Not the Onion: Vladimir Putin Tops Politico List of ‘Power Players’ Leading ‘Europe’s Green Agenda’

Jackson RichmanOct 12th, 2022, 12:57 pm
 
Putin

Pavel Bednyakov/Getty Images

Russian President Vladimir Putin topped Politico’s annual Green 28, a list of “the 28 power players behind Europe’s green agenda.”

“By invading Ukraine and manipulating energy supplies to undermine European support for Kyiv, Russian President Vladimir Putin has achieved something generations of green campaigners could not — clean energy is now a fundamental matter of European security,” stated Politico.

As Politico further explained:

The political response from the EU was swift: Within weeks of the February 24 invasion, a plan was sketched out aimed at unhooking the Continent’s energy ties from Moscow. It leaned on three pillars: cutting oil, gas and coal supplies from Russia; getting gas and other fossil fuels from elsewhere; and massively speeding up the roll out of renewable power and energy saving measures.

…

Putin’s miscalculations on the battlefield have been well documented. But he also mistimed his energy war. He attacked Europe’s energy system just as an array of cheap and reliable alternatives became realistic. That’s not only solar and wind, which now generate power at a fraction of the cost of gas; products that even five years ago had barely entered the market, such as heat pumps, are now mature.

Putin also invaded Ukraine after the EU had spent two years laying the foundations of its Green Deal program for zeroing out emissions by 2050. That meant the policy machinery for a total remake of the European energy economy was already moving. All it needed was a nudge.

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine led to Germany suspending certification of the completed-but-inactive Nord Stream 2 pipeline in which the United States enacted relevant sanctions.

Prominent conservative Twitter user Noam Blum first flagged Putin topping the Green 28.

Other observers on social media were perplexed as to how Politico could give such a glowing shoutout to the Russian leader:

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