Energy shortages throughout vast stretches of the U.S. are not due to weather, which can be expected to be cold in the winter. They are because of poor planning and recklessly implemented ideology. Michael Shellenberger explains:

No individual person has been more influential than New Yorker author Bill McKibben and 350.org. McKibben and 350.org activists have generated large amounts of news media publicity for their pro-scarcity agenda by blocking natural gas from being piped from Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and other states to power plants that could keep people across the United States warm this Christmas.

It’s not just 350.org but also groups like Sierra Club and Earthjustice that have used the court system to block natural gas pipelines.

In July 2020, Dominion Energy and Duke Energy announced that they had canceled the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which would have piped natural gas from West Virginia to Virginia and North Carolina.

Dominion and Duke blamed a decision by a U.S. District Court judge in Montana for overturning a federal pipeline permiting process that had been used for decades to allow oil and gas pipelines to cross wetlands and bodies of water

Climate activists also blocked a proposed, $7 billion, 300-mile long Mountain Valley Pipeline to bring natural gas from West Virginia to Virginia. West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin had fought for the pipeline but despite his remarkable power in Congress, as a swing vote, he was unable to overcome resistance by other Democrats. The pipeline is 94 percent complete.

The power of the climate movement in shutting down reliable sources of energy, and natural gas pipelines, comes from its success in persuading a large share of Americans that climate change represents an existential threat.