Who has an interest in keeping oil prices high? Environmentalists do because they want people to drive less. And Russia does because their economy has a significant oil production component. Neither the environmentalists nor Russia like that American is able to use fracking to cleanly produce natural gas, because it lowers the price of oil. How far would Russia and their environmentalist allies go to stop fracking?

The Daily Signal reports:

New Yorkers who are missing out on the natural gas revolution could be victims of Russian spy operations that fund popular environmental groups, current and former U.S. government officials and experts on Russia worry.

Natural gas development of the celebrated Marcellus Shale deposits has spurred jobs and other economic growth in neighboring Pennsylvania. But not in New York, which nearly 10 years ago banned the process of hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, to produce natural gas.

Two environmental advocacy groups that successfully lobbied against fracking in New York each received more than $10 million in grants from a foundation in California that got financial support from a Bermuda company congressional investigators linked to the Russians, public documents show.

The environmental groups Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club Foundation millions of dollars in grants from the San Francisco-based Sea Change Foundation.

[…]When New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, renewed his state’s ban on fracking three years ago, the Natural Resources Defense Council issued a statement supporting the ban. So did the Sierra Club,  the primary recipient of grants from its sister organization, the Sierra Club Foundation.

Environmental activists associated with the groups receiving Sea Change Foundation grants continued to pressure Cuomo and other public officials to maintain and expand New York’s fracking ban.

We know that Russia is helping dictator Bashir Assad to stay in power in Syria. It turns out that his ability to do these things is conditional on his ability to make money. The more natural gas America can get by fracking, the less influence Russia can have on the world:

Since the U.S. is now the top producer of natural gas in the world, and well positioned to export liquefied natural gas across the globe, Russia recognizes it gradually could lose influence in parts of the world where Moscow has been the dominant supplier of oil and gas, Stiles said in a phone interview.

“America’s natural gas revolution has huge geopolitical ramifications, so Russia’s motivation to try to block our natural gas development is easy to understand,” the CIA veteran said. “If you are worried about the Russian bear rearing its ugly head in the next several years, the way to stop that and put it back into its cage is to cut it off at the knees financially.”

“That’s what natural gas pipelines are all about and that’s what fracking is all about. We are providing affordable energy to average Americans at home and our allies overseas.”

Now, I’m sure that if I asked environmentalists why they are colluding with Russia, they would say that they had to everything they could to stop global warming. But is there any global warming? We know that global temperatures were higher than today during the Medieval Warming Period about a thousand years ago. Back then, as now, the sun was far more active. But solar activity has been declining lately, and is predicted to decline more. Should we expect to see a cooling period because of this?

The Stream reports on what we are seeing in the climate lately:

Temperatures plummeted way below normal across the Northern Hemisphere this winter. Many cities in Canada, America, England, and Europe broke previous record lows. But it is not just the intensity of winter that has taken climate alarmists by surprise. It’s also the length.

Winter temperatures persist in many parts of Canada and Europe in late April. Some places received record amounts of snow. Some got it unexpectedly late. The prolonged winter even delayed spring planting in many regions.

[…]By all measures, this winter is long and severe. The implications challenge those who believe CO2 emissions are pushing global temperatures ever higher.

[…]Winters like this year’s are not sufficient reason to claim an end to the Modern Warm Period. But they do subvert the claim of steadily, and swiftly, rising temperatures driven by CO2 emissions.

[…]When it comes to global temperatures, it is safe to assert (based on hundreds of scientific publications) that nothing unusual is happening with our climate system.

Almost none of the computer climate models foresaw the 18-year absence of significant warming. No alarmist scientist warned us about the current colder-than-normal winter, which has disturbed normal life in many parts of the Northern Hemisphere.

I understand that people get scared about the future, and they like to be doing things that make them feel safer, but I think we need to be careful about restraining our energy production in order to benefit Russia. Especially if there is no global warming happening.