Myopic Thinking

When I watched the news on TV this morning, I saw an item explaining Europe's vulnerable position with respect to gas supplies from Russia, particularly in the light of the crisis in Ukraine.  It was explained that about 50% of Europe's gas comes from Russia.  The country-to-country variations are quite significant.  For example, 80% of Bulgaria's gas, compared with 0% of the UK's gas, comes from Russia.  OK, I get the message, Europe is concerned about energy security.  But then the news report became somewhat bizarre.  It was suggested that the G7 energy ministers were considering ways of reducing the dependency on Russia for gas supplies.  Ah, I thought, maybe this is the opportunity to accelerate the use of renewable energy sources.  But no, what was being proposed was a network (the gas equivalent of an electricity grid) to link the European countries, so that, for example, fracking gas from the UK can feed into mainland Europe, as well as imported gas (also from fracking) from the USA.

This displays all the symptoms of myopic thinking.  A hopefully short-term relationship problem with Russia, over its stance towards Ukraine, has triggered Europe and its American ally to invest in a very expensive and long-term programme to cut off Russian gas imports - a classic example of knee-jerk political thinking.  But what's most disturbing is that even though carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, at greater than 400ppm, should be a real cause for concern, the G7 energy dumbos are planning to invest to exacerbate the problem.  Surely the current crisis in Ukraine should, if nothing else, be a catalyst for every European country potentially affected by the supply of gas from Russia, to put real effort into becoming self sufficient on energy from renewable sources?  The technology is available, so what's the problem?  It is probably cost.

Gas is grossly under-priced, because the costs do not include the premium that should be paid by the producers for the damage to the planet.  Those costs will currently be picked up by future generations.  I don't know how to quantify fossil fuel damage.  Maybe it's not possible.  In which case the simple rule should be, use renewable sources wherever it is possible, regardless of the acquisition and support costs.  Naive thinking on my part?  I don't think so.  Political myopic thinking benefits only the individual politicians and not society at large.  The use of economic justifications to support their actions is misleading and dangerous.  There is no shortage of man-made money, but the natural defences to combat atmospheric pollution are demonstrably beginning to fail - look at the continuous reduction of the Arctic ice cap.

So let's not get carried away with the current European energy crisis.  Al Gore once said:

"As many know, the Chinese expression for 'crisis' consists of two characters side by side.  The first is the symbol for 'danger', the second the symbol for 'opportunity'."