Liquid sadness

Note: Many thanks for the headline to Kattla, who may be an artsy type, but who knows very well what her paints and brushes are made from.

Ten days ago I wrote that the transition crusaders are getting increasingly desperate and their attempts at keeping their fantasy reality from crumbling will intensify. Indeed, this week blessed us with yet another hysterical report from the IEA, this spearhead of the transition, which essentially urges the oil and gas industry to commit suicide in the name of that reality.

“Oil and gas producers around the world need to make profound decisions about their future place in the global energy sector. The industry needs to commit to genuinely helping the world meet its energy needs and climate goals – which means letting go of the illusion that implausibly large amounts of carbon capture are the solution.”

The above is the latest from the IEA’s Fatih Birol on the release of a “major new special report from the IEA that shows how the industry can take a more responsible approach and contribute positively to the new energy economy.”

It’s major. It’s new. It’s special. And it wants the oil and gas industry to kill itself because there’s just no other word for it. Imagine how desperate you must be to become so blunt in your calls. And so very blatantly dishonest.

In its report, the IEA states that the oil and gas industry “provides more than half of global energy supply”. Of course, 80+% is indeed more than half but it is quite a bit more than half. Just a random example of abusing words to prop up a fantasy.

(Note: I am reminded by a reader that the 80+ % actually includes coal. Oil and gas do account for 50+%. My mistake. The next paragraph stands.)

That 80+% is really a lot and it’s not going down on its own. So, we get “Implausibly large amounts of carbon capture”. Implausibly large, eh? The IEA must have got a lot of angry calls from activists against carbon capture, whose problem does not seem to be CO2 as such but the oil and gas industry as such, whatever its emissions.

Indeed, the IEA has become a loudspeaker for climate activists the world over, as if they are not loud enough themselves. The problem is that loudness is not enough to keep a fantasy alive. Neither are verifiable lies such as the claim that the transition is a treasure trove of opportunities.

It’s hard to keep insisting on that when so-called sustainable funds are dropping the name sustainable from their names — and sustainable companies from their portfolios — because of investor outflows.