It’s hard to tell if she’s blaming him or crediting him, but European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told a meeting of the Paris-based Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on February 13th that “[Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s attempt to blackmail our union has utterly failed. On the contrary, he really pushed the green transition.”

The word “pushed” is telling – and projecting. Because that’s exactly what she’s been doing – evoking Putin to manipulate EU citizens into acceptance of a profitable system of greenwashed authoritarianism. Putin’s been a busy guy here in Europe lately. Just the other week, he was apparently pushing Europe’s farmers and their tractors onto highways.

Why does Queen Ursula always have to sound so shady? “Last year, in 2023, for the first time ever, we produced more electricity from wind than from gas,” she said. How many ways did her battle-hardened brigade of bureaucratic paper-cut Purple Hearts have to parse the data to come up with that bright spot? Because the truth is that, at 37% of the EU’s electrical power, renewables are still only just a half a percent more prevalent than fossil fuels at 36.5%, according to the EU’s own data – and that really hasn’t changed much over the past several years.

And it’s not like wind, at 13% of the bloc’s electrical production, is doing the heavy lifting in powering Europe’s industry when 60% of its energy is still imported, most of which is from fossil fuels. If wind and solar were actually capable of maintaining European industry,........

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