By Irina Slav
When I was a child, I was extremely shy. This, of course, made me a natural target for bullies at kindergarten. I didn’t have it as bad as others because I tried, and succeeded, to be as invisible as possible but from my current point of view I had good reason to have grievances. These could be voiced in one of two ways and, I believe, nothing has changed in this area over the past 30 or so years.
One way to voice grievances was to inform the teacher, alerting her to the bullying and prompting her to take measures to put an end to it. Like that ever worked. The other way to voice a grievance with a fellow human seedling was to tell mum and dad, and leave the task of informing Mrs. Teacher and spurring her into action to them.
As nature would have it, we grow out of kindergarten age and learn to handle bullies in more direct, braver ways. We also tend to learn — from life — that not everything is someone else’s fault and we are all responsible for the consequences of our actions and decisions. What we see as bullying is not always bullying, in other words. Alas, when I say “we”, I don’t mean “all of us, to varying degrees”.
Belgian Farmer Sues Energy Company Over Climate Damages, I learned this week to much surprise that the farmer in question had singled out TotalEnergies specifically. Why not Shell, I wondered. It’s a favourite punching bag. Why not BP? Why not all of them, after all? They all do the same climate-destroying stuff.
Well, apparently, it was TotalEnergies’ fault that the farmer suffered “yield losses, extra work and the stress that comes from dealing with a disrupted crop calendar,” because it is the biggest fuel seller in Belgium. Had the top spot belonged to another supermajor, Hugues Falys would have blamed that supermajor for his misfortunes, the likes of which no farmer from preindustrial times has ever experienced, of course.
But brave Hugues who tells mum and dad (lawyers) to tell Mrs. Teacher (the court) that Big Bad Oil made his crops fail and his back hurt is not alone. Not at all. A whole U.S. state has set its sights on a nice piece of Big Oil flesh, meaning cash, for weather-related damage done to local infrastructure.
“In order to remedy the problems created by washed out roads, downed electrical wires, damaged crops and repeated flooding, the largest fossil fuel entities that have contributed to climate change should also contribute to fixing the problem that they caused,” one Vermont senator said recently in comments on a planned bill that will hold Big Oil financially accountable for such events in the state.
The state’s governor is against the bill, suggesting he is an actual adult but it turns out he is not against the argument. He’s against the money that Vermont would have to spend to advance its case. He’s also not alone, with one local senator suggesting California or New York do it first — pit the big, rich guy in class against the bully.
Meanwhile yet another think tank is working hard to earn its keep with a study voicing the grievance that investments in the transition are falling short of targets — well short.
“Even though we’ve had another record year in terms of renewable energy growth, at the same time energy demand is increasing and the pace of renewable energy uptake isn’t sufficient to catch up,” the UN-linked think tank REN21’s executive director complained this week.
“We aren’t even reaching 50% of what’s needed annually,” Rana Adib said. “Governments have committed, but this needs to be followed by action.” You’ve got to love the passive voice. It needs doing but who’s going to do it is left to the imagination of mum, dad, and Mrs. Teacher.
As to why anyone would want to do it, well, that’s an entirely different matter. Because the perception of the bully is as warped as pretty much everything in the transition.
“Last year alone, oil, coal and gas received an estimated $7 trillion in subsidies worldwide,” a transition investor told us this week in an opinion piece for CNN, in which he argued that Investing in oil and gas doesn’t make sense anymore.
In case you were wondering why, it’s because extracting oil and gas is getting more expensive, because the industry faces a potential $200 billion per year bill if everyone decides to sue it like Big Tobacco, and because “Renewables such as solar and wind are growing at an exponential rate.”
In the context of such opinions it makes one wonder why governments all over the world continue subsidising oil and gas although, of course, subsidies are quite different for them, mostly in the form of tax breaks and price controls that by complete coincidence benefit all of us who consume oil and gas.
Even Canada is doing it — and I would advise you to hold on to your seats now because a have shocking news. The news is that Fossil fuel subsidies cost Canadians a lot more money than the carbon tax.
It is genuinely sad to see how low some people are capable of sinking in their effort to make everyone believe that white is black and a direct and constantly rising financial burden is actually less of a burden than ample and affordable energy, made ample and affordable by government measures dubbed “subsidies” because it sounds more sinister than tax breaks.
What we have here is a case of bullies, or rather, bully wannabes, calling the others bullies — those that have made their current lifestyle possible, at that. I know, it’s an overused argument but that doesn’t mean it’s not valid.
Brave Hugues from Belgium would not have the business he has at all if he didn’t have oil and gas at his government-subsidised affordable disposal. Vermont is a more interesting case. The state has no oil or gas industry but over half of the energy consumed in it is petroleum-based, per the EIA, with figures for 2021.
Not only that but “Although the state uses less petroleum than all the other states, Vermont uses more petroleum per capita than almost two-thirds of the states.” Well, isn’t that interesting. The same state that is in the top third in the country in per-capita petroleum consumption wants the industry supplying that petroleum to pay for its washed away roads, floods, and crop damage.
All that is based on questionable claims that are being increasingly challenged as more and more people begin to realise we have been duped into believing a trace element in the atmosphere, which incidentally made life on Earth possible at all, is causing devastating changes to the climate. Meanwhile, the Sun that powers life on Earth has only a negligible part in those devastating changes.
The bully wannabes are calling the fat kid who they all copy their homework from a bully and demanding that this kid pay for the fact that they never learn anything because they can’t be bothered to do their homework — because it’s easier to copy it from the fat kid. And it’s these same bully wannabes who insist that we can all learn everything without doing any homework at all because that’s how people lived in pre-industrial days. Interesting times.
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