apparently, the climate scientists like to cover all bases, global warming or cooling.
The layman, conditioned by years of mainstream media headlines proclaiming scientific unanimity on climate matters, is meant to nod along. After all, so many experts cannot be wrong!
Yet this is precisely the illusion that the late Michael Crichton dissected so ruthlessly on scientific consensus. Genuine science advances through falsification and debate, not through petitions or press releases:
Let’s be clear. The work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. …There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.
The North Sea letter is not a scientific paper. It is a political intervention dressed in lab coats. It reveals a familiar pattern: selective data, economic illiteracy and a refusal to confront the scale of global emissions realities — above all, those of China. Like China, other large developing countries such as India, South Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam and Bangladesh are stepping up generation of coal-fired power to offset Liquified Natural Gas shortages created by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Even Germany, the world’s leading proponent of renewable energy, is seriously considering reopening some of its coal-fired power stations in response to the energy crisis caused by the war with Iran.
Who are these “climate scientists”?
Let us begin with the signatories themselves, the supposed “leading UK climate scientists”. The letter lists 65 names with affiliations and qualifications. On the face of the document alone, without external sleuthing, only a small minority display explicit indicators of hard-science credentials in climate-relevant fields — specific post-nominals such as FRMetS and FLSW, or clear roles at institutions like the British Antarctic Survey, National Centre for Atmospheric Science or Royal Meteorological Society.
By a quick AI-assisted count, based solely on what the letter itself states, fewer than a quarter of the signatories meet the minimal threshold of verifiable hard-science standing. The rest are listed with generic “Dr” or “Prof” titles, or none at all, attached to affiliations ranging from the NHS and Wiltshire Psychology Service to community energy groups, wildlife trusts and independent roles. Several entries provide no qualifications whatsoever. This is not the roster of a disinterested scientific academy. It is a coalition of activists, communicators and academics from adjacent or non-empirical fields, many of whom have long signalled their alignment with Net Zero orthodoxy.
The letter’s primary coordinator, Dr Ella Gilbert — a climate scientist and presenter at the University of Reading’s Meteorology Department with ties to the environmental NGO Climate Outreach – has been openly described in multiple reports as the driving force behind its circulation. Professor Ed Hawkins of the same institution played a key initiating role, posting on LinkedIn to solicit signatures and stating he had “written an open letter”. There is no public evidence of external financial direction or sponsorship; the effort appears to have been an internal academic-network exercise amplified through professional channels. Yet the very act of framing it as a consensus of “climate scientists” performs the rhetorical heavy lifting. It invokes the authority of science while sidestepping the awkward reality that science is not, and has never been, a democracy of signatures.
Mad Ed says: “North Sea oil and gas: no way”
The substantive claims fare no better under scrutiny. Take the repeated assertion that “around 90% of North Sea oil and gas has already been extracted”. This figure originates not from primary geological data but from a March 2026 analysis by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, which aggregates North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) projections of ultimately recoverable resources through 2050. Official NSTA data as of end-2024 records 47.7 billion barrels of oil equivalent (BOE) produced historically from the UK Continental Shelf, with 2.9 billion BOE of proven and probable (2P) reserves and a further 6.2 billion BOE in contingent resources—roughly 19% of what has already been extracted still potentially accessible.
Industry body Offshore Energies UK (OEUK) rightly notes that framing the basin as “93% drained” ignores the reserves-replacement ratio. Norway, operating under more supportive policies, has consistently replaced a higher share of its production through exploration. The UK’s low ratio of 14% over 2019-2024 reflects not inexorable geology but punitive fiscal terms, windfall taxes and licensing uncertainty under successive governments.
Only active exploration and production (E&P) investment can delineate the true commercial potential of remaining prospects. As the late economist Julian Simon observed, resources are not fixed endowments buried in the earth but functions of human ingenuity, technology and price. Proven reserves expand with higher prices or better recovery techniques; they are not a predetermined pie chart awaiting final division.
The open letter refers to “two proposed new oil and gas fields in the North Sea”, claiming that the likely lifetime emissions from them would be more than most individual nations emit in a year. Presumably the reference is to the Rosebank and Jackdaw oil and gas fields in the North Sea, with Rosebank being the largest untapped oil field in UK waters. Both are in advanced stages of development with significant infrastructure already in place and first oil could be delivered to shore by the end of 2026.
