Original article (in Croatian) was published on 31/03/2022
In a bizarre text about the causes of the war in Ukraine, conservative American columnist Dennis Prager also explains the war through the activities of the environmental movement. His article was shared by the website Konzerva.hr.
The website konzerva.hr shared a column by Dennis Prager, a conservative columnist, radio host and founder of PragerU, known for publishing simplified interpretations of complex topics through five-minute videos. PragerU is short for Prager University, although it is not an educational institution but a non-profit advocacy organization.
A frequent target of PragerU is climate science, which is often misinterpreted in these five-minute explanations [1, 2]. An important source of funding for PragerU is the fossil fuel industry [1, 2].
According to Dennis Prager, the invasion of Ukraine was made possible, among others, by environmental activists in the West:
The Russian invasion of Ukraine was likely made possible by American and European environmentalists. Under Trump, America became energy independent and could even supply Europe with energy. But the environmental movement, dominated by the Democratic Party and almost every Western European country, has made Russia a major supplier of natural gas to Europe, especially to the most important country on the European continent, Germany.
The environmental movement uses climate change to achieve its primary goals: tearing down the economic foundations of the West, reshaping the Western way of life, dismantling capitalism, and redistributing wealth to Third World countries. They will strive to achieve these goals at any cost – whether it is rampant inflation, power outages, and even the strengthening of Russia and China.
If you genuinely believe that climate change poses an “existential threat” to human life, there is no exorbitant price to eliminating energy based on fossil fuels. This includes empowering and enriching evil people.
The claim that the activities of environmental activists have made Europe dependent on Russian gas has no basis in reality. The real reasons why the energy mix of European Union countries depends so much on Russian natural gas are much more complex.
It is true that EU countries, under pressure from environmental activists, have reduced electricity production from the dirtiest energy source, coal. This has contributed to increasing the EU’s dependence on gas imports, including imports from Russia. If the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline had not been (temporarily?) stopped due to Ukraine, this dependence would have deepened further, especially for the central state of the European Union – Germany.
Nord Stream 2 was supposed to boost the inflow of Russian gas, which was supposed to solve several European problems. However, not all of these problems are entirely climatic. The first is a reduction in the exploitation of Norwegian, Dutch or gas from other European countries, followed by a German reduction in coal energy production. The first summit is the search for an alternative after the decision of the German state to withdraw from the production of nuclear energy (which is climate-neutral because it does not emit greenhouse gases) after the accident at the nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan.
The cost of geography
However, these moves have not made Europe more dependent on Russia alone, but on gas in general. Namely, natural gas has long been considered an ideal transitional fuel, given that it is the least dirty hydrocarbon fuel, so it makes sense to use gas to reduce coal and oil consumption wherever possible.
This is especially true for gas extracted from the ground by conventional methods, such as that extracted in Russia. The gas obtained by hydraulic fracturing or fracking is significantly more dangerous to the environment, not due to differences in chemical composition but because this method of gas extraction results in the involuntary release of larger amounts of methane into the atmosphere. Fracking is largely banned in Europe, but this method of gas extraction is used by American fossil companies (which are now, due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, opening a significant space in the European energy market).
However, when he argues that America could supply Europe with fossil energy only if environmental activists did not stand in its way, Prager greatly simplifies reality and overlooks basic geography. Russia rests on the European Union by land border, unlike the United States, separated from the EU by the Atlantic Ocean. Transportation costs thus become much higher, and then fossil fuels from the USA become less commercially attractive.
In 2018, Russian officials boasted that America was not a competitor in Europe because the Russian natural gas available through gas pipelines was 30 to 40 times cheaper than American LNG. Prompted by the crisis in Ukraine, the US administration has recently promised to increase LNG inflows to Europe by an additional 15 billion cubic meters by 2022. Still, that additional amount barely covers 10 percent of last year’s gas inflows from Russia.
In 2021, the EU imported about 140 billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas from Russia. In addition, Russia has delivered about 15 billion cubic meters of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to the EU. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), a total of 155 billion cubic meters imported from Russia accounted for about 45 percent of gas imports to the EU in 2021 and almost 40 percent of total gas consumption.
Cutting out gas boilers, turning to nuclear power plants, wind, solar systems…
The IEA highlights climate-friendly opportunities among the proposals to reduce the European Union’s dependence on Russian gas. These measures account for a large part of the total of about 50 billion cubic meters of reduced imports from Russia, representing a reduction of one-third. In addition to not renewing existing contracts with Russia’s Gazprom and reorienting to LNG, the IAE cites the construction of new plants for the use of energy from renewable sources among its ten proposals.
By harnessing new solar and wind farms, it can get an additional 35 TWh of production over the next year. This would reduce gas consumption by 6 billion cubic meters.
