False Pretense of Energy Transition: Long on Facts, Short on Truth
5 hours ago Guest Blogger
By Gordon Tomb
While listing many of the barriers to abandoning fossil fuels for “green” energy, three writers in Foreign Affairs magazine skip over an important truth: the once ballyhooed but now moribund “energy transition” was and remains unnecessary and undesirable.
Instead, the article’s title, “The Troubled Energy Transition: How to Find a Pragmatic Path Forward,” suggests (1) that the so-called transition has legitimacy and (2) that it still somehow should happen. Both are false.
The writers are distinguished men: Daniel Yergin, a Pulitzer Prize-winning energy historian; Peter Orszag, Chairman and CEO of Lazard; and Atul Arya, Chief Energy Strategist at S&P Global. Their 5,000-word essay discusses issues extensively, but the language is less than direct and misses the heart of many matters.
For instance, the authors compare the shift to “green” energy from fossil fuels with coal replacing wood beginning in the 18th century and culminating in the 1900s and with oil overtaking coal as a dominant fuel in the 1960s. Energy sources being supplanted, they note, continued to be used well into the transitions just as fossil fuels have remained in use – even growing in quantity – during today’s introduction of alternatives.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/03/05/false-pretense-of-energy-transition-long-on-facts-short-on-truth/
