Benny Pieser’s CCNet brings our attention to this Globe and Mail item today. In it, the authors note some of the repercussions to Europe’s own energy strategy from Russia’s bloody Georgian gambit, which is the latest move in its expanding play to recover lost influence through energy (read this book for a discussion of how the Bolshies actually did the same thing to solidify their initial, not-so-dissimilar coup into a recognized nation-state).
The impacts go further, as I detail in a forthcoming Energy Tribune piece. Without spoiling it: Brussels’ Kyoto agenda demands that Poland, the Czechs, and everyone else with very good reasons to distrust the Russians leave their coal in the ground and rely instead on gas . . . which in practice would be mostly Russian gas. As I have detailed in this space before, the EU was already having a hard time wrestling those pesky new member states to the ground on this dangerous proposal. Now, they can forget about it.
Russia turned off the supply to Poland more than a decade before pulling the plug on Ukraine. For the reasons I cite in ET, those who are in the business of finding silver linings have Russia to thank for finally salying the Kyoto beast.
[UPDATE: This item has been modified since its first posting.]