Don Ritter: The Real “Existential Threat” to People and Planet

It’s ironic. The very Biden Administration and European Government policies that are supposed to address the “existential threat” of climate change are themselves the true existential threat to modern civilization. 

As someone trained in science and engineering, a lifelong hiker, gardener and lover of nature in the extreme, I want a healthy, sustainable planet as much as anyone promoting the climate change agenda.  It’s not that “green” energy is bad. It’s that the rate of “going green,” and the enormous investments required, are wildly disproportionate to society’s energy needs, now and for the foreseeable future. 

Elon Musk gets it, but most government leadership do not – or choose to remain silent. “Realistically, civilization will crumble if we don’t continue to use oil and gas in the short run,” Musk has said. 

Civilization crumbling is clearly an “existential threat.” And this guy sells electric cars! He also recommended “continued drilling and exploration for oil and gas,” because he understands that producing and fueling electric vehicles will require substantial fossil fuel electricity generation, for years to come. 

“Existential” issues like war, peace, economic vitality, jobs and living standards all have the same critical driving force: energy – all forms of energy. Energy to transport people and goods, to run farms and provide food, to heat and cool homes, to power manufacturing, and to fuel ships, planes and vehicles for our military. Natural gas is essential for fertilizers to feed a hungry world. Oil and natural gas are the building blocks for plastics, pharmaceuticals, synthetic fibers, paint and thousands of other products. 

Today, these vital, taken-for-granted benefits come almost entirely from oil, gas and coal. Those who have it will be powerful, those who don’t will not. China and Russia know this well. 

Europe made a deal with the devil by handing its energy supply to Vladimir Putin and energy-rich Russia – while crippling its own energy future with anti-fossil-fuel climate change policies. Europe closed its coal, gas and nuclear power plants, while building expensive, less-reliable and weather-dependent solar and wind facilities. Putin’s war on Ukraine couldn’t have happened without his dominance over gas, oil and coal supplies to Europe. 

And where is the United States government on energy reality? It’s copying Europe, with vast green energy subsidies and an unrelenting “whole of government” regulatory war on fossil fuels. 

America should be telling an energy-insecure world, “We will do everything in our power to increase the supply of energy,” in an-all-of-the-above approach: not only fossil fuels and renewables, but nuclear, and hydroelectric power when feasible. Instead, we beg hostile dictatorships – that pay no attention to human rights or ecological values – to increase their production, because we refuse to increase ours.

Isn’t that just a little embarrassing? We could be the “gas station for democracy” for the Free World. But our government’s climate change policies stand in the way. 

Simple arithmetic tells the story. Fossil fuels still provide some 80% of the world’s and America’s energy consumption. The rest comes from hydro, nuclear, solar, wind and biomass. In the