Anomalies of the Sanctions, and me Lamenting the Destruction of our Food Chain

 

I find that the sanctions against Russia are ironic, farcical, and two-edged. In the past few weeks, Russian coal was put under sanction by the European Union, but the sanction does not come into effect until August. I expect they expect the war to be over by then. A major pipeline still carries Russian natural gas through the Ukraine to the E-U, and Russia is still paying Ukraine royalties for the passage --- over two billion dollars per year from what I am told.  Why doesn’t Europe sanction the natural gas?  Why doesn’t Ukraine close the pipeline? Of course, Europe needs the natural gas. From where would they get it otherwise? Canada has plenty, but our PM is determined to demolish our oil and gas industry because of an ideology that is, so far as I can determine, based on pseudo-science.

Ideology implies an idea. Government ideologues ignore science, implications of morality and ethics, and common sense in support of an idea. The idea is that CO₂ is bad. I find it to be a scary idea. We are carbon based life. We ingest carbon from plants, and carbon is distributed to plants through the process of photosynthesis acting upon CO₂. The drive is to reduce carbon dioxide seemingly to as low a level as possible. Even at the current 400 atmospheric parts per million, plants are starving. This is why greenhouse owners buy CO₂ to raise levels to 1000 or 1200 parts per million. Various nations now have governments that are pursuing policies with the potential to destroy our race. At a CO₂ level of 150 parts per million, our plant life would die. I explored the notion a bit more deeply at

https://gordonfeil.blogspot.com/2021/09/put-more-co2-into-atmosphere.html.

I hope we soon get a government in this country that focuses on helping the nation develop ways of adapting to climate change rather than the misguided goal of preventing what we cannot prevent. (How are we going to change solar activity?)

Back to the sanctions. Russia supplies the world with critical materials without which there will be pain outside of Russia that is much greater than the pain caused by the sanctions within Russia. I wonder if the economic consequences of the sanctions will include the catalyst that impels the next economic depression.