The United Nations (UN) completed the COP26 climate talks in November 2021 in Glasgow, UK. Sadly, the highlights were more of the same old hysterical alarmism.
COP26 climate summit was expensive, energy-burning theater. One hundred eighteen private jets flew into the airport and President Biden’s motorcade had 24 vehicles.
The 20,000 wealthy diplomats, Wall Street financiers, and activists who attended claim that the world’s future is their priority, but their actions reveal a disdain for humanity that should undermine any ideas they propose. The main message was people should use less and do with less.
President Biden should have touted America's successes in reducing emissions. From 2005 to 2018, total U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions fell 12% while global energy-related emissions increased nearly 24%. Since 2005, national greenhouse gas emissions fell by 10%, and power sector emissions by 27% — as the US economy grew by 25%. Biden should have compared that to China's announcement of 30 new coal-fired power plants and China being the world's biggest polluter. The president should have stood up for his people. Our people.
As winter approaches, Europe is getting cold. Low energy supplies, mortgaged to Russian control of the Nord Stream II gas pipeline (given the go-ahead by Biden), and shortages of wind power are jacking up energy prices and making leaders there nervous.
Winter is approaching in the United States as well. Gasoline prices have been rising steadily and they are about to be joined by heating oil and natural gas heat. President Biden should be rethinking permits for the Keystone Pipeline. Instead, the president asked - demanded – that OPEC pump more oil and shipping it halfway around the world in diesel or coal powered ships to American ports with offloading problems. OPEC has said no. That is not surprising to anyone but, perhaps, the president.
In an effort to woo Iran, the administration came into office deriding Saudi Arabia and what it called "the Saudi war in Yemen." More correctly, that war is the Iranian-fostered Houthi war in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, in which Saudi cities and oil production facilities have been attacked. But in September, the administration pulled American Patriot Missile batteries out of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and some from Jordan, leaving those countries exposed to increasingly long range and accurate missiles supplied to the Houthis by Tehran.
In what universe would Saudi Arabia pump more oil, lower the price, and help out the United States?
Americans have had fairly stable energy prices for the past few years, and fairly low ones, in part due to the tremendous increase in energy production in the United States – both oil and natural gas. In 2018, the U.S. produced 95% of its domestic energy requirements, the largest share since 1967. Gas prices, the marker Americans watch almost to the exclusion of everything else, averaged $2.60/gal in 2019, 4% lower than in 2018.
Then in 2019, Russia and Saudi Arabia colluded oddly, not to keep the price up but to outdo one another in production to drive it down to where it would bankrupt American producers, looking for market share for when they drove us out.
President Trump used the situation to fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which President Biden is now considering tapping.
The truth of the climate summit and energy policy is that people don't want high energy costs or to be cold, and their governments have to respond – in China, in Europe, or in America the ramifications of high energy costs and cold citizens are politically dangerous whether they go to the ballot box or have revolutions.
For all the high-minded talk at the climate summit, the reality is it is all about production. And for Americans, it should be domestic production for domestic consumption.
America's president is failing the people. Our people.
Ed Cross is president of the Kansas Independent Oil & Gas Association.