How to run yourself into the ground in 5 easy steps

Self-preservation, science teaches us, is one of the strongest human instincts. We are capable of pretty much anything to save our lives and we are capable of anything, without the pretty much, to save the lives of our offspring to ensure the extended life of our genes.

Politicians are a special sub-species of humans with strongly developed career-preservation instinct. And just like the general human self-preservation instinct, it might sometimes lead to death. Of their career, of course.

I believe nowhere is this clearer than in energy policies, and more specifically energy transition policies. Yes, sorry, but it’s energy transition time again, because things are moving increasingly faster and they are moving downwards.

Once the political class decided that the planet is in danger and the only way to avoid a planetary crisis was to move beyond fossil fuels and into minerals and metals, the stage was set for what is shaping up to be the most colossal, or maybe epic, energy crisis history has ever seen.

It all started with environmentalism, a benevolent movement aimed at curbing the destructive effects human activity was having on the environment. Mining regulations have become increasingly stringent in the most developed parts of the world and so have fossil fuel extraction regulations.

This has certainly been a positive development even though its effects on the planet as a whole have been questionable because what the developed world actually did was outsource most of its mining and fossil fuel extraction. This is especially true of Europe, of course, because the U.S. still gets a lot of the oil and all the gas it consumes from local production.

Environmentalism then evolved into the climate change movement with an almost exclusive focus on the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions. Regulations became even more stringent. Increasingly radical movements sprang up from the environmentalism pool demanding things like the immediate suspension of all oil and gas production everywhere in the world.