Connecting the Dots With the Energy Crisis

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We all feel more pain at the pump these days. I’ve been fortunate enough to spend my adult life in various oil-producing flyover regions with relatively low gas prices. However, as of April 29, the average nationwide price for a gallon of gas was $4.159, with some states hitting over $5 per gallon. That smarts.

In my town, we had a 30-cent jump within a few days of Russia invading Ukraine, and then prices inched up another 30 cents per gallon over the next few weeks. They went up another 10 cents this past week. None of this is surprising. Even though I live in an energy-producing state, oil and gas are traded on a global scale, and any supply constrictions hit us all.

For me, so far, this has been frustrating and annoying but not disastrous.

I haven’t had to make any serious lifestyle changes yet. But I’m watching the global picture. Situational awareness is vital to prepping, and just because something hasn’t happened in the United States yet, doesn’t mean that it never will. Seeing events unfold in other countries may give us clues as to what may happen here.

Pakistan has had rolling blackouts recently, with even the wealthier urban areas experiencing at least four hours without power per day and much of the rural part of the country experiencing 12 hours without power per day. Pakistan has always been more susceptible to issues with their power grid. They have had rolling blackouts in the past due to either power plant equipment breaking as a result of poor maintenance, or nonpayment of fuel bills. With fuel prices rising for everyone worldwide, countries that have always been on the edge of the power grid are now falling off.

Pakistan is not alone in its loss of electricity. India has had rolling blackouts as well. Like Pakistan, their poor infrastructure maintenance and inability to produce enough coal for their own use has left them on the edges of the global marketplace. 

And it’s not only Third World countries dealing with rolling blackouts.

California has been notorious for years for its unreliable power grid. 

But Midwesterners may soon face rolling blackouts too. The Midcontinent Independent Systems Operator (MISO) warned that they expect to have capacity shortfalls this summer throughout the Midwest. While the Chicago metro area has produced much of its own energy for years, they have decided to shut down coal-fired power plants in the suburbs in 2022. Chicago residents assume, like many urban/suburban dwellers throughout the developed world, that energy companies can just switch to renewables at the drop of a hat.  

This will not happen. 

I spent a few years working in the energy industry. I lived in Illinois for fourteen years. It is not the Southwest, with its abundant solar energy. It is not the High Plains, with wind that’ll rip your face off half the year while producing energy. The upper Midwest is cloudy and gloomy, and living there requires an awful lot of heating. 

To deny the need for high-energy fuels such as coal, natural gas, or nuclear power in Chicago, with its metro area of nearly 10 million people, is to deny reality.  

Governments have already started rationing energy. Italy just announced that schools and public buildings will not be allowed to heat their buildings above 19 ⁰C (66 ⁰F) or to cool their buildings below 25 ⁰C (77 ⁰F). Currently, they import about 45% of their natural gas from Russia. The Italian government wants to be able to comply should the European Union institute a ban on Russian oil and gas.  

Being unable to set your thermostat below 77 or above 66 isn’t horrible. I have lived that way mostly by choice for years. But this type of mandate sets a disturbing precedent. With Covid, governments worldwide took on excessive powers in the name of combating a global health crisis. Now, they’re taking on more powers in the name of combating the Russians.

And I can’t help but notice that these steps taken by the Italians to combat the Russians dovetail nicely with the goals of the climate change crowd.

(Make sure you read our free QUICKSTART Guide to what to eat when the power goes out. Electricity “rationing” is a very real threat in the near future of America.)

Let me be clear: I think Putin has plenty of his own reasons for attacking Ukraine.

I don’t think there’s collusion between him and the Western elites bent on destroying the fossil fuels industry. However, I do think that the Western elites are absolutely capable of using the political situation between Russia and Ukraine as an excuse to force the common people of their own countries to lower their standards of living. 

They don’t try that hard to hide it. You can watch discussion panels hosted by the World Bank and the World Economic Forum online. 

