Obama Led Germany Into Putin’s Energy Trap

America’s exciting new president inspired the world to junk carbon taxes in favor of green pork

By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.. Excerpts:

"Let’s understand how we really got here. Germany’s mistake didn’t lie in buying gas from Russia, but in denying itself access to alternative supplies—by banning fracking, by not building LNG terminals. Somehow this was supposed to prove its devotion to the climate cause and renewables.

Unmentionably, the sainted Barack Obama was actually the pivotal figure, abandoning on behalf of the Western world the idea of fighting climate change with taxes in favor of pretending to fight it with handouts to alternative energy interests.

America’s exciting new president, on the eve of taking office, revealed a new direction in climate policy, focused on subsidizing solar and wind rollouts. The same spirit, a few years later, would fully infuse Germany’s Energiewende.

Whatever the political logic, this was not a policy for dealing with climate change. Take an example that will produce blushes in many quarters. Between 2005 and 2019, the U.S. reduced its total emissions by displacing coal with gas for electricity generation.

This result has been widely celebrated but there’s no reason to believe global emissions were lower. The U.S. at the same time greatly boosted its exports of oil, gas and coal. It boosted its imports of emissions-heavy merchandise and materials, including (ironically) lithium for electric cars.

The same logic applies if renewables were now forced to replace gas. Without an incentive actually to use less fossil fuels (i.e., a tax), subsidizing new forms of energy will mainly tend to accelerate energy consumption overall, with fossil fuels increasing right along with renewables.

This is demonstrably what has happened—look at the energy consumption and emissions tables. If California mandates the purchase of electric cars, the rest of the world will be able to consume more gasoline.

Again, you can tax fossil fuels, even punitively, and still maintain diversity of supply. Germany did the opposite, indenturing itself to cheap Russian gas while denying itself diversity of supply because, you know, wind and solar would fill the hole in the long run. This alone explains why a modest interruption of energy flows—the Nord Stream pipeline provided 5% of Europe’s consumption—now creates industrial chaos. Mr. Putin couldn’t have done this to Germany. Germany could only have done it to itself."