Tim Blair: Politico online journal names Vladimir Putin Europe’s top green power player

Leftist online journal Politico has found an upside to Russian madman Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine, writes Tim Blair. It may have killed tens of thousands of people — but it is turning Europe green!

There’s always a bright side. If you’re sufficiently insane, there are even reasons to celebrate Vladimir Putin’s vicious war against Ukraine.

Sure, the war has killed tens of thousands of people, including at least 7000 Ukrainian civilians. But leftist online journal Politico last week found an upside — the war is turning Europe green!

“By launching a bloody invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has done more than almost any other single human being to speed up the end of the fossil fuel era,” Politico announced, putting the Russian madman at No. 1 on its list of “28 power players behind Europe’s green agenda”.

“It took a war criminal to speed up Europe’s green revolution,” Politico continued. “Russian President Vladimir Putin has achieved something generations of green campaigners could not — clean energy is now a fundamental matter of European security.”

Well, isn’t that just dandy. It turns out ol’ Vlad is just a weaponised version of Greta Thunberg.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has taken top spot on Politico’s list of ‘28 power players behind Europe’s greenagenda’. Picture: AFP

“We will look back at this situation in 10 years’ time,” Simone Tagliapietra, a researcher at some Brussels think-tank, told Politico, “and see, OK, that was the moment where we really got serious about the green transition and we really had the big green acceleration.”

So it’s all for the best, if you’re the kind of climate obsessive who puts the holy cause of greenism ahead of mass human slaughter.

Of course, some were unimpressed by this elevation of a bloodthirsty maniac to eco-visionary.

“The wives and mothers of Ukrainian soldiers will be pleased to know their loved ones died for a righteous progressive cause,” the Washington Free Beacon sarcastically editorialised.

“Russian conscripts are understandably reluctant to fight and die in what seems like a pointless war. Morale should improve once they realise they are fighting and dying to heal the planet by facilitating a ‘green revolution’ in Europe, where civilians bracing for a brutal winter amid soaring energy prices will take comfort in the fact that their suffering is making a difference.”

Even Politico, a 15-year-old, 900-employee enterprise that sold last year to a German publisher for more than $1.6 billion, confessed that Putin’s green advancement wasn’t all solar panels and cuddles.

“The green acceleration,” it admitted, “doesn’t mean Europeans will avoid a succession of brutally cold and expensive winters.” Or perhaps, in an absolutely worst-case scenario, one or two nuclear detonations.

Still, what’s a few more thousand deaths when freezing Europe can rejoice over the promised rise of renewables?

Family members say goodbye to Volodymyr Chovgun, 34, one of tens of thousands of people killed in Putin’s war. Picture: Getty Images

In fact, Politico’s reframing of the Ukraine war as planet-saving “green acceleration” calls for a historic review of other atrocities and their ecological benefits.

Given the Politico treatment, even the deadliest conflicts and most obscene acts of inhumanity can be recast as great leaps forward in the green revolution.

The Nazis, for example, sent millions to their deaths in concentration camps, but at least they used trains. Progressive!

Likewise, certain Japanese provocations led in 1945 to a rapid reduction in urban sprawl across Nagasaki and Hiroshima and the eventual creation of leafy “peace parks” in both cities.

Osama bin Laden is mostly remembered for murdering 3000 people on 9/11, but green activists might prefer to focus on his urgent environmental warnings.

“You have destroyed nature with your industrial waste and gases more than any other nation in history,” the deranged Islamic terrorist wrote in a 2002 letter to the US.

“Despite this, you refuse to sign the Kyoto agreement so that you can secure the profit of your greedy companies and industries.“

If bin Laden had been born in Stoke Newington rather than Saudi Arabia, he might have joined London art gallery climate churchies who last week threw tomato soup at van Gogh’s Sunflowers.

Philistinism aside, it would have been a better option than throwing jets at the World Trade Centre.

“Speaking about climate change is not a matter of intellectual luxury,” bin Laden said in 2010. “All of the industrialised countries, especially the big ones, bear responsibility for the global warming crisis.”

One year later, in 2011, bin Laden did his bit to cure global warming by assuming room temperature following a US raid on his Pakistan compound.

Unfortunately, his body was then dumped at sea — marginally increasing the rise in ocean levels.

But back to Ukraine, and how Putin’s war might further advance the green cause. Hey, how about using all those thousands of corpses to create useful organic fertiliser?

There’s precedent for this kind of earth-friendly recycling. According to a University of Glasgow study released this year, the bones of soldiers slain in the Battle of Waterloo were subsequently sold as a crop growth-enhancer.

“European battlefields may have provided a convenient source of bone that could be ground down into bone-meal, an effective form of fertiliser,” lead researcher Tony Pollard told reporters.

“One of the main markets for this raw material was the British Isles.”

The Brits might be in the market for similar substances as they freeze for warming this winter.

Get grinding on those bones, Vlad, and you’ll be in line for another eco award in 2023.

Read Tim Blair’s blog here

UPDATE:

You couldn't make this up. The United Nations says the Ukrainian conflict is a good thing. pic.twitter.com/BJ7vjrkTGn

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) October 11, 2022

UPDATE II. Power cuts in Berlin:

Mayor of Berlin says two to three hour power cuts are expected as citizens prepare for gas shortages with electric heaters that could overwhelm demand.

Germany has nuclear reactors powerful enough for 10 million people, waiting for permission to run.https://t.co/q4NavbSJPB pic.twitter.com/f1YemvH7x1

— Mark Nelson (@energybants) October 15, 2022