For the most part, the talks are boring and full of doublespeak. However, by reading between the lines, you can garner some insight into the goals and mindsets of these incredibly powerful individuals.

The World Bank hosted an online event on April 21, 2022, called Transitioning Economies, Transforming Climate: Financing Climate Action for a Green and Inclusive Future. You can watch it here because, again, like the World Economic Forum, the World Bank does not hide its agenda.  

They are pushing a carbon-neutral future.

Western government and financial representatives had talks with various officials from developing countries about planning a carbon-neutral future.  

The World Bank’s Climate Change Action Plan says that it takes money from the “world community” (so from various governments) and then distributes it to “world goods.” They use fancy terms that sound nice, but all it really means is sending tax money from First World countries to pet projects based in Third World countries but still run by government and industry elites from First World countries.

Throughout the 1.5-hour-long series of interviews, the lack of technical details was noticeable. I only worked in oil and gas for a few years, but it was long enough to appreciate the incredibly complex technology that goes into not only production but also storage and distribution. 

Because wind and solar electricity are only produced intermittently, battery storage would become a vital part of the electrical grid. Multiple retired engineers have crunched the numbers and have found that to maintain our current standard of living, Americans would need to spend hundreds of trillions of dollars to remake the electrical grid.

And this doesn’t even address the question of whether the rare earth metals needed to create batteries for this carbon-neutral system exist. Most batteries currently used in electric vehicles, for example, are lithium-ion batteries, and whether or not the world holds enough lithium to convert all existing vehicles to electric is highly questionable.

We live in a world that would have seemed magical to the vast majority of humans that have ever lived. 

We’re not spending hours every day carrying water in buckets or grinding grain by hand. We just flip switches and crank faucets, and things happen. This is the result of a few generations taking the time to understand the details of how these things work and putting care and attention into setting up the infrastructure that has made modern life so relatively clean and comfortable.

Now, however, anyone insisting on attention to detail regarding the shift to a carbon-neutral future is being excoriated in the press. In 2020 Akio Toyoda, current President and grandson of the founder of Toyota in Japan, a man who has spent his life living and breathing the automotive industry and technology, gave a speech voicing his practical concerns about shifting to all-electric vehicles.

Mr. Toyoda expressed concern that the regulations were changing too quickly for companies to adapt without laying off many employees. As a responsible employer, he didn’t want to do this. He also pointed out that electric vehicles are only carbon neutral if the electricity they use is carbon neutral. Japan’s electricity comes primarily from coal-powered plants. Mr. Toyoda explained that, in Japan’s case, electric vehicles would actually cause an uptick in carbon dioxide production.  

These are reasonable concerns, but Mr. Toyoda was widely criticized in the press afterwards for lacking vision. But again, no real solutions were presented, only vague platitudes about how “the technology would catch up.”  

“Technology” isn’t something magical you get from waving a wand.

Advances are made by real people, putting real brainpower into specific problems. 

If the people who have spent most of their lives in the energy and automotive industries say something can’t be done, or at least not for a long time, a bunch of bankers and activists aren’t going to be able to change that by wishing hard enough.  

But the climate change alarmists seem to think this is all beside the point. They don’t like carbon emissions, they’re going to change them, and if it sends 95% of the world back to the Stone Age, they really don’t care. 

During the online event hosted by the World Bank, Dr. Rhian-Mari Thomas, Chief Executive of the Green Finance Institute, said that there are “no intellectually coherent high-carbon pathways to prosperity.”

This is patronizing nonsense of the worst kind. European countries became what they are today thanks to coal and the steam engine. To pretend otherwise is dismissive of history and dishonest toward the developing nations trying to figure out how to make it into the First World themselves.  

The environmental problems with fossil fuels are real. But the practical constraints of wind and solar are real, too. We should absolutely keep looking for ways to make extraction less environmentally damaging. We should focus on efficiency. We should focus on mitigating the very real problems people that live surrounded by oil and gas facilities have to endure. (Case in point: the fracking in my area has turned my well water orange. Country people that gripe about fracking have legitimate complaints).

