The 2023 environMENTAL Awards
The year's wackiest, tackiest and most cringeworthy "green" stories of 2023
“In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.” - Friedrich Nietzsche
At the intersection of environmental, energy and economic policy, 2023 was a year filled with drama, paradox and insanity. The year started with world renowned climate scientist Greta Thunberg leading a “last stand” in Lutzerath, Germany where wind turbines were knocked down to expand a coal mine. It ended with the global offshore wind industry in tatters, renewable energy stocks and indices in Europe and America battered, and Germany de-industrializing at a growing pace. As if this weren’t enough, (EVs) began piling up on dealer lots, with major manufacturers losing money on each unit sold, and hundreds of U.S. dealers refusing to sell them.
Through it all, even with the enormous taxpayer-subsidized growth in “alternative” energy since 2000, global CO2 emissions actually increased in 2023. In December the Global Carbon Project projected that global CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning reached 36.8 billion tons in 2023, up 1.1% over 2022.
One month after we launched this Substack, we posted the inaugural 2022 environMENTAL Awards with the intent of starting an annual tradition. The topics we cover can be sobering. Each January, we’ll take a look back at the year just completed and bring a bit of levity to the situation.
This year, we’ve refined the format. The Ten Green Dog Pile Awards are for 2023’s ten wackiest, tackiest, and most cringeworthy stories. We give a Green Jacket Award to three stories that gave us hope for a brighter future where energy, environmental and economic matters are concerned.
Without further ado, we present the 2023 environMENTAL Awards, a baker’s dozen of the editor’s choice of stories that best represented the craziness and the hopefulness of the year. We hope you enjoy.
The Green Dog Piles:
Timelessness Award – winner: Paul Ehrlich
The year began with 60 Minutes interviewing Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich on New Years Day. From the publication of The Population Bomb into the mid-1970s, Ehrlich made some pretty bold and scary predictions for the future of humanity and earth. On the first Earth Day in 1970, he warned that, “in ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish."
In a 1971 speech, he predicted that: "By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people. If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.” In 1975 he commented on the potential of harnessing energy from fusion, famously stating, “Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.”
In his 60 Minutes interview, Ehrlich, age 90 and likely sensing an opportunity to add to his doomsaying legacy on the public stage one more time, gave us another zinger: “humanity is very busily sitting on a limb that we’re sawing off”.
It's been about 20,000 days since Ehrlich published The Population Bomb. Over that period a stopped clock would have been right 40,000 times. Enough said.
Naked Empress Award – winner: U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm
In April, U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee. She was asked by Senator Joni Ernst (R – Ethanol) whether she supports the Biden administration’s goal of a 100% electric vehicle (EV) fleet for the U.S. military …. by 2030. Granholm responded, “I do, and I think we can get there, as well”.
Predictably, Doomberg had the world’s best take on the unseriousness of the Energy Secretary’s response. Using the U.S. Army’s famous M1 Abrams tank and the specifications for GM’s state of the art “Ultium” battery in the GMC Hummer EV, Doomberg’s Substack post Charge! demonstrated the absurdity of the proposition. An electric version of the 60 ton diesel powered M1 Abrams would need a 40 ton battery to replace the power in its 500 gallon diesel tank and maintain similar field performance, range and capability. For reference, 500 gallons of diesel weighs 3,550 pounds.
National Green Kevorkian Award – winner: Germany
After closing the last three of its remaining nuclear plants in April in the midst of an energy crisis of its own making, Germany lapped the field for this Dog Pile. By June, German Economy and Climate Minister Robert Habeck was warning the situation for Germany industry was in dire condition if Ukraine’s gas transit agreement with Russia isn’t extended after it expires at the end of next year, noting Germany may be forced to wind down or switch off industrial capacity. By October the International Monetary Fund predicted Germany’s recession would be deeper than previously thought and would be Europe’s worst performing economy for 2023. In November, global consulting firm Deloitte reported that two in three German firms had at least partly relocated their operations abroad due to Germany’s self-inflicted energy problems.