The open letter was launched in time to influence the debate over whether Ed Miliband, Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, should allow new production from the fields. He is under growing pressure to allow new production in the North Sea to combat what some call ‘the energy crisis’ sparked by the Iran war. Rachel Reeves has backed more North Sea drilling in a potential split with Miliband. The Chancellor said she was “very happy” to back exploration at Rosebank oilfield and Jackdaw gas field. Miliband, Labour’s chief Net Zero ideologue, is expected to make a decision on whether to grant licences for the two fields.
The Telegraph expects Miliband to block North Sea oil drilling, stating that he is “said to be unwavering in his opposition despite impending fuel shortages and surging oil prices”. In this, of course, Miliband is true to his “Mad Ed” designation, fiercely devoted to the UK’s immiserating “global climate leadership” role.
Economic and geopolitical illiteracy
The letter’s economic and geopolitical analysis is equally detached from reality. It laments “the volatility of oil and gas prices” that have “caused our energy and food bills to rocket — twice”, attributing this to dependence on “imported fossil fuels whose price is vulnerable to the actions of the world’s most authoritarian and least reliable leaders”. The implicit prescription appears to be greater independence through renewables. Yet this inverts the logic of comparative advantage that has enriched nations since David Ricardo.
International trade in hydrocarbons has historically buffered supply shocks precisely because diversified sources and spot markets prevent any single actor from dictating terms. The North Sea producers themselves demonstrated this in the mid-1980s by helping collapse the OPEC cartel’s administered pricing system. Britain – like most countries including large oil producers such as Saudi Arabia and Russia – remains a price-taker; incremental North Sea output will not set global benchmarks. But neither will it exacerbate volatility if it displaces imports. The alternative — deeper reliance on Chinese-manufactured solar panels, wind turbines and batteries, whose production is powered overwhelmingly by coal — merely shifts dependence to Beijing’s supply chains and the very fossil fuel infrastructure the letter condemns.
Here the letter’s silence on China’s emissions is deafening. The world’s largest emitter continues to approve coal-fired power stations at a furious pace that dwarfs Western renewables deployment, while its Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement are little more ambitious than business-as-usual trajectories. Western Net Zero advocates prefer not to dwell on this, choosing hope over experience lest it complicate the narrative of renewable salvation.
Yet the arithmetic is merciless: even if the entire OECD ceased all emissions tomorrow — an impossibility — the impact on global temperatures by 2100 would remain marginal in IPCC-modelled scenarios, as Bjørn Lomborg has repeatedly demonstrated. The letter’s claim that “the likely lifetime emissions from two proposed new oil and gas fields in the North Sea would be more than most individual nations emit in a year” is true only in the most trivial sense; it ignores the fact that non-OECD emissions dominate the trajectory by far. Meanwhile, the UK’s share of global carbon emissions sits at 0.8%.
Our poor farmers
Farmers, meanwhile, receive the letter’s ritual concern: “rising prices and increasingly empty supermarket shelves”, “worst harvests in recent years” and “extremes of heat, drought, fire and flood”. Evidently, the letter’s signatories spent little time consulting actual IPCC studies. While the IPCC reports increases in heatwaves and some heavy-precipitation events in certain regions, it finds no clear global rise — only “low confidence” — in many of the extreme events (droughts, floods, tropical cyclones, wildfires) that are routinely invoked in climate alarmism.
One wonders when the signatories last consulted real life British farmers. The largest and most sustained rural protests of recent years — repeated tractor convoys into central London from late 2024 through 2026 — have centred not on ‘climate extremes’ but on the Government’s imposition of inheritance tax on agricultural assets above £1 million (later softened to £2.5 million after sustained pressure). Family farms face break-up, not because of marginal weather shifts but because of policy-driven cost pressures: the world’s highest electricity prices, diesel taxes exceeding 50% and regulatory burdens that make food production uneconomic.
