The European Left is living in Wonderland when it comes to the current global energy crisis, telling tales of mass renewable adoption and global solidarity schemes that they claim will totally get us out of the current sticky situation.
Such delusion has well and truly hit Ireland, where it plagues even the most respectable of our media outlets. Publications regularly platform claims that the current difficulties facing Europe are not down to the fact that it shunned fossil fuel developments for less stable renewable platforms, but because it did not put enough faith in the green transition.
Please ignore the fact that countries that did work to develop their local hydrocarbon economies are not facing shortage fears.
Enter Sally Rooney. A self-described “Marxist”, the Irish author has regularly been platformed in the Irish press as the country’s preeminent literary darling, lending her pontifications on life and society a cultural value within official Ireland.
Rooney — to her credit — has little fear of controversy, having found herself in the culture war crosshairs for her opinion on the Israel-Palestine conflict. This has likely been to the detriment of her artistic career. If nothing else, she deserves credit for having the courage to back her convictions.
Convincing arguments for such beliefs, however, seem harder for the author to come by.
Writing in the Irish Times over the weekend, Rooney opines that the current spike in oil prices is the consequence of the current “market system”, and that the only option the world has now to fix it is to start rationing.
“The idea of fuel rationing may sound drastic, but in reality, fuel is already rationed. All goods are. At present, they are just rationed according to price,” she wrote.
She added that the reduction of oil on the global market meant that “structural changes to everyday life” were now needed, arguing that the world “cannot increase the amount of oil and gas available now”.
Such a structural change, according to Rooney, would represent a blanket 25 per cent reduction in oil use across the developed world. This could be enforced through an “international buyers’ club” which could use consumer market dominance to force down prices, with the novelist suggesting the EU, China and India would all ideally be members.
All of these claims have gaping flaws.
First, we can increase the amount of oil circulating globally, with several EU nations having significant untapped resources that would help insulate the bloc from international instability. But these have been left fallow thanks to hardline climate radicals forcing them legally to stay in the ground.
Not only has Rooney failed to challenge the poor decision-making of these people, she has in the past openly celebrated their efforts.
Then there is the idea that forcing down the price of oil via some global organisation will reduce costs for the consumer. In reality, without the presence of a major enforcing state such as the USA, it would likely just serve to further restrict supply. This is because low energy as a whole induces demand, with non-member states likely to snap up oil formerly destined for Europe and China at low prices, using the glut in availability to fuel new industry.
But the greatest issue with Rooney’s article is that it lacks substance, with almost none of her positions being stated without justification. Her claim that oil and gas supplies cannot be bolstered is left uncited, while her push for a buyers club is given just an offhand credit to two left-leaning economists.
In short, she treats her solution as not merely correct, but completely obvious to anyone reading it. It almost goes without saying that a global system of oil rationing and demand destruction is the plain, mainstream, and clearly reasonable solution to our current predicament.
This is a problem in and of itself. One should never assume one’s conclusions are obvious — even when they arguably are. But a greater issue in my view is that the Irish Times looked at her piece and decided it was fit to publish without further revision. The newspaper is entitled to publish whatever it likes, but releasing an article that lacks the core argumentation that their readers would benefit from can only be considered a massive oversight.
The problem is not Rooney’s argument. It is her lack of it, and how the people at Ireland’s paper of record seemed not to notice its absence.
Instances like this show how out of touch Official Ireland is out of touch with reality. Treating Rooney’s radical argument as something that should almost go without saying betrays a significant lack of understanding regarding where the views of the general public are at the current time, especially in the wake of the recent fuel protests. This is only compounded by Fintan O’Toole’s recent screed decrying those who would dare protest the government as the “dictatorship of the breakfast roll-atariat”.
The Irish Times serves as one of the main news content producers in Ireland. Its lurch from reality to unquestioningly believing in the myths and fables spun by the socialist darlings of the art world will naturally bleed into their reporting, reducing its quality and reliability.
In short, it will damage trust in both the Irish Times, and in Irish media as a whole.
I’m sure, somehow, this will be the far-right’s fault.