The West’s continued fixation with climate change and inherent abhorrence of foil fuels despite the crisis triggered by Ukraine, takes one back to the Gospel According to Luke. In one of the passages in that Gospel, we learn about the fate of a man who while on his way from Jerusalem to Jericho, got attacked by robbers. As he lay there unconscious on the road, a priest – of all people – saw him and passed by on the other side so that he could not touch him. Why you may ask? Because it was the Sabbath and in keeping with tradition, the priest would not soil his hands with the man’s blood. So the priest prioritised keeping the Sabbath than saving the life on an innocent man. A Samaritan put the priest to shame and did the right thing.
We see the same thing with the leaders of the United States and Europe. At this point the biggest threat to economic growth in the US and Europe and indeed many parts of the world including Botswana, is Ukraine and exorbitant fuel prices which in turn fuel out-of-whack inflation. This past week, the United States for its part, reported that its inflation rate had spiked to 9.1% and this is the worst it has ever been in 41 years. Europe on the other hand, is not faring any better with inflation also at a staggering 8.6%.
Given that inflation is a tax on every man or in this case every European, US citizen and of course Botswana citizen, it should be triggering a change of policy course to increase the supply of fossil fuels. As an example of inflation being a tax on every man, consider the following: at the beginning of the year, the price of a loaf of garlic bread at one of Gaborone’s leading retail shop was approximately P10.00. Now you are looking paying almost double that price.
We know that the West led by United States president Joe Biden and his European Union counterparts worship at the altar of climate change. One would have thought that the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent spike it caused in oil and gas prices, would at least have woken them up from their slumber but alas! None of that has happened. Just as the priest observed Sabbath, climate change is these leaders’ Sabbath. The Ukraine war has led to rising fuel costs but the global leaders are not prepared to ease regulations for producing more gas and oil on their own shores. Instead, they remain unshaken from their hasty and suicidal rush to unproven solar and wind powered electricity. Because it is Sabbath, they have chosen to pass by on the other side of the road instead of helping their hurting citizens. Climate change is that sacred and for that they would rather let people perish through high gas prices as winter approaches.
Joe Biden and his fellow travelers in the European Union and United Nations seem to think that by simply calling solar and wind, clean energy then such technologies can magically power whole economies. Nothing it seems is going to dissuade them from plunging people into poor living standards as a result of their headlong transition to solar and wind. The ideal is more important than common sense of sticking to reliable sources of energy to maintain good living standards for citizens.
The anti-fossil fuel snobbery in the face of the Ukraine crisis is leaving even supporters of crazy Biden and EU climate policies perplexed. This week, CNN, the leading Biden supporting TV network had one of its commentators Fareed Zakaria fret that the Netherlands was not ready to mine its gas fields , Germany had in a ‘’self-defeating’’ manner phased out its nuclear energy while the US made it difficult to invest in oil and gas. If solar and wind were viable he would not have been exasperated.
