In a remarkable display of disingenuous gall, the EU has decided oil and gas, a.k.a. fossil fuels, are not fossil fuels. What stunning scientific research produced this result? Are the abiotic cranks right after all? Alas no. It’s just political hypocrisy, wrapped up in Orwellian illogic. Unwilling to crush their economies totally in the wake of the pandemic, but also unwilling to admit that their plans to phase out fossil fuels were bad and should be repealed, they decided to keep the plan but repeal the meaning of the words.

They may soon have to pretend they didn’t because it’s just too silly. But for now, the Financial Times reports, “Under draft proposals for the EU’s sustainable disclosure regime, the European authorities responsible for banking, insurance and securities markets define fossil fuels as only applying to ‘solid’ energy sources such as coal and lignite.”

Shall we chalk this up to just another day’s work for the EU bureaucratic blob? No, this one isn’t even MRDA. Nobody would think to claim such a thing because nobody can hear it spoken out loud without laughing out loud. Even if they don’t share the trendy aversion to fossil fuels and sympathize with the desire to stave off an economic depression.

Those who said it don’t understand the economy and do share the trendy aversion, which is a fitting reminder that rational thought long ago fled the climate field in favour of virtue-signalling. But while La Rochefoucauld famously called hypocrisy the compliment vice pays to virtue, it has to have at least some plausibility. When you look this stupid doing it, the dodge fails.

Admit it. The pandemic is worse than climate change. And oil is a fossil fuel.