Chemically Dirty

Oil, natural gas, coal: they are dirty. They all add ancient carbon to the atmosphere when you burn them.

The elite of Post-Fukushima Western Europe played a game of pretend: natural gas is somehow clean and green.

The dominant molecules that make up natural gas: plenty of prehistoric carbon there. (via justenergy.com)

They had to: Russian gas was so damned cheap it was impossible to resist, it does burn clean, as clean as any hydrocarbon can (as far as cough-cough pollution goes, CO2 + water vapor is squeaky clean), and every Watt of newly installed renewable energy, lacking any practical way of storing it, needed the same Watt of instant-on, fossil fuel backup in case the Sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow: natural gas engine power plants. Smaller than the imposing base power stations of old, using internal combustion (turbine or piston).

The greener Europe got, the more it begin to rely on natural gas. Since this is mainly a German hypocrisy, I’ll call this way of pretend-greening grüning. It’s kind of green, from one angle, and very climate damaging from another.

This is the chemical dirt that no grüning can escape.

“What’s Plan B?, Scholz asked his aides in the chancellery. Only to be told there wasn’t any, according to a person familiar with the discussions.“

Geopolitically Dirty

Hydrocarbons, just like other resources, happen to be where they happen to be, in the ground, where Allah had put them when he started this round of world simulation. What is above them, the human society on the surface, can vary to a great extent: theocracy, some form of dictatorship, a state at war with another state, a state at war with itself. A democracy with many enemies, and, the rarest of all, a democracy that is peaceful and respectable.

If there’s intelligent design in our world, it favors putting the resources the Western world needs under the feet of people who are very reactionary to the tenets of our progress. People who have public executions, with swords. People who consider homosexuality a capital offense. As if God, teamed up with Gaia is testing our ability to be hypocritical when our professed Values meet our basic need for Joules.

If so, the Western Elite failed this test and continues to fail so, right now turning away from Russia to find alternatives anywhere, to places that would make 1950s Europe a model liberal democracy. Unlike money, natural gas truly has no smell. If it does, it’s psychosomatic.

I’m just a mere mortal, and I don’t judge Western Europe for opening to the ‘Stans in need, it’s a need after all, not a choice. It’s only the hypocrisy that bothers me. Having sports events in these backwards places is way more optional, yet they have no problem with those, they even keep the Pride colors to the minimum out of respect to the local barbarians. They of course would never call these cultures barbaric, that hostile language is reserved for their Eastern European allies. We are aware, you know, and we’re not even that angry, we’re used to your double standards by now.

Westerners, when it comes to Joules, you can’t have your cake and eat it. You can’t stay warm and ethical. Stop pretending otherwise, and stop judging us in the East for being honest about it! You are no better than us.

Personally Dirty

The best way to describe Norway is that it’s the country with the highest Tesla ownership. That speaks volumes, about wealth, environmentalism and the general culture of hypocrisy. I’m sure they are very proud of themselves, judged by our contemporary standards, what a place!

If there’s one country where you could get ethical energy from in Western Europe, or the world really (Canada has dirty extraction techniques that would make everyone from Rachel Carson to Little Greta cry), it’s Norway.

Natural gas has no smell, but the odorant added to the Norwegian export must be a pleasant one. I wouldn’t know, we’ve only ever had Russki gas, but that’s how I’d imagine it.

But how ethical can a usurer be? How ethical is predatory lending? How ethical is being a landlord? Offering a payday loan? By our modern capitalist standards, set by the United States, these are fine, it’s a personal responsibility for both parties. It’s not nice, but these are the rules of the market, and we have free market capitalism.

Except we don’t, really, as we’re killing ourselves trying to exclude certain hydrocarbons on ethical grounds from the market. Morality is in, putting its finger on the scale. Deal with it, we all do!

If there’s one winner in this war so far, and one guaranteed winner when it ends, a country that will gain even more the worse it gets for everyone, it’s Norway. Norway is making a killer extra profit on this war.

Currently, Norway is the largest exporter of natural gas in the EU, with an expected turnover of €94 billion this year, an increase of €65 billion compared to last year.

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It’s all just business, or so they object to any criticism. The rumors of them making use of their market advantage go even wilder, accusing them of acting like textbook predators:

Norway would give gas to Austria but would take the majority of OMV in return

Norway would be willing to supply Austria with enough gas to make it completely independent of Russia as a supplier of natural gas. This would mean the supply of 75 TWh of gas per year, which is more than 80 percent of Austria's annual gas consumption of 90 TWh. But the Norwegian offer only stands if the same Norwegian consortium can acquire at least 51 percent of OMV's shares

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It’s just a rumor, but at this point, one that even the Western European press is willing to float. International sociopathy. Not illegal, but not really nice.

Being greedy at this great hour of need, when the rest of the continent exclaims and — to be fair — demonstrates huge sacrifices, Norway seeks to have their cake and eat it.

They can’t, and they shouldn’t; they are war profiteers, the number one in Europe.

The last refuge of clean, moral hydrocarbon energy is gone, due to the humans’ greed on the surface above it. They might have been model citizens of progress in peacetime, but their addiction to prosperity, their unwillingness to chip in when everyone else is expected to, turned them immoral during Our war.

My shitty internal combustion engined car is no less ethical than a Norwegian’s Tesla, even if it runs on Russian oil. It’s more ethical in fact, as I’m not getting any prosperity out of this situation, only suffering, and I don’t really have a choice. I’m locked in, geographically, and I lack the money to burn, I have less belt to tighten. Norway, the Norwegians have a choice, and despite being already prosperous beyond belief, with plenty of room for sacrifice, they chose to take further advantage of us all. To get even more rich, on this war.

They are immoral.

So what now then?

Stop looking for ethics in hydrocarbon energy! If it ever bothers you, think of the Saudis. Or the Norwegians. They are more similar than not. If they can sleep well, so can you. The morality of energy policy within our greater sphere of alliance is determined by the least moral player, and America’s Middle East play spearheaded by Saudi Arabia alone sets a very low bar; being pressured by the State Department to commit sudoku over dirty energy, to Hungarians, is absurd. You don’t care about them Yemenis? You’re not alone, no one really does, care is a finite resource, just like any resource. We look at Washington, the lighthouse of our coalition, and we sleep well, we’re not the dirtiest campers by far.

If you’re willing to make the sacrifice it takes to have an ethical source of hydrocarbon energy, always apply the same, global standard, no excuses! See what allowing exceptions do to a people as noble as the Norwegians. Allowing double standards, being hypocritical corrupts them, corrupts you. If you want to swing the moral sledgehammer around, don’t be picky, go berserk! Be prepared to give up hydrocarbons though, as no one will be left standing once you’re done.

Grün is not green. Stop pretending otherwise. Oh, and call out a Norwegian on social media, if you have the opportunity: it seems that even in our current censorship regime, they are fair game.

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