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Michael McLeod
This, from the Atlantic, on the shifting practicalities that face us when it comes to saving the environment.
Inflation, not unemployment, is now the economy’s biggest problem. And that means that even if the country had workers to spare, it does not have raw materials. Any major domestic buildout of clean energy would require a large amount of steel, concrete, lithium, and other rare minerals. Yet global commodity prices are spiking to all-time highs, and the kind of supply chains required for construction projects are especially clogged. In this economy, it takes a year to finish renovating a kitchen. Restructuring an entire energy system will be far harder.
Moreover, the world’s energy problems are no longer quite as straightforward as they were in the previous decade. After a long lull, gasoline prices have started rising again, peaking earlier this month at their highest inflation-adjusted level since 2014. From an environmental perspective, gasoline remains much too cheap in the United States given its societal costs. But that ideal pricing matters little to the issue’s politics in a car-dependent country. The political challenge, too, is made worse by America’s polarized climate politics: If only one party is interested in passing climate policy, then the climate’s safety rests on the party’s ability to keep voters happy.
The Ukraine crisis has overturned the final dictum, reinstating energy security as a major issue for the West. In almost any world, Putin’s war would have thrown global markets into tumult: More than a quarter of the natural gas that Europe imports from Russia flows in pipelines that run through Ukraine, and large, violent military campaigns do not tend to treat fragile (and flammable) fossil-fuel infrastructure delicately. But Russia’s role as a major oil producer to the world, and Europe’s dependence on Russian natural gas (beyond just that which flows through Ukrainian pipelines), has brought the issue to the center of global politics.
That represents a mixed blessing for the most dogmatic American climate advocates. In the coming years, the European Union seems likely to go on a mad decarbonizing dash, electrifying as much of its energy system as possible so as to reduce its dependence on Russian gas. But even optimistic accounts posit that the continent cannot hope to regain “energy sovereignty” until 2027. It will need more than just heat pumps and solar panels; it will need someone else to sell it gas.
The math makes any other conclusion unavoidable. Last week, the EU promised to import 50 billion cubic meters of liquid natural gas from the United States annually through 2030. Right now, for context, it imports about 17 billion cubic meters of LNG a year, so it will need to find another 33 billion cubic meters to meet its goal.
That is a lot of gas. It exceeds the LNG imports of every country in North and South America combined. It seems reasonable to conclude, therefore, that if the EU follows through on its commitment—but no country produces more gas—then it will break the global market for liquid natural gas. That will make natural-gas prices rise everywhere, for all countries, even those that don’t buy LNG from the United States. And that will force middle-income countries—such as Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Thailand—that have been planning on importing natural gas to instead buy coal, a far dirtier and more climate-destructive fuel.
This doesn’t mean that climate advocates should become pro–natural gas, of course—especially when the fuel’s climate impact is looking worse and worse. But it does mean that American climate advocates must approach the new energy landscape with the same creativity and disrespect for orthodoxy that they brought to the old. If Europe’s democracies believe that their ability to import natural gas from a non-Russia country is essential to their survival, then American climate advocates should find a way to help them—without cutting a blank check to U.S. natural-gas producers or extending the gas system’s lifetime into the 2030s.
Climate activists remain correct in their essential diagnosis: In order to avoid catastrophic changes to the climate system, most undrilled fossil fuels must remain in the ground. But for the next few years, climate policy will require a subtler hand than advocates have been used to providing. It means that the U.S. must make strategic investments to increase grappling with the energy system as it exists today—which is fossil-fuel-dependent—not because fossil fuels have inherent value but because only by understanding the current situation can the U.S. plan for the future. Putin’s war has all but ensured that the path to decarbonization will not be a straight line. But if advocates navigate this moment carefully, then the U.S. and the EU can find a shortcut, not a detour.
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