Green-tinged West shoots itself in the foot on energy

An inspection station on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in Lubmin on Germany’ss Baltic Sea coast. Picture: AFP

The absurdity of the West’s position in its confrontation with Russia over Moscow’s aggression towards Ukraine lies in this wretched equation.

If Russia invades Ukraine the only response threatened by the West – led by US President Joe Biden – is crippling sanctions. Chief among those sanctions must be stopping Russia earning the money to fund its army through its energy exports. Yet Russia provides a third of Europe’s gas, and half of Germany’s gas imports.

But Germany, in thrall to the excesses of Green enthusiasm, is abolishing not only its coal-fired energy but also its nuclear energy as well, making it hugely dependent on gas. Fracking is effectively banned in Britain, which is also moving to a ban on other gas exploration. Ditto other west European nations.

The greening democratic West is crippling its own energy production while in reality still relying overwhelmingly on fossil fuels. This has left much energy production, and therefore huge strategic leverage, to dictatorships which couldn’t care less about green issues, namely Russia, China and the regressive regimes of the Middle East.

The US-led Western alliance must deal with Russia AND China simultaneously, which is what the forthcoming Quad nations (US, Australia, India, Japan) foreign ministers meeting in Melbourne is really all about.

The Biden administration is rightly signalling, through the Melbourne Quad meeting, that while it is dealing with Russian aggression against Ukraine, it is not taking its eye off China.

This is a big assignment and the US needs all the help its allies can provide. US allies ought to be vastly more capable militarily, and they ought to be producing much more energy.

Russia is the world’s biggest exporter of natural gas and one of the biggest exporters of oil. Any conflict involving Russia will send commodity prices soaring.

In the short term, that would be good for Australia economically as we are a commodity economy.

But it’s extremely dangerous geo-strategically.

Those European greens who think Australia’s climate policies are too permissive – especially, say, our natural gas production – may soon find their national governments paying to import Australian gas to keep European lights on.

They should be very glad there are still some Western-aligned, democratic, fossil fuel energy producers – especially Australia, Canada, the US and India.

Australia instinctively shares a national interest outlook here with two members of the Quad, India and Japan. The Biden administration itself is working through the agonising paradox of trying to restrict fossil fuel production domestically, while still relying on it fundamentally, and finding all its allies, including the progressive green Europeans, also rely on it.

There’s a lot of business for the Quad to get through in Melbourne.