The “Energy Crisis” is not an accident. It is Green Policy

The Green Party believe that the world is facing an existential crisis because people are burning too many fossil fuels. In order to save the world, they say, we must (their words) “keep it in the ground”. They want us to use less energy and electricity. They want us to become “more efficient”.

In the history of humankind, the only mechanism we have ever evolved to make people more efficient is price. If you put the price of something up, people will use less of it. The Green Party avails of this mechanism openly: The Carbon Tax is about putting up prices, to get people to use less diesel, or home heating oil, or petrol. That is the point of it.

Ireland’s “energy crisis” – where prices are rising (one farmer I know is now paying twice for electricity what he paid a year ago, with bills rising from an average of €1,000 per month to over €2,000 per month) – is not an accident. It is a result of policy. That policy has been to make energy more expensive.

There are two ways to make energy more expensive. You can raise taxes on it – that is in progress, and will be advanced further in the coming budget – or you can reduce the supply of it. Since they entered Government, Ireland’s Green Party have worked tirelessly, with the full support of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, to reduce the supply of energy.

First, they closed down two Peat fueled power plants, in Lanesborough and Shannonbridge. Collectively, these two power plants produced enough electricity to power 245,000 homes. Both power plants were in the middle of their lifespans, and operating safely. The Greens shut them down.

Then, they banned all new exploration for oil and gas in Irish waters. We had very little oil, but we have considerable reserves of natural gas. The Green Party secured legislation to “keep it in the ground”. So, we are sitting on natural gas which our Government bans us from using or accessing.

Then, they announced that they will oppose plans for the €650m LNG natural gas terminal at Shannon. This terminal would allow Ireland to import natural gas from the United States. The Greens oppose this because that Gas is extracted through fracking.

Now Ireland, after just 18 months of the Greens in government, is facing the very real prospect of electricity blackouts this winter. Already, and predictably, efforts are being made to blame this on the demand for electricity. Idiot journalists (and sorry, there’s no other fair word) are fully complicit in this narrative:

Data centres are not the problem. The problem is that Ireland closed down power stations capable of powering a quarter of a million homes. We had data centres before the Greens entered Government, and no problems with them.

The other problem they point to is that the price of gas has gone up. Well, who could be shocked by that? Ireland has made itself, by choice, dependent on Russia for gas, just like most of the rest of the EU, which is also infected by the same dose of insanity. We have our own gas, and refuse to extract it. We have the choice of American gas, and refuse to buy it. Those are policy decisions. The price rise is not something which just happened.

And all of it – all of it – is by design. This is not an accident. It is what the new, Green, world is supposed to look like. In order to save the planet, you are supposed to be terrified of the cost of turning on your bathroom light. They want you to use less power. What better way to do that than to drive up the cost, and, better yet, tell you to flatten the demand curve by using less?

Constrict the supply, and then blame people (and in this case, companies) for using too much power. It is obscene.

But you voted for it. Maybe you did not vote Green. Maybe you voted Fine Gael. Or Fianna Fáil. Either way, you voted for all this nonsense. It was not hidden by the politicians before the election. They were falling over each other to capture the “Green vote”.

Of course, most “Green” voters do not think about this stuff. They think “Green” is about putting their bottles in the bottle banks, and planting a few trees, and then tuning into the latest documentary on Netflix about the receding polar icecaps (which, by the by, have been relatively stable, again, this year).

Of course, there will be horror and outrage, now. And rather than blame ourselves, as an electorate, for our own monstrous, horrendous, unbelievable stupidity, many of us will get on board the Government’s spin bus and blame the “data centres”.

After all, they’re just horrible foreigners coming here, taking our power, and not giving us enough money. That’s the new line, now. And all the alarmed goats will bleat it.

Easier than accepting, ever, that the voters made a mistake, and voted, as usual, like buffoons.

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