The Climate Curtain
On March 5, 1946, Britain’s Iconic War-time Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, delivered one of his most impactful speeches. Speaking before an assembled audience at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, and broadcast around the country, the “Iron Curtain” Speech, as it became known, was a wake-up call for America.
On that day, Churchill announced to the United States and the rest of the world that the Global community was dividing. The former allies in World War II were no longer united. The then Soviet Union would henceforth pursue a separate path.
“From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe.” (Winston Churchill).
That was the last time the nations of the world divided as they are today. Then the divisions were purely ideological. Ultimately the Iron Curtain divided those countries that were Communist in their ideology from those countries that were democracies, or more correctly, democratic republics.
It was a division that would last for half a century. On the one side, the Communist countries of the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and China. While on the other side, Western Europe, much of Asia, and the United States.
However, in the mid-1990s, when the Berlin Wall in Germany fell, many political differences seemed to fade away. The former adversaries, the communists of the eastern block and the western capitalist, saw their confrontation mellow.
The oppressive stern dictatorship of Mao Zedong came to an end with his death. The USSR became the more democratic Russian Federation. And China made a concerted effort to revise its image in the West, ultimately becoming its number one trading partner.
For three decades, the world has existed in relative harmony, with the major powers, at least, united in trade, travel, and commerce.
Today that worldwide harmony is coming to an end. To paraphrase Churchill, a Climate Curtain is descending between the countries of the world. There’s no doubt that the catalyst for this division of the nations has been the Conflict in Ukraine.
The collective West, principally the European Union and the United States, reacted to the Russian invasion of Ukraine by expelling Russia from the dominant world order in every way they could. First, by cutting Russia off from SWIFT, the chief financial settlement system. Then by boycotting Russian oil and gas sales. And finally, by the continued trade sanctions imposed against Russia. I believe the European Union has just instituted its tenth trade sanction.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been the “Casus belli” (the occasion of war), which has provoked the actions of the Collective West. The collective West’s objective seemed designed to make Russia a pariah state. A country without allies and supporters.
However, it hasn’t worked out that way. While the European Union and the United States implemented stick sanctions against Russian Oil and gas imports, other countries, including China and India, have been happy to take up the slack. Much of the rest of the world tacitly supports, if not actively engages with Russia.
Additionally, China supported Russian international financial transactions with its Cross Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS), a complete replacement for the West’s SWIFT System, and Russia didn’t skip a beat.
As a leading member of the emerging BRICS Countries, initially formed as Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. These countries have all remained entirely loyal to Russia. And surprisingly, there are indications that several countries would like to ally themselves with the BRICS and, by extension, with Russia. Rumored to want to join BRICS are Iran, and several other mid-eastern states, possibly even Saudi Arabia.
And as you go through this list of countries, something immediately stands out. They are countries united in their use of energy. Either they are major oil exporters, Russia, Iran, Brazil, and certainly Saudi Arabia. Or they are significant consumers of conventional fossil fuels, India and China. In one way or another, these nations rely on Oil and gas. Their economies can only function with fossil fuels.
On the other hand, the collective West, particularly the European Union, is making great strides to remove fossil fuels as an energy source. In April 2021, the EU enacted its most recent legislation to reduce CO2 emissions by more than half by 2030. That legislation is aimed directly at the oil and gas industry. After all, wind, solar, and even nuclear power do not produce CO2. Burning fossil fuels produces CO2, and the EU is well on its way to outlawing that “pollution.”
Whether by circumstance or forethought, it’s dawning on the BRICS nations that the climate controls advocated by the Collective West are not compatible with their current economic structure. The Oil producing countries will struggle in a world that will consume only half of today’s current production levels.
And the world’s highest Oil consuming countries, India and China, have shown no interest in becoming pollution free. As difficult as that is for many in the West to understand.
For the BRICS countries, most of whom are struggling economically, it’s a matter of dollars and cents. They cannot afford the more expensive but climate-friendly alternatives that the West is now mandating.
Today a Climate Curtain is descending. On the one side will be the climate-conscious West. On the other side will be the fossil fuel using BRICS.
Just who is pulling this curtain down is uncertain. But we know that the BRICS have decided they won’t live in this new climate-sensitive world, while the Collective West is mandating that they must.
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