We should not be closing down power plants and cutting off pipelines. We cannot generate power overnight. If we continue to restrict power generation, people will freeze to death this winter. 

We are already facing famine conditions. What happens if we cannot dry, freeze, or transport what food does get produced?

I try not to be too negative, but sometimes it’s impossible not to connect the dots and see disturbing patterns.

The First World is regulating itself into dependence on electric energy production, which, as mentioned above, requires battery storage. The batteries require lithium and rare earth metals. When we stumbled out of Afghanistan last summer, we handed potentially the world’s largest lithium supply to the Chinese.

Between a regulatory environment that exists in hopes and dreams rather than reality, and stupid geopolitical moves, we’ve been painted into a corner in terms of energy.  

Modern energy production is incredibly complex.

All most of us can do right now is think about what we need on a daily basis. Personally, I have one small gas-powered generator to run my freezers should we lose power for an extended period in the summer. My neighbors and I have set up a plan to pump water. If I had money to burn and more technical knowledge, I’d probably look into a solar-powered generator for my freezers. But that’s just me. I wouldn’t know what to tell someone living in a high rise, dependent on the grid. Your best option, in that case, might be to develop a bug-out plan.

We’re all in different situations. Prioritize. 

What kinds of appliances do you have? 

How well is your home insulated? 

If you produce much of your own food, would it be more practical to dry your food, as opposed to relying on a freezer? 

Learn what you can, while you can. The world is changing rapidly.  

What do you think?

Do you see a disturbing pattern in all of this? Do you think it’s just another conspiracy theory? Let’s talk about it in the comments.

About Marie Hawthorne

A lover of novels and cultivator of superb apple pie recipes, Marie spends her free time writing about the world around her.

Picture of Marie Hawthorne

Marie Hawthorne

A lover of novels and cultivator of superb apple pie recipes, Marie spends her free time writing about the world around her.

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  • Well said Marie.
    If anyone really takes a good look at carbon neutral thing, there is no magic wand to be had. Everything from getting those much needed rare earth elements out of the ground, shipped to the processing facilities, refined, to production and disposal has to be taken into account.

    The one thing you never hear green energy proponents say is in order to get even close to carbon neutral, everyone would have to reduce their carbon foot print. Everything from how far you drive, to how far your food travels. No more 2,400sqft homes. No more big screen TVs. No more plastic pumpkins traveling half way around the world.
    In short, everything would have to be either local, or more expensive. Or both.
    As preppers, that comes as no surprise to us.

    I recall a few years ago, someone at the Energy Department suggested setting thermostats at 77 degrees . . . and dang near everyone’s heads exploded.

    • That’s what the CBDC is for. You’ll get your carbon allowance and once that’s exceeded, no more heat for you.
      I wish I was kidding.

        • The blood of tyrants . . . the Tree of Liberty . . . Thank God for the Constitution-loving Marines.

    • Carbon non-sense. This is just an effort by the “haves” who have only gotten “more” and now want the unwashed masses (us) to cower before them. After all they know better!
      They are strictly “consumers,” they “produce” nothing but fear. What’s even more ridicules is there are people who actually believe what they are saying! And since they control the narrative via their proxies…the flock of “sheeple” continues to grow.
      I could make a list of complete non-sensical spew that they have contrived, but if your on this site…you already know.
      The “yoke of the oppressor.” How many wear it proudly!

    • I’ve worked in the energy and sector for the last 25 odd years. The energy companies have led the way in making changes to make the process more efficient, safer, and have spent literally hundreds of billions of dollars to make the process more ecologically sound. We use technology that most people wouldn’t believe to prevent leaks and spills, and capture carbon, and anything else you can imagine. But very few outside the energy sector know about it, and wouldn’t admit it if they did, because oil and gas are the easy villains and target for governments/ the media to pin the blame on. The truth is that our society does not run without oil and gas.

