President Joe Biden and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, July 15.
Photo:
BANDAR ALGALOUD/VIA REUTERS
An old gospel song attacks the hypocrisy of a certain Mr. Brown, who “prays for Prohibition, but votes for G-I-N.”
That’s not a bad description of the Biden administration’s climate policy. The president took office vowing to make Saudi Arabia a pariah nation and to reduce the world’s dependence on fossil fuels. After a brief fist-bumping détente last summer, he is back on the attack because the Saudis don’t want to produce as much oil as he wants. Meanwhile, even as it prays for a global energy transition, the administration is scouring the world for new sources of carbon-spewing fossil fuels, relaxing sanctions enforcement against the murdering mullahs in Tehran and looking to steer new revenue into the coffers of the crime lords of Caracas.
Mr. Biden isn’t the only one sending mixed climate messages. Across the European Union, frantic ministers are reopening coal plants, subsidizing the price of fossil fuels to consumers and otherwise doing everything to heave as much carbon into the atmosphere this winter as they possibly can. Leaders across Europe have adapted St. Augustine’s famous prayer for chastity: Please, Lord, make me green, but not yet.
Energy disruption owing to
war on Ukraine is the immediate cause of the gyrations and flip-flops among climate-focused policy makers, but a larger problem is at work. Integrating climate policy into international diplomacy is hard. Take Mr. Biden’s frustration with Saudi Arabia. The old U.S.-Saudi partnership was not based only on security. When it came to oil prices, the Saudis were traditionally among the less hawkish members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. With more than a century of reserves in the ground, the Saudis cared about the long-term health of the oil market. They feared that aggressive pricing would encourage…
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