Europe Ditched Russian Energy, Now People Are Sitting In Line For Days To Buy Coal: Is Biden To Blame – OpEd

By Alice Salles*

When people start freezing to death in Europe this winter, who will be blamed? Regulations, Russia, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization? They all will be, but no one with a recognizable face or name will pay any price.

The war fueled by the US and NATO’s expansionism and military involvement in Ukraine has worsened Europe’s energy problem. In Poland, citizens are lining up in their cars a mile from coal mines to buy enough fuel to prepare for winter. Due to the increased demand caused by the European Union’s embargo on Russian coal, Polish families worry they won’t have enough for the cold season.

“This is beyond imagination; people are sleeping in their cars,” Artur, 57, a pensioner, told Voice of America.

“I remember the communist times, but it didn’t cross my mind that we could return to something even worse.”

Prior to the embargo, Poland was under pressure from EU environmental policy. To Polish families that rely on coal, Russian imports were a household staple due to lower costs. With Poland banning coal from Russia, locals must rely on coal from Polish state-controlled mines, which have rationed sales recently due to the high demand.

Birthplace of Western Civilization Is Poverty Stricken

On a recent Tucker Carlson Tonight episode, the Fox News host covered the struggle of Europeans trying to secure heat for winter.

Carlson highlighted countries like Germany and Poland, which are running out of fuel, forced to rely on coal or even timber. Could this imminent energy calamity have been prevented? Carlson explained:

Green energy cannot replace fossil fuels. Not now, not anytime soon. Fossil fuels remain what they have always been: the key to civilization…. So-called green energy is not close, is nowhere near replacing gas and oil and coal. It’s measurable. We could have known this. Anyone with eighth-grade math skills could have figured out in about 10 minutes that we cannot replace fossil fuels with renewables or green energy and of course, they must have known that.

While Carlson is right that the EU’s obsession with the so-called green economy is coming back to haunt it, he left out that America’s decades-long policy of foreign intervention has played just as great a role in the current crisis.

Biden’s Regime Presses NATO Expansion, Fueling War

Ron Paul has long warned of the risks associated with NATO expansion. In 2008, then representative Paul voted against a bill meant to encourage Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO.

At the time, Paul explained his vote with the following message:

NATO is an organization whose purpose ended with the end of its Warsaw Pact adversary…. This current round of NATO expansion is a political reward to governments in Georgia and Ukraine that came to power as a result of US-supported revolutions, the so-called Orange Revolution and Rose Revolution.

Providing US military guarantees to Ukraine and Georgia can only further strain our military. This NATO expansion may well involve the US military in conflicts unrelated to our national interest.

The US support for NATO membership for Ukraine continues. Russia did not want to risk seeing this come to fruition and engaged militarily as a result. Biden is also personally involved, as he was a key player in turning NATO into what it currently is.

In 1998, then senator Biden voted in favor of expanding NATO to include Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, stating that this move would be “the beginning of another 50 years of peace.”

As Paul wrote recently, Biden was quite off.

Unfortunately, as we have seen this past week, my fears have come true. One does not need to approve of Russia’s military actions to analyze its stated motivation: NATO membership for Ukraine was a red line it was not willing to see crossed. As we find ourselves at risk of a terrible escalation, we should remind ourselves that it didn’t have to happen this way. There was no advantage to the United States to expand and threaten to expand NATO to Russia’s doorstep. There is no way to argue that we are any safer for it.

As we witness the current escalation threatening to hurt Europeans who are not involved in the war in Ukraine, it becomes clear why the current crisis is being downplayed as an energy problem caused by Russia alone. In order to aid Ukraine, we are told, we must simply send the country billions of dollars’ worth in military equipment. To both the White House and legacy media, Russia’s attacks are unprovoked and daring. To say otherwise is nothing short of heresy.

*About the author: Alice Salles was born and raised in Brazil but has lived in America for over ten years. She now lives in Fort Wayne, Indiana, with her husband, Nick Hankoff, and their four children.  

Source: This article was published by the MISES Institute