Professional Pundits Are Just Now Getting It In Re Energy

Someone who Walter Russell Mead thinks is "one of the world's top journalists" has this say about the new world emerging due to the energy revolution:

Political progress in combating climate change has been slow, but the battle for hearts and minds, especially of the younger generation, is being won. That political capital can be lost in an instant if the environmental movement allows itself to be equated with opposition to one of the lone sources of growth – and of good blue-collar jobs – at a time of global economic stagnation.

Let's compare that to what someone who has not been similarly lauded had to say, um, a long time ago:

The world has just received a lesson in what happens when people stop consuming oil. From American drivers driving less to Chinese factories producing less goods, "demand destruction" has been the buzz phrase of the second half of 2008, and for many countries around the globe who rely heavily on the production of oil for their economic health or their very survival, the picture isn't pretty.

...

 Each of the countries I have named, and many others that are in the same position on a smaller scale, stand to fall into disarray or be denied dreamed-of living standards at the hands of the next great global climate change initiative. Thus, it will not stand. Individual countries may do what they please to limit hydrocarbon fuels, but only a global initiative stands a chance of doing something meaningful, so the greenies tell us. Just as developing economies won't sacrifice their shot at economic opportunity in order to indulge the developed world, countries reliant on oil production won't vote to kill off global demand for the one industry on which their future rests. The lesson in demand destruction that we've just experienced has shown a large part of the world our potentially green future and I am certain they will have none of it.