      On a side note: EV’s (electric vehicles) that all the greenies are promoting and that Mr. Biden seems to be trying to legislate as the answer have a lot of issues that nobody seems to look at. In addition to all of the battery/ production issues, nobody seems to be looking at the simple fact that it would require not only a substantial increase in production of electricity, but the ability to distribute it as well. The power requirements for the average household would probably mean that most houses would require a new service to feed their new cars. A new service would mean new lines back to the transformer. New lines for a majority of houses would mean a larger transformer. Larger transformers mean new lines back to the substations. More power from the substations means larger generating facilities. How long did it take to get electricity to all of America 80-100 years ago? How long would it take today to replace a majority of the electrical lines presently out there? This is not an overnight project, and we haven’t even laid the groundwork for the required infrastructure upgrades – while Mr. Biden is trying to legislate this into being in the next 10 years.

      Hell, we haven’t even got the technology yet to solve the problem of reduced electrical output of battery powered vehicles in cold climates (trust me, I live in Canada, and -20 or -30 weather will cut you battery output by up to 70%) let alone long haul trucks or tractors or combines that run on electricity. This is all still a pipe dream in the time frame they’re looking at. Yes, technology is advancing, and I applaud the developments, but we are nowhere near a workable scenario at this time.

  • I think you missed the point.
    They are not really concerned about climate change, it is just another step towards an Authoritarian World Government.
    It is their cognitive dissonance that blocks out anything, but achieving that goal.

    What goes along side of this is Corporate Feudalism. Where you own nothing and like it.( because you are their slave and the main thing that is being owned).
    Slaves do not get to decide their living conditions, the temperature of their homes or any thing else. How you exist is dictated to you and you will submit or else.
    These come as a pair, because you can’t really accomplish one without the other. Freedom of Choice is their enemy. Control over every aspect of your life is their goal.
    What most people fail to see is this bigger picture. So unless you want yourself or your kids to be slaves; you need to start thinking now about fighting this.

    The Covid protocals were just trial runs, to see the public’s reactions and endurance in accepting Total Governance.
    Masking, ” Social Distancing” and Lockdowns, were not based in Science, but just at the whims (or tests) produced by the Corporate and Government Medical establishments for testing their authority and the public’s Compliance.

    An “invisible” enemy (Pandemic) is easily faked and brings more voluntary compliance than War, Patriotism and the “rationing of goods”, sanctions, embargo’s etc., in order to support the war effort.
    It is an easy was to force people to give up their freedoms, in the name of “safety”. The thing that destroyed it was Freedom of speech (and thought) and the internet( meaning the wide distribution of ideas and resistance).
    So expect these to be one of the next targets. With Brownouts and Blackouts, (without electricity) or with rationing electrical usage, access to the internet can be removed or controlled. All without the appearance of direct Governmental restrictions or control.
    None of this is happening by coincidence. To the casual observer it may appear that way, but it is far deeper and more sinister than that.

    • Totally agree. It’s all part of (((their/Satan’s))) plan and being allowed by our Creator God because many do not have a love of the truth. Hosea 4:6 My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. 2 Thessalonians …10and with every wicked deception directed against those who are perishing, because they refused the love of the truth that would have saved them. 11 For this reason God will send them a powerful delusion so that they believe a lie. Colossians 2:8 See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ. We’re in a spiritual battle. Ephesians 6:10…The Full Armor of God 10Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might. 11Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. 12For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. 13Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. 14Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness; 15And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; 16Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. 17And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God:
      And, with God’s this can change this overnight: 2 Chronicles 7:14 if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

  • With the average cost of an EV at $60K, the extra weight of the cars, tires will be changed more often, roadways not designed for this increase will deteriorate more rapidly as well. It’s a control of the populous. Hope I’m wrong Sully

