A group of former generals and senior defense officials is warning against the seductive myth of American energy independence. Fracking and horizontal well drilling are giving the United States a lot more oil and gas, but they aren’t making us independent from foreign suppliers. In fact, because oil is a globally traded commodity, even if we produced as much oil as we consumed (an unlikely proposition), supply disruptions abroad would still affect the price of oil here. Barring an isolationist energy policy—a logistically fraught idea that would really upset our allies—America won’t be energy independent as long as it consumes oil. The Commission on Energy and Geopolitics expanded on these concerns in its inaugural report on U.S. energy security.

Today brings the world more nut job balderdash from supposedly responsible green leaders, as the UN’s climate head warned the world’s investors to divest from fossil fuel funds and put that money towards green energy. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres supported this extraordinary demand with an old green standby: pain of climate doom and gloom.

The Italian energy firm Eni is now the fourth of five early movers on Poland’s shale reserves to call it quits, and it’s hard to call this anything but a disaster for Polish shale ambitions. That’s a shame, because for a little while there it looked like Poland might have been the first country in Europe to follow in America’s footsteps.

A few weeks ago, Iraqi Kurdistan began piping oil north to its border with Turkey, connecting Iraqi oil fields with Turkey’s fairly extensive pipeline network for the first time. That didn’t go over well in Baghdad, where officials are worried that the region’s oil exports to Turkey will make it more economically and politically independent from the central Iraqi government. Irbil has done little to quell those fears, announcing that it will sell its first blocks of oil through its own regional oil marketing association, rather than the Iraqi state equivalent.

Fish too much, and you get fewer fish. That’s neither new nor surprising, but a new study suggests that overfishing’s depletion of fish populations can have permanent effects.

Melting polar ice is thrusting the Arctic Circle into the geopolitical limelight. The frigid region is estimated to contain nearly a third of the world’s undiscovered natural gas and 15 percent of its undiscovered oil, and the Arctic countries—Russia, Canada, Denmark, Norway, and, thanks to Alaska, the United States—are eying those resources as they jockey for position. But thawing ice will also expose new shipping lanes, and nations like the United States will have new responsibilities to keep those routes safe for commerce.

Brussels will sketch out its 2030 green targets next week, and there’s a strong possibility that its renewable energy goals will be more suggestion than mandate. In March, the European Commission will vote on a plan for 2030, and the mood is decidedly less optimistic than it was when targets for 2020 were put in place, thanks to rising electricity costs.

Britain’s shale prospects got a lot brighter today, after 10 Downing sweetened the deal local communities will get for playing host to drilling operations. Local councils could now reap nearly $3 million per well—a number that could overcome what has been to this point strident NIMBY opposition.

We hope our readers had a productive return to reality in the first full week after the holidays. Here are some stories you may have missed in the past week that are well worth your time this Sunday afternoon.

Late last week, 7,500 gallons of a coal-processing chemical leaked into West Virginia’s Elk River. That river supplied water for the state’s capital, Charleston, and in the aftermath of the spill, more than 300,000 people are without clean water. Fracking could prevent accidents like this one, but don’t expect any green to admit that.