Obama Led Germany Into Putin’s Energy Trap

America’s exciting new president inspired the world to junk carbon taxes in favor of green pork.

Vladimir Putin’s energy war is real but undeclared. The West’s counter energy war is declared but not real. Doubtful is whether the latest convoluted U.S. plan to cap Mr. Putin’s oil receipts will be any different

Meanwhile, the phoniness of the West’s own energy riposte is of the opposite variety, all talk and no action, as manifested in a simple fact: So far Mr. Putin’s energy revenues are higher than before the war.

Let’s understand how we really got here. Germany’s mistake didn’t lie in buying gas from Russia, but in denying itself access to alternative supplies—by banning fracking, by not building LNG terminals. Somehow this was supposed to prove its devotion to the climate cause and renewables.

Unmentionably, the sainted Barack Obama was actually the pivotal figure, abandoning on behalf of the Western world the idea of fighting climate change with taxes in favor of pretending to fight it with handouts to alternative energy interests.

America’s exciting new president, on the eve of taking office, revealed a new direction in climate policy, focused on subsidizing solar and wind rollouts. The same spirit, a few years later, would fully infuse Germany’s Energiewende.

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