Under the snide headline “Climate unfriendly skies” Bloomberg Green complains that “Delta Air Lines Inc. quietly scrubbed a pair of key environmental targets from its sustainability web page”, namely by dropping its plan for hitting 10% of “sustainable aviation fuel” by 2030 and rephrasing Net Zero by 2030 as an “aspiration” not a “goal”. At the same time The Australian reports, “Qantas will slash domestic flights over the next two months including the suspension of several regional routes, in response to soaring fuel prices which threaten to wipe half a billion dollars off the airline’s earnings.” And Air Canada is also suspending some flights to the U.S. though not, apparently, to China. We do not go so far as to say that corporations were only pretending to embrace Net Zero. But we do say that a shortage of the fuel they said they planned to stop using anyway reveals once again that it is easy to indulge luxury beliefs but they do not hold up in hard times. It was easy to pretend it was dispensable when there was no real prospect of having to dispense with it, but impossible to deny that it is crucial when it started running short.

It’s revealing that in the face of such developments Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who gives Keir Starmer a run for his money in the deer-in-the-headlights department, is now trying to scrounge up fuel in places like Malaysia and Brunei. Remember when poor countries came begging to rich ones? It’s a pathetic spectacle:

“Anthony Albanese has warned major Asian fuel producers may consider prioritising their domestic markets if the oil supply crunch worsens, ahead of a second consecutive week of travel to meet the leaders of Malaysia and Brunei in an aim to prevent Australia from being caught up in potential export controls.”

But the wounds are self-inflicted. For decades the Australian government has been squashing working energy in favour of green dreams. And now it’s worried that it may not be able to import the fuel it piously refused to produce at home but could not function without. Oh, and speaking of leaping into committee, and the rhetorical fog, in a crisis, Albanese:

“also denied being flat-footed in the early weeks of the conflict when fuel shortages began in the regions, saying he hosted a ­national cabinet meeting on the issue ‘almost immediately’ despite it not being held until nearly three weeks after the war began.”

Oh. A meeting. No shortage of those.

It’s not just Britain and Australia, of course. The New York Times “Climate Forward” grumps that:

“Northeast States Set Big Climate Goals. Now Those Plans Are in Trouble. Many blue states are rethinking ambitious strategies to cut emissions as they struggle with rising electricity costs and new hurdles for renewable energy.”

It’s all Trump’s fault, of course:

“Several years ago, in a burst of climate optimism, Democratic-led states across the Northeast adopted some of the world’s most ambitious policies to shift away from fossil fuels and cut planet-warming emissions. But today, many of those states are scaling back or rethinking their climate plans as they miss emissions targets, struggle with soaring electricity bills and confront the Trump administration’s hostility to renewable energy.”

So never mind the physics or economics, it’s all down to mean Truth Social posts. Or is it? The article concedes that:

“Most Northeastern governors still say tackling global warming is a priority. And climate advocates have fought against rollbacks, arguing that cutting clean energy and efficiency programs might ease burdens on taxpayers today, but will cost more in the long run by leaving the region exposed to volatile oil and gas prices.”

But wait. If “clean” energy is cheaper as well as more reliable, as we’ve been assured by outlets like, say, the New York Times “Climate Forward”, then why would cutting them “ease burdens on taxpayers today”? To say nothing of the mysterious claim that cutting “efficiency programs” would save money… unless like wind and solar, this efficiency was a mirage.

It’s not just planes, trains and automobiles, of course.

As Ronald Stein and Yoshihiro Muronaka wrote on David Blackmon’s “Energy Additions” Substack:

“a disruption in fossil-fuel supply would mean far more than higher gasoline prices or temporary pressure on power generation. If supplies were seriously interrupted, the consequences would reach into nearly every corner of daily life. The clothes we wear, the medicines we take, the smartphones we use, the fertilizers that sustain agriculture, and even the containers and packaging that transport food and medical goods would all be affected by shortages of raw materials. The modern world is not merely powered by fossil fuels; it is materially structured by them. This is why recent tensions in the Strait of Hormuz have such profound significance.”

Now of course the people pushing Net Zero were mostly opposed to the burning of petrochemicals despite some careless rhetoric about leaving them in the ground. But they were, and are, also guilty of assuming somehow that we could continue to enjoy the fruits of a civilization built on them while hacking through the trunk and the roots.

Suddenly they can’t fly, let alone on “sustainable aviation fuel”, whatever that term even means. And they never saw it coming.

How strange. We did.