British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, the socialist brute who presides over the country with the highest industrial power prices in the world, urged President-elect Donald Trump to “show leadership” on climate change Monday.
Starmer’s remarks came as he disembarked from a carbon-spewing jet upon arrival in Azerbaijan to attend the UN-sponsored COP29 climate conference.
The annual COP conferences, remember, are where the world’s elites gather each year to discuss ways to leverage climate-alarm dogma as a means of destroying western democracy and trapping the world’s masses in energy poverty while they consume $1,000 Wagyu steaks and $2,000 bottles of wine over dinner.
“I have repeatedly emphasized the importance of global leadership when it comes to the climate challenge,” said Starmer, “and therefore it is very important for me to come to COP… I see the climate challenge as a huge opportunity for the UK if we get it right, and that is why we have made it one of our missions to have clean power by 2030.”
Among the means Starmer’s government is using to show “global leadership” on the climate alarm front is to provide heavy subsidies for costly, low-efficiency offshore wind farms and cover up vast swaths of the UK’s farmlands and countryside with enormous solar arrays. Starmer’s government has simultaneously presided over the closing of the UK’s last remaining coal power plant and one of its last steelmaking factories as part of what appears to be a focused effort to deindustrialize its once-powerful economy.
Trump has made it crystal clear that his approach to energy policy will be diametrically opposite that of Starmer’s Labor government. Trump has already said he plans to pull the United States out of the Paris Climate agreement again, an action he took during his first term, but which was reversed by President Joe Biden.
Trump has also laid out plans to re-industrialize America’s economy with a carrot-and-stick approach that will include incentives for companies building new factories and assembly plants in the United States and imposing tariffs on those who choose to invest in capacity overseas. In a recent pre-election interview, Trump detailed plans to address instability and capacity shortages on the U.S. electric grid by implementing policies to speed up permitting and building of new natural gas and nuclear power generation.
“We have to produce massive electricity that we don’t have. But the environmental impact statements won’t allow us to do that. The rules and regulations that we currently have won’t allow us to do any of it,” Trump said. “But if I’m president, we’ll be able to do it and we’ll do it through natural gas, which is clean. And we’ll do it through primarily natural gas and nuclear.”
While on the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly promised to bring back his first-term policies designed to stimulate the domestic oil-and-gas industry and return the United States to the position of “energy dominance” it enjoyed under his previous administration.
In kicking off the COP29 festivities, Azerbaijan leader Ilham Aliyev created a stir among the climate zealots who make up the preponderance of attendees by appearing to endorse the Trump approach.
Referring to oil and natural gas as a “gift of God,” the Azerbaijani President said, “Countries should not be blamed for having them and should not be blamed for bringing these resources to the market because the market needs them. The people need them.”
At another point, Aliyev appeared to lecture western elitists like Starmer, saying: “Unfortunately double standards, a habit to lecture other countries and political hypocrisy became kind of modus operandi for some politicians, state-controlled NGOs and fake news media in some Western countries.”
In an interview at the summit, Starmer displayed a shocking lack of self-awareness by claiming his government has no plans to “start telling people how to live their lives. We are not going to start dictating to people what they do.”
That is of course exactly what Starmer is doing, and exactly the sort of thing Trump plans to avoid doing regardless of any demands from the globalist climate-alarm industry. Americans stand to be the main beneficiaries from the contrast in policy approach.
David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact [email protected].
