Europe Faces Green Energy Immiseration. Trump Is About to Offer It a Lifeline

Teddy Roosevelt believed in speaking softly and carrying a big stick. Donald Trump will never speak softly, or even politely, but he will soon pack the power inherent in presiding over the world's number one producer of oil and gas.

Fifty years ago, the US was the world's largest importer of oil, as demonstrated by the pain suffered during the Arab oil embargo. Now, largely due to fracking, any such future threat is moot while Texas's Permian basin, in effect the world's fifth largest oil producer, is expected soon to be responsible for half of all US oil output.

The question now is whether other western countries will embrace this development as a way to break dependence on autocratic regimes like Russia, Iran, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Particularly promising is natural gas, which provides reliable energy that produces an estimated 40 per cent less carbon dioxide (CO2) than coal and 30 per cent less than oil.

Continue reading the entire article at The Telegraph (paywalled)

Joel Kotkin is presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University and senior research fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas