The 2022 environMENTAL Awards
The best and worst environmental and energy stories from 2022. And the start of an annual tradition.
Our raison d’etre – environment, energy, economics and human prosperity – is serious and sometimes heavy stuff. With at least 6.5 billion people living below the standards of our readers, we take this job seriously, just as we have over long careers helping reduce, control or eliminate serious environmental problems.
A little levity helps. Fortunately for us, the level of sheer insanity, scientific ignorance, and vacuous political virtue signaling in this area gives us no shortage of material.
Accordingly, we are pleased to present the inaugural edition of The EnvironMENTAL Awards. Eight of the stories serve as shining examples of the 21st century absurdity of western environmental and energy policy. We close with four stories that should give readers some solace.
Congratulations to the winners of The 2022 environMENTAL Awards!
Organic Uprising Award - Winner: former Sri Lanka President Gotabaya Rajapaksa (Victory by Popular Acclamation). In 2021, he decided his 2019 election promise to transition Sri Lankan agriculture from chemical fertilizers and pesticides to organic over 10 years wasn’t fast enough. So, he banned them. By summer 2022, with Sri Lankan agriculture in collapse along with its economy, he was “transitioned” out of office by angry mobs who stormed his (now former) residence in protest. Once the military escorted him off the grounds, the crowd celebrated their victory with a swim in the palace pool.
Green Hydrogen Unicorn Award – Winner: The Canada-Germany Hydrogen Alliance. This “achievement” was hard won, especially after Canadian Prime Minister/Charlatician™ Justin Trudeau could not “make the business case” for Canadian LNG for which German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had come. Of course, his inability to make the business case was made much easier by his efforts in collaboration with Canadian “greens” to landlock most of the natural gas in the (flyover) Provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. Our last issue noted the enormous industrial undertaking required in terms of wind turbines, hydrolyzers, a Haber-Bosch plant and giant tankers. Doomberg’s analysis from an energy return on energy invested is a must read.
Green Sotto Voce Award – Winner: French President Macron for saying the quiet part out loud (emphasis added): "This overview that I'm giving - the end of abundance, the end of insouciance, the end of assumptions - it's ultimately a tipping point that we are going through that can lead our citizens to feel a lot of anxiety.” Conspicuously and ironically absent from legacy media were any questions about whether or how the environmental and energy policies of President Macron and his “progressive” ideological cohorts might have contributed to the condition he hypothesized. Given this repeated lack of self-awareness, we see the potential for more Gilets Jaunes in President Macron’s future.
Back to the Future Award – Winner: Germany for the Un-Wende™ of its “Energiewende” (German for “energy turnaround”). The ultimate metaphor for Germany’s self-inflicted energy chaos was utility RWE knocking down wind turbines to expand the Garzweiler lignite mine. Lignite is not just any form of coal, it’s the lowest quality, dirtiest form with the least energy-density usable for electricity generation on earth. When Germany closed its entire fleet of high quality nuclear plants after the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan we saw some version of this in its future.
Fly in The Soup Irony Award – Winner: “Just Stop Oil” for throwing John Kerry’s wife’s soup on Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” at the National Gallery in London. It was Kerry who emerged from the smoky back room with delegates from India and China at the 11th hour at COP26 in Glasgow with revised wording in the final declaration to “phase out” coal watered down to “phase down”. COP26 President Alok Sharma appeared to hold back tears as he announced the last minute switch to attendees.
Green Eggs and Pork Award – Winner: U.S. Congress and President Biden for the Orwellian-themed “Inflation Reduction Act”. Even the Congressional Budget Office’s analysis showed it was never about reducing inflation. It was always about “climate change”. The IRA includes $369 billion of borrowed/printed taxpayer money over ten years for “clean energy” (read: “climate change”), including another ~$250 billion for our favorite “renewable” non-solutions: wind and solar. Solyndra ($528 million taxpayer bonfire) redux?
The Uber Gaslighting Award – Winner: Europe. For almost two decades, Europe’s environmental and energy policies have constrained developing nations’ abilities to exploit their domestic fossil fuel resources to advance their citizen’s prosperity. After suffering the consequences of their own self-inflicted energy crisis, Germany and the EU spent the summer outbidding that same developing world for natural gas. When the music stopped in the game of energy musical chairs EU Greens created, the wealthier EU printed money and secured the first seats. That put Pakistanis economically out of the game and they sat in the dark.