By maximizing production from existing sources of low emissions, bioenergy and nuclear energy, an additional 70 TWh can be obtained. That would reduce natural gas consumption for electricity by 13 billion cubic meters.
Accelerating the replacement of gas boilers with heat pumps would reduce heating gas consumption by an additional two billion cubic meters in one year.
By accelerating energy efficiency improvements in buildings and industry, consumption can be reduced by two billion cubic meters in a year. Furthermore, reducing heating thermostats in buildings by only 1°C would reduce gas demand by about 10 billion cubic meters per year.
The 10-point plan is in line with the EU’s climate ambitions and the European Green Agreement, according to the IAE, and the EU could eliminate the need to import Russian gas before 2030. According to the Agency, the savings could be much higher if Europe returned to oil and coal, but they do not advise that.
REPowerEU
Increasing the speed of application of renewable sources and energy efficiency measures, along with ensuring the supply of gas from other sources, is the focus of the European ‘REPowerEU’ plan. It is a plan to make Europe independent of Russian fossil fuels well before 2030. It was presented on March 8, and on that occasion, the Head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, stated:
The faster we switch to renewable energy and hydrogen, combined with greater energy efficiency, the faster we will be truly independent and master our energy system.
The Vice-President for the European Green Agreement, Frans Timmermans, said:
Renewable energy sources are cheap, clean and potentially infinite energy sources, and instead of financing the fossil fuel industry elsewhere, they are creating jobs here. Putin’s war in Ukraine shows the urgency of accelerating our transition to clean energy.
As for other measures, the Commission is committed to filling up to at least 90% of EU gas storage facilities by October 1st each year. This, of course, applies to gas from non-Russian sources such as Qatar and the United States.
‘Fit for 55’
Furthermore, full implementation of the Commission’s proposal for a green transition ‘Fit for 55’ by 2030 could reduce Europe’s annual natural gas consumption by 30 percent. That is the equivalent of 100 billion cubic meters (bcm). Thus, the Commission considers that thanks to the measures in the REPowerEU plan, the European Union could gradually remove at least 155 billion cubic meters of fossil gas, equivalent to the amount imported from Russia in 2021.
According to the European Commission, nearly two-thirds of that reduction could be achieved within a year, ending the EU’s over-dependence on a single supplier. The Commission proposes working with the member states to identify the most appropriate projects to achieve these goals, thus building on the extensive work on national recovery and resilience plans.
Existential crisis
The fact that global warming is an existential crisis is not a fabrication of the Democratic Party or “evil people” who are empowered by mitigating the climate crisis. The climate crisis is the result of human activity, which we know thanks to temperature measurements and the share of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and even the fossil-friendly intellectuals that Prager uses in his videos to explain reality in five minutes dare not deny it.
An example is physicist Steve E. Koonin, a former British Petroleum chief scientist hired by the administration of Democrat President Barack Obama. In the video, Koonin presents inaccurate information, which is easy to verify. For example, he incorrectly claims that the reduction of ice cover in Greenland is not accelerating compared to the last 70 years.
By claiming that “things are not so bad”, Koonin strongly disagrees with the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In its latest report, the IPCC points out that global temperatures could reach 1.5°C in the near future, compared to pre-industrial times, thus posing a serious risk to ecosystems and humans.
The climate crisis will continue to exist despite wars or pandemics, which, among other things, are destroying the economy of societies. Such events can be used not only to delay the resolution of the climate crisis, but also to focus the recovery on resolving it.
Financing the war by financing fossil fuels
Energy independence resulting from reduced dependence on fossil fuels would also prevent situations in which Europe, despite sanctions, would continue to fund Russia’s war machinery. This is the main message of Greenpeace, which held a protest in Croatia after several countries.
“For more than a month, the Russian army has been shelling Ukrainian cities and villages, civilians, children… This war is also financed by the fossil fuel trade. Russian oil, fossil gas and coal continue to arrive in Croatia and the European Union. It is scandalous that European countries send hundreds of millions of euros to Russia every day, thus enabling Putin to continue waging a bloody war”, said Perica Stefan from the Croatian office of Greenpeace (Novi list).
The parallel could easily be drawn with other fossil fuel exporters in the world. Saudi Arabia is perhaps the most famous country in the world for its combination of strong fossil fuel exports and flagrant human rights violations. Unhindered by sanctions, it has been leading a coalition that is conducting the war in Yemen since 2015. Despite opposition from the United Nations and the European Union, Saudi Arabia perpetuates war and humanitarian crisis with long-standing support in arms from the United States and some European countries such as France and Britain. These countries also import oil from Saudi Arabia [1, 2, 3].