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Oh Lord, forgive them for they are idiots

France’s parliament has passed into law a ban on producing oil and gas by 2040, a largely symbolic gesture as the country is 99% dependent on hydrocarbon imports.

In Tuesday’s vote by show of hands, only the rightwing Republicans party opposed, while leftwing lawmakers abstained.

No new permits will be granted to extract fossil fuels and no existing licences will be renewed beyond 2040, when all production in mainland France and its overseas territories will stop.

Socialist lawmaker Delphine Batho said she hoped the ban would be “contagious”, inspiring bigger producers to follow suit.

France extracts the equivalent of about 815,000 tonnes of oil per year – an amount produced in a few hours by Saudi Arabia.

But centrist president Emmanuel Macron has said he wants France to take the lead as a major world economy switching away from fossil fuels – and the nuclear industry – into renewable sources.

If as and when renewables are cheaper then no one will drill for oil or gas. If they’re not going to be cheaper by 2040 then what the fuck are you doing banning drilling?

19 thoughts on “Oh Lord, forgive them for they are idiots”

  1. Ils seront dans la merde je pense. More pointless virtue signalling from people who won’t be around to see it happen. Seriously the Chinese and Indians must be sitting there killing themselves laughing. The West is destroying itself with no outside help at all.

  2. The Other Bloke in Italy

    I cannot see that the West is keeping the Indians and Chinese down.

    If we do destroy ourselves, the whole world will be sorry.

  3. Given the proportion of nuclear that used to be in their energy mix, weren’t they already greener than most? Who cares about unreliables?

  4. They seem to have decided that 2040 is going to be when the renewable energy rapture takes place…all sorts of ecofantasies scheduled for that year.

  5. Don’t just ban drilling for oil, ban importing it and its derivative products. Then we’ll know they care.

  6. France’s parliament has passed into law a ban on producing oil and gas by 2040, a largely symbolic gesture as the country is 99% dependent on hydrocarbon imports.

    This is the sort of thing you do when have neither the brains nor the balls to tackle the real problems at hand.

  7. But centrist president Emmanuel Macron has said he wants France to take the lead as a major world economy switching away from fossil fuels – and the nuclear industry – into renewable sources.

    Isn’t about time someone changed his diaper?

  8. “oil and gas by 2040, a largely symbolic gesture as the country is 99% dependent on hydrocarbon imports.”

    That’s twenty years away. A very, courageous, decision to assume that imports will remain uninterrupted for that long.

    Putin is, what, 65? He’s been knocking around the presidency one way or another for eighteen years.

    What could possibly go wrong?

  9. ‘Socialist lawmaker Delphine Batho said she hoped the ban would be “contagious”, inspiring bigger producers to follow suit.’

    Like California Gov Jerry Brown, who just spent two weeks in Europe trying to persuade them to commit energy suicide just like California is doing.

    Batho/Brown NEED others to do it, else they fail. Energy/economic suicide fails if your neighbors don’t play along.

    This just in from the graveyard:

    “Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run, we are all dead.”— John Maynard Keynes

  10. This looks to me like some sort of regulatory capture – legislate to abolish your market and you can tidily wind up and get out of an uncompetative industry.

  11. I’ve banned Oil and Gas production on my property with immediate effect. In fact, I’ve never engaged in such behaviour, and certainly haven’t approved any licenses for anyone else.

    I don’t know why the French feel the need to carry on killing the planet for another 23 years, and am baffled as to why we’re supposed to applaud them for this decision.

    Should this Macron wish to visit the UK, either in his official capacity, or as a private school boy, we should certainly resist it.

  12. President Macron has also been doing a bit of small scale sneering at the Germans over their Energywende policy.

    alors! we ‘av ‘zee solution! Wattway! une chaussée solar vers l’avenir ! – c’est magnifique!

    – if the competition is for the most expensive electricity – the French are likely to win this one by a considerable margin.

    1000km of solar roadway that’s 1/3 as efficient and 9 times the cost of standard panels in a field / on a roof (and that’s being very generous – see YT link above).

    I predict pitchforks and directly fossil fuel lit processions.

    Macron + chums like Hulot are turning out to be even bigger twats then ‘Ollande + crew – which is quite an achievement.

  13. If our two principle historic enemies–the French and Germans– decide to fuck themselves over our only sensible reply is “Ta very much”.

    Of course the problem then is that our contemporary enemy is our own state.

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