The letter’s pastoral alarmism about “catastrophic tipping points” that “could plunge the UK into a much colder climate” is rhetorical. Earth’s 4.5-billion-year history records repeated glacial-interglacial cycles without human help; warm periods in antiquity and medieval times allowed, for instance, northern England to grow wine grapes and Greenland to support barley cultivation. The term “tipping point” itself is not a precise physical concept but a metaphor borrowed from non-linear systems. Large natural systems, per Le Chatelier’s principle in dynamic equilibrium, tend toward equilibrium when perturbed — not runaway instability.
Tropes and ideology
The signatories, like their fellow ideologues in academia, employ the cheap renewables trope. The letter urges leaders to embrace “the cheaper solutions we have already”. Renewables, we are told, are proven and cost-effective. This assertion rests on the familiar Levelised Cost of Electricity (LCOE) metric, which systematically understates the system-wide costs of intermittency: overbuilding, backup dispatchable generation (often gas-fired at inefficient part-load), grid reinforcement and balancing services. Full-cost-of-electricity analyses, incorporating adequacy and integration expenses, tell a different story — as detailed in the work of Lars Schernikau and others. Renewables’ “cheapness” is an artefact of subsidies, mandates and selective accounting, not a market verdict.
In the end, this letter, embraced and publicised by the FT, is less about science than about maintaining the climate-industrial consensus. The University of Oxford’s Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment came out recently with its analysis which echoes the conclusions of the open letter. In the open letter and in the Oxford analysis, there is no reference to the benefits of increased North Sea oil and gas production: added value to the nation’s GDP, improvements to Great Britain’s balance of payments as a net oil and gas importer, increases in Government tax revenues and oil and gas jobs and ancillary benefits in cities like Aberdeen which serve the offshore oil and gas industry.
Science advances not by petition but by relentless scepticism. The North Sea’s remaining resources — whether measured in billions of barrels of oil equivalent or in the potential unlocked by competitive exploration and production — are not a climate sin but a strategic asset. Ignoring them in favour of virtue-signalling autarky serves neither energy security nor affordability.
Britain’s leaders would do well to treat such letters with the scepticism they deserve: not as oracles, but as more noise in a debate that ideology has long sought to close. The real crisis is not the climate; it is the West’s self-imposed energy anorexia in the face of a multipolar world that has no intention of following suit.
Dr Tilak K. Doshi is the Daily Sceptic‘s Energy Editor. He is an economist, a member of the CO2 Coalition and a former (cancelled) contributor to Forbes. Follow him on Substack and X.
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In early February 2026 (and late January), Finland experienced an extended cold spell with temperatures dropping to -20°C or lower in key wind- heavy regions like western Ostrobothnia, combined with low-lying fog and calm winds.
Icing is a recurring issue for wind in Nordic countries (though many modern turbines have de-icing tech like blade heaters or coatings, not all deployments do, and extreme fog exacerbates it). Low wind (Dunkelflaute-like conditions) compounds the problem.
In early February 2026 (and late January), Finland experienced an extended cold spell with temperatures dropping to -20°C or lower in key wind- heavy regions like western Ostrobothnia, combined with low-lying fog and calm winds.
Icing is a recurring issue for wind in Nordic countries (though many modern turbines have de-icing tech like blade heaters or coatings, not all deployments do, and extreme fog exacerbates it). Low wind (Dunkelflaute-like conditions) compounds the problem.
Renewables make grids “fragile” or “Fubar”. The phrase “Fubar” is a military slang for “Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition”.
But mainstream sources (Bloomberg, Helsinki Times, Fingrid data) frame it as a manageable winter hiccup, not a collapse.
Science Matters tells the whole story about Finland’s renewable- heavy energy systems.
“Imagine an argument so airtight about science so settled over technology so reliable that you have to use censorship to make sure nobody gives a dissenting opinion.” @ProctorZ
Finland has prided itself as a global leader in decarbonization, boasting the second-highest share of renewables in final energy consumption across the EU.
But the green utopia narrative has cracked under the strain of a brutal winter, as cold weather has brought wind power generation to a near standstill.
Most of the country’s wind capacity is concentrated in western Finland, where temperatures are well below freezing, and these adverse weather conditions have led to dangerous ice buildup on turbine blades. According to Bloomberg, this forced the grid operator Fingrid Oyj to curtail wind power output.
Primary energy sources in Finland 2017. All fossil fuels should be replaced by clean energy sources.