The Billabyongyang Award - Winner: Post-Modern Neo-Environmentalism which is responsible for the video from Australia below. Many rural North Koreans struggle to survive through winter for lack of food. Some relief arrives when the insects appear in Spring. While rural North Koreans eat grasshoppers for lack of protein, “progressive” “environmentalists” in advanced nations simultaneously constrain Europe’s leader in meat production (Netherlands) to reduce nitrogen emissions and promote insect eating.
Now for the brighter side of the moon. There were many good reasons for optimism in 2022.
Polling in early 2023 shows that the toll taken by Europe’s self-inflicted energy crisis resulted in a significant favorable shift in public opinion regarding nuclear power. There were significant scientific achievements that have enormous future implications for decoupling environmental impact from economic growth and human prosperity.
There were hopeful signs for future shifts in the regulatory landscape for nuclear energy in the western world. And some in the developing world decided they could no longer quietly tolerate the hypocrisy displayed by western leaders who could no longer hide the logical end-result of their own environmental and energy policies.
We are happy to announce the awards for our four most optimistic stories of the year.
The Overdue Award – Winners: NuScale for the innovation and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for (finally) approving a design certification for an advanced nuclear reactor design. The achievement hopefully marks a major shift for the NRC and the first design certification of a new era of small modular reactors (SMRs) we’ve anticipated for more than a decade. While NRC wins the award, our congratulations goes to NuScale for persistence and innovation.
Courageous Leader Award – Winner: Uganda President Museveni, for calling Europeans hypocrites before COP27:
"We will not accept one rule for them and another rule for us. Europe's failure to meet its climate goals should not be Africa's problem. It is morally bankrupt for Europeans to expect to take Africa's fossil fuels for their own energy production but refuse to countenance African use of those same fuels for theirs."
Scientific Achievement Award – Winner: Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Lab, for achieving fusion ignition. Even if no one reading this edition ever receives a single electron from commercial-scale fusion reactors (a coin flip if you’re 65 or older), the breakthrough achievement in scientific history has enormous future potential. In the meantime, we have no shortage of fission technologies and fuel that work, with more on the way. Watch for “environmentalists” to attempt to stand in the way of traditional and advanced forms of fission reactors under the auspices that “fusion is just around the corner and solves the nuclear ‘waste’ problem. Let’s just wait!”. Don’t buy it.
Backfire of the Year Award - Winner: “Scientist Rebellion” activists who glued themselves to the floor at the Autostadt museum and car showroom opposite Volkswagen's main factory in Wolfsburg. Ironically, they owe their win to VW leadership who showed courage and refused to allow the protesters to play victim for the cameras. We hope other corporations are paying attention. There’s a lesson to be learned here.
We close with a call to our readers. We can already tell by your comments you’re an astute, well-read lot. Be sure to point out potential 2023 nominees in the comments section of our articles. We would not want to miss the opportunity to recognize those whose absurd or heroic actions warrant nomination for next year’s Awards.
(Editor’s note: some readers may wonder why Paul Ehrlich’s appearance on CBS’ 60 minutes did not make the cut. It missed the deadline by a day. Sorry, you’ll just have to remain an environMENTAL subscriber until this time next year. Rest assured that with his appearance, Dr. Ehrlich nominated himself for the 2023 environMENTAL awards before the sun had set on the first day of the year.)
Thanks to our readers for an amazing first 6 weeks. Next up, a critical examination of “Sustainability”.
No one beats Justin Trudeau, the only person on the planet unaware there is a business case for LNG.
The first hint: leaders of two of the largest economies on earth fly for hours to come see you to ask for LNG betrays that there might be a business case.
Terry Etam had what i think was the best comment on this, that when the German Chancellor came looking for usable energy, Trudeau handed him a crayon drawing of a hydrogen plan.
Fantastic compilation. I mentioned several strong candidates in my ESG score post: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-raise-your-esg-score The west is enabling Azerbaijan to attack Armenia because they don't want Russian oil, but Russia merely sells it to the Azeris who then resell it to the west: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-visit-a-warzone-part-2