Hydrocarbon haters: You have no chance of success. Zero. Seven billion people agree, every day

“Severe personality problems find *camouflage.* No one thinks “I’m a sadist” or “I’m a malignant narcissist.” They find a belief system/social group that validates their most hateful, destructive impulses & construes them as virtues. The most toxic and hateful people in the world are 100% convinced they fight for what is true and right.They find a way to give free rein to their cruelty, to attack, to treat others cruelly and viciously. *And they find allies to cheer them on* who also believe they are on the side of all that is true and good…the psychological processes are splitting, projection & projective identification. Splitting means not recognizing one’s own capacity for hate, cruelty, and destructiveness. The person is blind to the bad in themselves. Instead, they project the badness onto some designated other. And this other person, via the defense of projection, is now seen as the repository of all that is bad and evil and necessary to destroy. That’s the projection. The person now feels fully justified in unleashing their viciousness and hate on the other person, who is now seen (via projection) as someone monstrous who must be destroyed at all cost. If the person who is projected on attempts to protect or defend themselves, this is now seen as further confirmation of how hateful and evil they are (this is what is called is “projective identification.”) The end result is that the person can deny their own sadism, cruelty, and hate—while simultaneously acting it out without restraint. And feel themselves to be 100% on the side of truth and right as they do it.” – Jonathan Shedler via Twitter @JonathanShedler

You might read this post’s title and roll your eyes at perceived melodrama. You might send cranky Etam an email, explaining exasperatedly that no one is that dead set against hydrocarbons, that all activists want is to transition away from them as quickly as possible. 

If you thought that, you’d be wrong. There exists a very vocal, very powerful and very well funded group of ideologues that are blatantly determined to destroy the oil and gas industry. They’re not ‘transitionists’, they’re borderline anarchists. They mock and ridicule any attempt by the existing energy business to make emissions progress. 

It’s time to stop pandering to their nonsense and inform them in no uncertain terms that their objectives have not the slightest chance of success. This isn’t a ‘strategic’ call, as they would dream up in an activist think tank/camp – is is a declaration that the reality of energy consumption is exactly as it appears, and that dark forces of destruction are incapable of pulling it apart. Outrageous demands in the name of the ‘climate’ are irrelevant to 7 billion people, and, frankly, the climate.

How outrageous? I don’t have all day, so I’ll only pull up a couple of examples that have been pushed in front of my eyes by well meaning people. Elizabeth May, former leader of Canada’s Green party, recently tweeted: “Just voted for a bill for government help shut down oil and gas wells. We need to shut down the whole fossil fuel sector.”

Ms. May, you have zero chance of succeeding at this. Further, by saying such ludicrous things, you help ensure that your party has zero chance of ever governing. You are in fact a big zero yourself. You solve nothing. You create nothing. You sow division and discord. You foster malicious ignorance. Such comments don’t even earn you the derogatory title of ‘politician’. 

Tzeporah Berman heads up a similarly delusional organization called the “Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty” that calls for someone – not sure who, but someone with lots of guns, we know that – to ‘end new exploration and expansion’ and ‘phase out existing stockpiles and reserves’. Berman attacks and tries to discredit any attempt by energy companies to reduce emissions as a ‘sham’. Most helpful, that perspective. Ideological bunkers like The Guardian that publish such nonsense are failing rapidly, because voices like those are so obviously destructive.

That call to arms (‘warrior up’, as Berman likes to say) came within months of billions nearly perishing in the winter of 2020/21 as fuel shortages – of natural gas, heating oil, and even coal – swept Asia (including large parts of China, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh), and localized emergencies were declared and industries shut down to preserve what was available for a not-well-placed population. Even Japan, wealthy Japan, struggled to find enough heating supplies. There are no options to hydrocarbons, on a large scale. That is reality. That will be reality, for decades.

May, Berman, US powerhouse haters like Bill McKibben, and the respective small-but-loud armies you lead: You have not the slightest chance of success. None. You rely on fear-mongering about the unholy terror about to be unleashed – in 3 or 4 or 5 decades – should temperatures rise slightly, but you are now a joke. The web is full of dire and wildly inaccurate climate warnings from decades ago, warning how New York City’s west highway will be underwater by 2020 (not even remotely close), how the Maldives will be underwater (the government continues to build new resorts and runways), how there will be endless droughts (there aren’t, any more than there ever have been) and on and on and on and on. No one is listening anymore. 

Your attacks and hatred only alienate the very people that require for survival the very fuel you decry. It doesn’t matter how powerful you are, or how many politcians are in your back pocket. It’s not working. While pondering that, also ponder the irony that you have now become the voice of power and lobbying and backroom dealing that you accuse ‘Big Oil’ of doing. Funny world, hey?

Three billion people are trying to live like the west’s 700 million, and they will consume all of every type of energy that is available to do so. Your not-inconsiderable ability to destroy the west’s petroleum industry has zero bearing – zero – on the trajectory of global emissions. You are not spearheading a new vision for world energy; you do not understand energy and your tactics will only fail. 

Of course, you don’t need to believe me, and you won’t. I don’t care. What I’m saying isn’t ‘messaging’. It is the world around you that you refuse to acknowledge. You are the ones that choose destruction over construction, conflict over cooperation, and planning ignorance over cold hard reality. You will get what you deserve – complete and utter failure. But hey, the money’s good, right, so have at it!

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