“There are low fog clouds in Finland’s main wind power production area, roughly at the height of turbine blades, which are causing new ice to form,” Pia Isolähteenmäki, an adviser at industry consultant Kjeller Vindteknikk Oy, told the outlet.
Much of Finland’s wind fleet lacks blade-heating systems for extreme cold weather. How is that even possible, considering it’s a Nordic country? Even the thinnest ice buildup risks equipment damage and has led to shutdowns this week.
Bloomberg data show that Finnish wind output is expected to remain very low for the next two weeks. Meteorologists at MetDesk forecast that Nordic wind generation will remain as much as 20% below normal through at least the midpoint of the month.
The result of the green utopia pushed by Europe’s climate alarmists, not based in reality whatsoever, is soaring power prices that are crushing working poor households.
Wind tubine defrosting in Sweden
Helsinki Times wrote on Sunday:
“Electricity prices in Finland rise to the highest level of the winter on Monday, driven by severe cold, weak wind conditions and rising weekday demand,”
Finnish folks on X are questioning the government’s questionable decarbonization push:
Dana X post:
News from the “green garden”. In Finland, the blades of wind turbines froze. The electricity production of wind power stations in Finland fell from 9433 MW to about 430 MW. Thus, they produced no less than 5% of the nominal power. The culprit turned out to be Russian frosts, the possibility of which European energy companies did not take into account when implementing the “green” transition.
Zeaqi X post:
Finland literally has to use nuclear power to MELT frozen wind turbines, and we live in darkness most of the year. How about focusing on reliable power like nuclear instead?
Mari Luukkainen X post:
Our electricity bill was 45 EUR yesterday alone. Finland: nuclear power, hydroelectric, wind farms, one of the most technically advanced countries in the world. Also, Finland: people burning firewood because the electricity market is fucked. I am sitting next to the fireplace shitposting on LinkedIn (that’s why shitposting is very intense today). This is my energy strategy.
In the US, a historic cold snap in the eastern half of the country led to increased fossil-fuel power generation to prevent power grid collapse.
Across the West, years of grid mismanagement by climate alarmist policymakers have transformed what were once reliable grids into fragile messes where working poor households bear the brunt of some of the highest electricity costs in the world.
It is time to get back to basics and expand natural gas generators and nuclear power, the only proven large-scale source of clean and reliable electricity. And it is also time to hold accountable the climate alarmists whose policy decisions pushed power grids toward the edge of collapse while promising a green utopia that was never going to arrive. And one can only wonder whether the move to push power grids to the brink of collapse was intentional.
The headline you mentioned refers to a January 2026 report from IREF (Institut de Recherches Économiques et Fiscales), a French libertarian think tank focused on economic freedom, low taxes, and limited government intervention. IREF critiques the EU’s ambitious net-zero emissions target by 2050, calling it irrational and economically damaging.
The headline refers to a January 2026 report from IREF (Institut de Recherches Économiques et Fiscales), a French libertarian think tank focused on economic freedom, low taxes, and limited government intervention. IREF critiques the EU’s ambitious net-zero emissions target by 2050, calling it irrational and economically damaging.
The European Commission has approved a new step towards its 2050 ‘net-zero’ objective, targeting a 90% reduction in net greenhouse gas emissions relative to 1990 levels by 2040. But a recent report by the French think tank IREF (Institut de Recherches Économiques et Fiscales) delivers a sobering reality check.
ChatGPT
The European Commission now targets a 90% reduction in net greenhouse gas emissions by 2040. Final adoption is expected in 2026, followed by mandatory transposition into national laws. The scale of the plan is staggering. The EU estimates required investments at €21 trillion by 2040—around 7–8% of EU GDP—excluding financing costs. Policymakers expect a mix of subsidies, carbon pricing, and coercive regulation to push most of the burden onto the private sector. The key question is no longer ambition, but feasibility.
A recent report by the French think tank IREF (Institut de Recherches Économiques et Fiscales) delivers a sobering reality check. Simple arithmetic already raises red flags. EU emissions fell by 37% over the 33 years from 1990 to today. Achieving an additional 68% reduction in just 17 years would require nearly tripling the pace of decarbonization. If this acceleration fails, the economic consequences of such a quick drop in emissions would be severe.