Five European nations allow assisted suicide for terminally ill patients, including Germany. Germany wasn’t even ill yet actually attempted to commit it.
Best Climate Performance – winner: unidentified climate activist (NYC Times Square).
In June, smoke from Canadian wildfires poured into America’s upper Midwest and Northeast, making air quality awful in a number of major cities. Cue the climate activists.
Choosing a day when the sky in Times Square was at 8.7 on the apocalypse scale from “climate change-driven wildfires!” was genius staging. Gluing yourself to streets and buildings, throwing paint on precious art, and blocking roads are all “so 2022”. “Taps” would have been a more appropriate song, but it’s not obvious to us she was up for it.
Scientific Breakthrough Award – winner: American Psychological Association (APA)
APA wins the award for their study finding that climate change trauma impacts babies in the womb. “Research shows that the effect of extreme weather events resulting from climate change can interrupt normal fetal development and lead to a greater risk of anxiety or depressive disorder, ADHD, educational deficits, and lower levels of self-control, as well as psychiatric disorders later in life.
Maybe the APA had FOMO (fear of missing out) on the opportunity to be among the adored rock stars of science. As we often say, when everything is proof of your hypothesis (“climate change”), nothing is.
Greenwashing Enron Award – winner: Voluntary “carbon offset” projects
In January, The Guardian published a story about a nine-month investigation into “carbon offsets” in conjunction with German magazine Die Zeit and non-profit Source Material. Their investigation found that ~90% of the rainforest offset credits certified by Verra, one of the world’s leading carbon offset certificate standards “are likely to be phantom credits and do not represent genuine carbon reductions.”
DC-based Verra has issued 1 billion carbon credits, approves 75% of all voluntary carbon offsets, and its rainforest protection program accounts for 40% of the credits it approves. The investigation also found that few Verra rainforest projects showed evidence of reduced deforestation, with one analysis showing that 94% of credits had no benefit to the climate. In May, Verra’s CEO offset himself, but somehow the show goes on.
Beautiful Loser Award – winner: Lucid Motors
Lucid makes a beautiful EV. It delivered 1,456 of them in its third quarter last year. With revenue of $138 million (down ~30% vs. prior Q3 2022) and net losses of $631 million, it lost $430,000 for every car it sold in the third quarter. Lucid, of course, plans to make it up on volume.
Fallen Angel Award – winner: Greta Thunberg
She started the year as Green Activism’s Army General, rallying climate protesters to the symbolic (and most ironic) protest at Lutzerath, Germany, the small village where wind turbines were being knocked down to expand a coal mine. But in October, after a Twitter post in which her climate “intersectionality” crossed the bizarre barrier into a land involving anti-Semitic symbol stuffed toys, her stock dropped precipitously. We were already past “Peak Greta”. We can only hope this hastens her departure from being anywhere near the policy arena.
Choice of Venue Award – winners: Extinction Rebellion, Rave Revolution, and Scientist Rebellion
On August 27th, three of the usual climate activist groups staged a protest blocking eager Burning Man festivalgoers’ entrance on the two-lane road into the Pyramid Lake Paiute Indian Reservation. Their choice of venue was too smart by half. When the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribal Rangers arrived (about 40 minutes after the first 911 calls from angry motorists), they were in no mood to treat the protesters with the kid gloves seen throughout western Europe. It is reasonable to question whether the Tribal Rangers were a bit heavy handed ramming protester’s signs with a truck and drawing a firearm. The incident was quickly forgotten in the alkaline mud mosh pit and first-world comfort crisis that ensued on the desert floor in the days that followed.
Religious Awakening Award – winner: Blackrock CEO Larry Fink
After gushing over ESG in his annual letters to investors and CEO’s for several years, Fink finally got religion in 2023. While the $4 billion+ of investor flight over the backlash against ESG was a fraction of Blackrock’s trillions under management, it was enough to cause Fink’s religious conversion. By June, his tune had changed markedly: “I don't use the word ESG any more, because it's been entirely weaponized ... by the far left and weaponized by the far right”. After using Blackrock’s capital and influence as part of that weaponization, Fink laid down his ESG arms at the first punch in the nose from capital flight. Apparently some religious convictions hold up better under pressure than others.
