Going Green: The West's Fatal Miscalculation?

This week, Russia ordered 15 more floating nuclear power plants from its Rosatom nuclear outfit. These plants can provide energy to companies operating in the Arctic, but also eclectic heating to polar workers’ towns. The West has no such floating power plants at all, nor does it have any up-to-date nuclear-powered ice-breakers that Russia uses to keep its Northern Sea Route open for traffic from Europe to China.

While Russia smells business, meanwhile, the West isn’t really active in polar regions at all. Rather, Western powers are betting on the switch to electric vehicles to keep temperatures from rising, at least not enough to make Arctic exploration profitable, even though China can open up as many coal mines as it pleases to keep heating up the planet anyway.

And that is still beside the point. The real issue is that geopolitics is an art form best practiced by the most talented, such as Putin and Xi. Everyone knows Joe Biden and Kamala Harris (luckily) aren’t in charge of making any reals decisions, for a simple miscalculation today may lead to catastrophic events a century on. One's entire people, for example, may be wiped from Earth when the equations governing life’s material needs become too unbalanced.

Germany, for example, has recently completely abandoned nuclear energy, hailing the transition to renewables as a great achievement while shutting down its last three nuclear reactors. German “leadership” has thus turned the once industrious nation into a net importer of electricity, rather than a net exporter. But the joke’s on Germany: With U.S. funding, Poland is getting up to 20 new nuclear reactors by 2030. Poland is expected to become Europe’s next main industrial nation, bigger than Germany.

I believe the West's obsession with Going Green is indeed a geopolitical miscalculation. While China and Russia continue to invest in Arctic mining and shipping because they believe the fossil fuels and other materials found there will still be needed a hundred years from now, the West is betting on EVs in an overtly stupid attempt to decouple Western transportation from the fossil fuel supply, but only by making itself dependent on rare lithium from African mines.

To date, electric vehicles aren’t better for the environment due to the battery production cost and short battery life cycles.

As a consequence of this decision to Go Woke on energy, Western powers have simply neglected to invest in Arctic ports, ice-breakers, and floating nuclear plants for use along the northern shipping routes, whereas China does see the North Pole as part of its Belt and Way Network, and Russia is clearly heavily investing in proper infrastructure along its section of the Northern Sea Route.

If the West has maneuvered itself into a weak position. Increased industrial activity in polar waters may raise the local surface temperatures just enough for operations to run smoothly anyway, regardless of global temperatures. And the greater problem is that the West set itself up to lose its civilizational momentum. We will have to allow China to take the lead.

It is this miscalculation then, that may also turn Europe into a Third-World backwater, a continent itself devoid of meaningful resources, hosting barely 5 percent of the global population. That is unless hundreds of millions of young sub-Saharan Africans decide to make a push for Europe. In that case, Europe becomes the hub for middle-class Central Africans, and Europe can change its name to Eurafrica.

Ethnic Europeans will wither away as though they were the Amerindians of the Indian Reserves in the USA. Then again, electric vehicles may not be feasible at all if Europe cannot generate its own electricity. Today’s Germany couldn’t possibly switch all its diesel- or gas-powered cars to electric. The electricity network would not only implode under the high demand, but electricity prices would also make driving EVs too expensive for ordinary families (since people will have to pay for already unaffordable heating instead).

I’ve personally known black Central Africans living in The Netherlands, and even though this part of Europe isn’t even remotely as cold as, say, Northern Sweden, black Africans don’t seem to like temperatures below 25 degrees Celsius inside their homes. White Dutch people may still thrive comfortably at 19 degrees. I have met black people who complain about the cold buses and trains. And in The Hague, I’ve seen the local Burger King heat up its interior during wintertime in order to attract large numbers of African diners.

A large African population living in Europe, therefore, leads to an even higher demand for heating. But don’t expect Western leaders to fathom, let alone appreciate, such insights since their minds are wired to ignore racial differences. Blacks who’ve never seen trees die in winter really aren’t built for the cold.

The same goes for Central Bank Digital Currencies that ask for a vast upgrade of (Eastern) European payment infrastructures. The idea may fail if the internet regularly starts to break down due to power interruptions.

The green intellectuals, I believe, are simply mistaken. Industries need cheaper fuels, not smarter fuels that are more expensive. For now, we need to ask the question: How much longer do you think Germany can keep affording more expensive electricity imports if it refuses to generate cheaper electricity from Russian gas?

I guarantee you, a century from now, Russians will still be driving gas-powered cars. And their homes will be warm. Germany, on the other hand, may return to the age of my distant Germanic ancestors who once kept themselves warm by digging their homes into the soil, the top covered with a thick layer of thatch and moss.