EU strategy rests on the assumption that technologies are sufficiently mature to justify a rapid dismantling of decades of fossil-based capital. The plan relies on three pillars: a power system dominated by variable renewable electricity (VRE), massive electrification of industry, transport and buildings, and deep changes in agriculture. The flaw lies in the need for perfect coordination. Grids must expand for renewables, storage must scale faster than intermittency, and demand must rise exactly on schedule. Any mismatch turns ‘transition investments’ into stranded assets.
IREF shows that these mismatches are already widespread. Large-scale VRE deployment produces alternating periods of oversupply—negative prices and forced curtailments—and shortages, when prices spike but renewables cannot respond. Subsidies, initially promised to be temporary, are rising again. These dynamics were warned about years ago by institutions such as the OECD and the Nuclear Energy Agency, but largely ignored.
The April 2025 Spanish blackout exposed another weakness. Despite early denials, investigations showed that excessive reliance on non-dispatchable power sources reduced grid stability. Beyond this event, European transmission operators report a dramatic rise in voltage incidents since 2015, pointing to growing systemic fragility.
The EU response is to call for faster grid expansion and large-scale storage, especially hydrogen. Yet progress lags far behind renewable additions. The Netherlands illustrates the problem: grid congestion now blocks new connections for households and firms, weighing on growth. According to sources cited by IREF, fixing the Dutch grid alone could cost €200 billion by 2040. By contrast, the Commission estimates only €1.2 trillion for the entire EU, only 6 times more—an implausibly low figure that suggests systematic underestimation.
Germany tells a similar story. Only one-sixth of planned transmission lines have been built under the Energiewende. The German development bank KfW estimates that grid investment capacity would need to quadruple to meet 2030 targets, but nobody knows where the money should come from. Hydrogen fares no better. European and national audit institutions have concluded that hydrogen strategies are driven more by political aspiration than by technical or economic realism. Few projects are advancing, and key technologies remain immature. Storage targets for 2040 or 2050 are therefore largely speculative.
Ironically, Germany itself is now acknowledging the limits of its model. Chancellor Friedrich Merz has announced plans to build 71 gas-fired power plants by 2035 to secure backup during recurring wind and solar droughts, alongside subsidies for industrial electricity prices. Correcting the failures of the Energiewende now risks distorting competition within the EU.
On the demand side, reality is equally harsh. Energy-intensive industries are discovering that global markets are unwilling to pay large premiums for ‘decarbonized’ products. For instance, European aluminum production has fallen by 25% since 2010, while global demand rose by more than 70%. High electricity prices and mandatory carbon allowance purchases further restrict investment capacity.
Households face similar limits. Electric vehicle sales have plateaued as concerns over cost, convenience and reliability persist. Heat pumps and insulation followed the same trajectory: early enthusiasm, disappointing returns, collapsing demand once subsidies decline. Only stricter mandates could close the gap—but such mandates would come at the expense of individual freedoms.
IREF concludes that the EU’s net-zero plan is effectively dead on arrival. Its internal coherence is unachievable at this scale, across member states moving at different speeds. Persisting regardless will damage prosperity and liberties, repeating the classic failure of grand central plans—what the Austrian economist Friedrich von Hayek once described as fatal conceit.
The irony is that the climatic impact would be negligible. Based on IPCC formulas, IREF deduces that for Europe, reaching net zero in 2100 rather than 2050 would alter global temperatures by only 0.02 to 0.06°C—below any meaningful measurement threshold.
IREF therefore calls for a strategic reversal: a slower, more realistic path to decarbonization, centered on innovation rather than mandates. France’s nuclear-based electricity system already delivers far lower emissions than the EU’s renewable-heavy vision inspired by Germany’s failed experiment. Gradual replacement of remaining coal and gas with dispatchable low-carbon generation—potentially including advanced nuclear technologies—over the next three decades would be both economically and technically credible. This pathway would avoid radical grid overhauls, unrealistic storage schemes, and mismatches between supply expansion and actual demand.
Europe is beginning to adjust at the margins, softening EV mandates and allowing electricity subsidies. But cosmetic fixes will not rescue a fundamentally flawed strategy. A genuine reassessment is overdue. Better to correct course now than to persist in an illusion that risks undermining the European project itself.
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