The Reverse Green Energy Cargo Cult

I couldn’t help but notice a most curious phenomenon that has recently gripped Western Europe, which very much looks like a cargo cult, but in reverse.

In a classic cargo cult, native tribes that have become inured to the indignity of regular airlifts providing them with humanitarian relief in the form of, say, beer and pizza, when deprived of this affront to their native dignity, take to building fake airstrips with fake control towers and bonfires for runway lights in the hopes of luring more transport planes laden with aforementioned beer and pizza.

In a reverse cargo cult, native tribes, that have become inured to the indignity of regular airlifts providing humanitarian relief in the form of, say, beer and pizza, having suddenly become cognizant of the deleterious effect of beer and pizza on public health, Arctic permafrost or planetary alignment, take to barricading the landing strips and dismantling the control towers in the hopes of preventing the landing of more transport planes laden with aforementioned beer and pizza. The natives then remain hungry and sober until sanity returns and air traffic is restored.

The latter scenario is what seems to be unfolding in the European Union of late, where the native tribes have made strenuous efforts to limit their access to Russian-supplied beer and pizza, instead switching to eating grass and drinking swamp water—figuratively speaking: by beer and pizza I mean natural gas and coal and by grass and swamp water I mean wind turbines and solar panels. And by blocking runways and dismantling control towers I mean blocking or delaying the construction of South Stream and Nord Stream 2 pipelines, gambling with their own energy security by tying the pricing of long-term natural gas contracts to casino-like futures markets, and playing political games with pipelines that run through Poland and the Ukraine. Lastly, the assumed deleterious effect of beer and pizza on public health, Arctic permafrost or planetary alignment is analogous to the assumed planet-destroying effects of CO2 emissions from burning hydrocarbons.

If you find such analogies outlandish, please let me explain.

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