  • the carbon hoax.. the test they conducted to prove that CO2 is the big contributor to global warming was faked.. this is just another way to scaremonger us into submission and pay a measurable, like the fake CFC scare when the ozone layer was depleted (no word about that anymore – funny that?)..
    1. CO2 helps plants grow, and they (the mainstream) are stopping it..
    2. a bigger problem being ignored completely – carbon is pumped into the oceans by ships exhausts bubbling away under water causing havoc for our future = this is where the real danger lies, the carbon rich exhaust fumes (i.e. carbon particles) are sub micron and float in the oceans indefinitely, blocking vital UV light from algae and plankton to stop their photosynthesis (and CO2 conversion into oxygen). if the oceans die – we die! The plight of the Oceans was addressed for the first time at COPE26, but falling on deaf ears as corporate elites will not make money from this.. but their puppet Greta does float her boat :).
    Methane is 10x more harmful to global warming. Our conventional sewer systems and waste water as well as landfills all contribute to it with methane production – not much done about this, except trying to stop cattle for meat, even though special algae species are grown worldwide and introduced into the feed to stop methane from cows digestion.. again just another scam all round.
    i could carry on about this vast topic but time is short.. so take heed not to be deceived. thanks,

    • Ship’s exhausts do not “bubble away under water”. I’m guessing you have never been on a ship.

  • Old civilizations like the Aztecs and such, disappeared with now clear record of what happened. Reliable records were not, could not, be kept of the end. This has been going on forever, as long as the sun has risen and fallen.

    More or less one or two thousand years from now, they too will wonder how we destroyed ourselves. But you and I and God will know.

  • I am beginning to research “free energy,” which is some form of mechanical or electrical energy based on the fact that the entire universe is made out of energy. Usable energy can be generated any time opposites such as N/S magnetic poles are manipulated in suitable ways. This knowledge has been firmly suppressed and you are not going to make any money out of it. Nor can you have any until you create it yourself. Thousands of individuals have figured that out and are looking to make their own “perpetual motion machines.” This is one of the things Patriots/liberty lovers are going to need to escape “you’ll own nothing [Gates will own it all] and you’ll be happy [totally mind-controlled slave].”

    • Is there a way to generate magnetic energy yourself or is it still in the discovery stage?

      • Addendum: he said planetary motion around the sun is perpetual motion, but it cannot be harnessed on the earth. We have known someone who was being conned into investing in a perpetual motion machine with flipping magnets. Such mechanisms are impossible. Please use your investment money on something truly useful.

  • All government is a conspiracy. All government as we know it is a scam for a ruling class to do whatever they want with unlimited stolen money at their disposal, and it’s set up so they almost never pay any price no matter their crimes. They are psychopaths who delight in the misery of those they plunder, murder, and order about with threats and punishments for anyone who disbelieves their lies or disobeys them.

  • The US has an energy crisis due to monopoly regulation of electricity, nuclear and fossil fuel subsidies, and the lack of a carbon fee and dividend.
    Even Al Gore suggested the replacement of the payroll tax by a carbon tax. Politicians don’t usually suggest that the market knows best.

  • I live in Illinois- not in the tiny northeastern portion of the state where all bad ideas originate. Yes, it was announced about a year ago that coal-fired plants are going away, and only nuclear is to be used. Unfortunately, they dont seem to care that nuclear plants dont exist in southern IL. We will have NO power plants at all. There is one in Clinton IL near Champaign, but I doubt it could power the whole (non-Chicago) state. Biden was even trying to close down a pipeline near St Louis, which worries me, as my area’s (and possibly most of the state’s power) is based in Missouri. None of our leaders seem to think things through, and certainly dont consider that all people dont live in cities. This is global, as London makes rules about driving, not even considering that people outside of London exist.

  • There are no-carbon solutions out there that have been suppressed of course–cold fusion, magnet motors, aether harvesting. But they want a die-off. One cannot reason with someone who is bent upon your death. Nor can one inform and educate your way around the situation.

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