What happens if Russia never turns the taps back on to Europe?

As Putin wages a war of aggression against Ukraine, critical self-inflicted errors have left the Western world exposed and vulnerable, and climate change targets more out of reach than ever before.

This week, despite the palm trees, sea breezes and ample availability of high-end cocktails, in the swish Egyptian resort town of Sharm El-Sheik, all is not well.

It’s here that thousands are presently gathering for this year’s iteration of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Committee of Parties meeting. COP 27, as this year’s meeting is known, struggled from the get-go. Delegates couldn’t even agree on what should be on the agenda.

It was no surprise then, that the most pressing issue to both address climate change and global peace was left off the agenda. That is, energy security in a world where Russia is waging a war of aggression on the European continent, and China is flexing its muscle.

What exactly did European countries think would happen when they shuttered nuclear plants in favour of a pipeline operated by Vladimir Putin? What, exactly, would power European homes if shit ever hit the fan, as it has done so this year?

To date, climate policy has willfully ignored that energy supply has always equated to political power. And today, the world still lacks low-cost, readily available substitute goods for carbon energy. This is a reality that should never have been ignored while the world works to develop affordable alternatives.

But for years, merely raising this issue was likely to get someone labeled a climate change denier. The result of the lack of balanced discourse has been a sharp decline in the production of carbon energy in Western countries and an increase in reliance on energy produced by despotic or autocratic nations.

October’s European Union inflation numbers provide a stark illustration of the cost of this ignorance. According to an article from Global News, “Annual inflation reached 10.7 per cent in October….up from 9.9% in September and the highest since statistics began to be compiled for the eurozone in 1997.”

This is due in large part to the sharp rise in fuel prices due to Russia curtailing the delivery of carbon energy to most of Europe.

Boggling the mind is the sheer volume of policymakers who believe this situation will reverse by itself. This prevailing wisdom believes that if Western sanctions against Russia hold over the winter, at some point in the near future, the pressure of that lost wealth on Russian oligarchs will combine with the unpopularity of Russian conscription measures to end the war in Ukraine. Everything will get back to the way it was.

But the current state of geopolitics suggests this may be an impossibility.

So the Western world now needs to ask itself, what happens if Russia doesn't turn the taps back on? 

Make no mistake, this is a distinct possibility. Western sanctions have caused the Russians to find other buyers, and there’s no reason to think that this shift couldn’t be somewhat permanent. China has found a cheap, reliable source of energy and fuel for its national agenda. India has benefitted as well. And African nations, many of whose post-colonial perspectives are rightly skeptical of paternalistic Western policies, are weighing the prospect of a stable supply of energy against Western sanctions. At the same time, the cartel of oil-producing nations, OPEC, has little to benefit from easing the pain of rich Western nations that have curtailed their own production. Having the West literally over an (oil) barrel only serves the interest of countries that have long opposed a global democratic geopolitical hegemony.

Simply put, we’ve got a big problem on our hands, and it looks like this.

First, expensive, scarce energy results in societal unrest. Inflation driven by carbon fuel prices and a lack of alternatives has left people hurting and angry. Angry people who can’t afford to eat and heat their homes are ripe for radicalization. Last week, 4000 fascist sympathizers gathered in Italy. American scholars are warning of the same in their nation. Across the world, the appetite for extreme far-right policies is increasing. This phenomenon, in and of itself, should be enough to urge advocates of far-left climate policy into sobriety. Fascist leaders aren’t exactly known for supporting things that are in the best interest of the world, like effective climate policy or human rights.

Second, energy insecurity is a massive hindrance to the growth of developing nations. In the post-colonial era, Western countries have typically approached the global south not as peers, but as locations for photo ops for politicians with saviour complexes to dole out culturally insensitive development aid. Cheap reliable energy and financing from Russia and China is shifting the sympathies of many of these countries away from the Western geopolitical order and to these traditionally anti-Western nations. Pushing for Russia and China to reduce their carbon emissions is not top of mind when it comes to their foreign policy postures towards these nations.

Third, the deficit spending frenzy that many Western countries embarked upon over the last three years has left many governments with less cushion capacity for economic shocks. There is less wherewithal - read, capital - to develop projects that could make the energy security of Western countries more resilient. Even if the West wanted to build out more projects to address climate change and energy security, it's harder to do being relatively broke.

Fourth, the energy crisis has meant some countries are reverting to high carbon energy production. In Germany, coal powered electricity plants are being turned back on, or lives being extended. This is a huge blow to climate progress.

And most significantly, the West’s lack of energy security has emboldened despots like Putin. Behind closed doors, there are concerns about Europe’s ability to maintain energy sanctions against Russia given public unrest and concern over energy prices. The choice between an energy-pooror electorate and maintaining sanctions will be a real test for many Western leaders. 

Failed Western climate policy has put us in a situation where little progress has been made on actually reducing greenhouse gas emissions, while the Western world is praying for a warm winter in Europe so that sanctions can hold. A new path is needed.

This involves Western climate lobbies finally recognizing that energy security is core to solving climate change. And that means both aggressively developing low-cost, widely available alternatives to carbon energy while shifting the purchase of carbon energy to nations with rigorous environmental and human rights standards. Canada and the United States should be urgently trying to develop projects which have been shelved to cover the carbon energy needs of allied countries who are dependent on OPEC and Russia for their energy needs, while developing alternatives.

Anything less will ensure the failure of climate policy and may condemn the Western world to living under the thumb of autocracies that have taken the question of energy security more seriously than we have.

Suffice to say, there’s a lot riding under those under the palm trees in Sharm getting this right.