Aspirational goals and nonbinding commitments became the currency of negotiations that lacked any real enforcement capability. Like other U.N. initiatives that emerged in the 1990s and early 2000s, such as the Sustainable Development Goals and the Convention on Biological Diversity, the purpose was primarily to exhort and galvanize. Yearly U.N. climate conferences, amplified by the world’s media, became performative theater where the utopian agendas of the global environmental movement -- limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, powering the world entirely with renewable energy, switching to organic agriculture, and transferring hundreds of billions of dollars from rich countries to poor ones for mitigation and adaptation -- could be talked about as if they were realistic.
Facts on the ground told a different story. The carbon intensity of the global energy system fell faster in the 30 years before the first major U.N. climate conference than after it -- a result of rising energy efficiency, the spread of nuclear power, and the changing composition of the global economy. After 1997, when the Kyoto Protocol was adopted,

A gas shortage and high prices will send “shockwaves through the country,” leading to landlords cutting the heat for tenants and widespread company bankruptcies, warned Klaus Müller, the head of Germany’s Federal Network Agency, which is the regulatory office for electricity, gas, telecommunications, postal services, and railway markets.
Müller paints a bleak picture about the crisis in an interview with German newspaper Rheinische Post, saying it will “send shockwaves throughout the country. Banks will ramp up their business with installment loans, and ailing companies will fall into insolvency.”
Müller’s office, which is a federal agency within the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, has a bird’s eye view of the economic situation in Germany and also special insight into how economic conditions will develop into the future.

Müller says he expects gas prices to continue to climb, resulting in increased inflation that goes far beyond energy. He also warns that there will be a dramatic lack of gas in the winter, which could lead to landlords turning down the heat to save on energy. In turn, Germans may have to grapple with colder apartments. [snip]
The government has already pushed businesses and citizens to reduce their energy consumption, but that pressure may come in the form of new laws and regulations in the future, with Müller calling for more pressure to be applied to save gas. Although Germany has pushed for a general ban on Russian oil imports, the country is highly reliant on natural gas from Russia. If Russia were to cut gas in the critical winter months or even restrict supplies, it could lead to critical damage to the German economy, a scenario energy experts have already warned about.
Germans will not only be colder in their apartments, but companies will also face mass bankruptcies, said Müller. However, he said government policies could help mitigate financial losses and preserve critical gas supplies.

Von der Leyen also gushed over the planned pipeline from Israel to supply east Mediterranean gas to Europe (a project from which the Biden administration has withdrawn American support). The EU is even siding with Israel in a row with Lebanon over Karish, Israel’s major northern offshore gas field, which Brussels agrees lies in Israeli rather than Lebanese territorial waters.  
Also paying a visit to Jerusalem this week was Italy’s prime minister, Mario Draghi. He too was in search of alternative energy supplies to replace Russian gas. He too had honeyed words for the Jewish people. [snip]
So does this mean the EU is now changing its attitude to Israel? Until now, it has been hostile. It promotes the Palestinian narrative that seeks to delegitimise Israel through lies about its “illegal” settlements and alleged Israel Defence Forces aggression; it funds NGOs devoted to harming and destroying Israel; in an aggressive move in 2015 against Israeli “occupation” of the disputed territories, it started to label products from the “West Bank.”
Despite all the warm words in Jerusalem, there’s no sign that this EU hostility is about to ease. For on the same day that von der Leyen was kissing up to Bennett, she stood alongside Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh in Ramallah and announced the transfer to the Palestinian Authority of some 214 million euros (about $224 million).
This money had previously been frozen because of the incitement against Israel in Palestinian schoolbooks. Now it’s been unfrozen, even though the incitement remains.