And now, for the three Green Jackets:
People & Planet Hero Award – winner: Dr. Chris Keefer
It is easy to get discouraged about the overwhelming inertia behind the Climate Industrial Complex, and the long-odds of any grassroots group or effort setting it on its backside. In 2023, Ontario emergency room physician Chris Keefer and the grassroots group Canadians For Nuclear Energy (C4NE) saw years of tireless efforts pay off as the Ontario government made big new bets on nuclear power.
After announcing a doubling of capacity at Bruce Power (the largest nuclear power station in the world), the Province announced it was adding three more small modular reactors (SMRs) to the existing planned SMR at Darlington. Ontario Power Group (OPG) submitted a feasibility study to the government that would allow the refurbishment of Pickering, the oldest Canadian nuclear power station.
These are amazing turns of events in any western nation where nuclear energy has been sidelined for the last 20+ years. There many other important contributors to this effort within C4NE and its allies (special mention to Mark Nelson). But we recognize and reward Dr. Keefer for the years of amazing grassroots work that led to the turnabout, which seems to be contagious. At COP 28, twenty nations committed to a tripling of nuclear power worldwide by 2050, something considered impossible five years ago.
Whether nuclear expands rapidly or gets bogged down in Administrative Statism™ and regulatory quicksand, Dr. Keefer and C4NE showed that effective, civil, reasoned, and dogged small advocacy groups can literally change the course of history. As our friends in Saskatchewan say “right on!”
Green Guy Fawkes Award – winners: London ULEZ protesters
The Ultra Low Emissions Zone (ULEZ) announced by London Mayor Boris Johnson in 2015 and implemented a year ahead of plan by his successor Sadiq Khan is a creeping, regressive carbon tax. What began as an add on to the London Congestion tax raised almost a quarter billion British pounds in 2022. The ULEZ tax hammers service providers like “White Van Man”, a common British term for the working-class people in white transit work vans who drive into London to fix your boiler, broken pipes or appliances.
In 2023, Khan expanded the ULEZ tax to cover all 32 London boroughs. As it expanded into increasingly working-class boroughs, Khan’s subjects finally had enough. All manner of civil disobedience ensued. We don’t condone property damage as a way of solving conflict. We do, however, note that Western Charlaticians should consider the situation instructive. There is a limit to green tyranny hiding behind scientific “consensus” and “altruism”.
Refusal to Cave Award – winner: COP 28 President Sultan Al Jaber
Former Irish President Mary Robinson is the chair of the Elders group and a former UN special envoy for climate change. In late November at an online pre-COP28 Summit called She Changes Climate, Robinson questioned COP28 President Sultan Al-Jaber about Abu Dhabi National Oil Company’s (Adnoc, which Al-Jaber heads) plans to expand investments in versus “phase out” fossil fuels. Robinson told Al-Jaber, “That is the one decision that COP28 can take and in many ways, because you’re head of Adnoc, you could actually take it with more credibility.” She then pressed, “will you lead on phasing out?”
Al-Jaber’s rather direct answers did not please Robinson and set off the usual hair-on-fire wave of saber rattling from regressive progressive legacy media. The comment that sparked the blaze actually won the Green Jacket for the COP28 President.(emphasis added): “Please help me, show me the roadmap for a phase-out of fossil fuel that will allow for sustainable socioeconomic development, unless you want to take the world back into caves.” Ms. Robinson said “I think we can” but failed to provide any such plan in response.
You can dislike him because he heads a Middle Eastern oil company, for his country’s human rights record, or any other reason you’d like. But ignoring the validity of his point in favor of the prevailing narrative is Poor Judgment.
“Like” this post or you’ll be forced to take violin lessons with our winner of the Green Dog Pile for “Best Climate Performance”.
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Didn't realise Ehrlich was still alive. His 1970s doomsaying was the background to my childhood and is the reason I'm a sceptic and an anti-leftie ever since.
Needless to say, Mr Erlich is the apropos poster child for 50 years of environmental insanity.