For fucks sake, in The Netherlands, we are burning WOOD for """green energy""", while everyone NIMBYs the fuck out of any windmill or power grid expansion project.
Sometimes we, as a species, act in a monumentally stupid manner.
Realistically, in this new world (since Russia's invasion of Ukraine and China's coordination and complicity in it), there's zero reason for China or Russia or any of their allies to coordinate with the rest of the world to reduce greenhouse emissions, especially when their economies are so heavily dependent on greenhouse gas for their energy sources and GDP. Deglobalization is going ahead full-speed, and the forces based upon globalization were the only real way to rein in other countries' behaviors in a peaceful way.
So why should the US and EU cripple themselves? The world is in a state of war, and we need to start acting like it. Nuclear energy is a great solution that solves both climate change and energy demands, but it will take a long time for any country to get there.
We act as a bunch of individuals, each responding to the incentives which are put before us.
You'll never get people to stop doing something if it is easy and profitable.
Is it the relative inefficiency and cabron generated throughout supply chain?
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/17/climate/eu-burning-wood-e...
Pollution on the other hand...
It is ok to take some risks. It is not acceptable to be without a plan once these risks materialise.
¹Consistently, they apparently put backup plans for worst-case scenarios "there where they must" (there where they must only - where it is part of the scripted plan, there where it is consolidated practice), not as a general consideration.
On the former, it's not a competition.
On the later, Chinese state massively subsidized the industry with the objective of wiping out foreign competition.
That said, few saw a war with Russia coming.
The Greens are the #1 culprit, for their social destruction of Nuclear over the last 50 years.
If we were to have expanded Nuclear at the pace of 1980 we'd be within striking distance of getting away from fossil fuels.
It might be too late now.
It's going to be a crappy winter and I have no faith that politicians will be able to do the big pie in the sky strategy things necessary.
A Nuclear rewnewal, alongside doubling down on renewables is in order on 'Marshall Project' scale.
The stakes are high now.
It was public doctrine in textbooks, taught at university. The warnings about moves at the chessboard (which in diplomacy often are issued in advance, contrary to chess) have been stated for decades, publicly and face to face. The products of the propaganda machine were quite reachable, and not really ambiguous.
Really, that «few saw» is farcical.
Edit: and it is quite worrisome to think that said "doctrine" is now implemented only up to a small fraction, and those expressions suggest blindness not just about the current actions, but the openly planned, stated future ones.
How on earth is it right to criticize a government for subsidizing green energy in the face of climate change? The reason why solar panels are so cheap today was because Chinese companies achieved economies of scale due to governmental support. This is a GOOD thing.
European countries were way ahead of the curve 10 years ago in terms of these green technologies but chose to do nothing. Their solar companies could have been world leaders as long as governmental policies supported them too. They would have been wiping others out. How can anyone blame China for investing/subsidizing in green energies? The way I view it, it's their just rewards for at least taking this aspect of green technology seriously while others did next to nothing in terms of subsidies.
And now those parties are blaming the greens because "you told us to get rid of nuclear".
Wilful blindness is a thing in international relations. Churchill plowed a lonely furrow in the 1930s. We were sure the bad old days were over in 1992. Etc. Policymakers and the public /wanted/ to believe that the era of aggression was over (or perhaps, more cynically, that the only permissible aggressor would remain the US).
Only in the sense that they weren't harsh enough, yes. They are stupid in how many areas they haven't tackled yet.
Declaring war to Hitler over invading Poland was colossally stupid.
No, relying on oil and natural gas was stupid.
We had so many warnings -- Moldova, Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine in 2014 and Ukraine now -- the only explanation possible is that Merkel and her cronies are russian agents.
The sanctions must be taken back, Ukraine must be divided and de-militarized, relationship with Russia and China MUST be improved. All this as long as we can.
Unfortuntatly, we only have trash politians in Germany.
Once there are demonstrations against this shit system, I will join. For the first time in my life. I am sick and tired of this system that knows it better and just hurts us. No thanks.
Any widget made in Europe - already losing in cost competition with East Asia - will now become even more expensive to make. It takes circa 10 years for nuclear reactor from plan-to-grid, and that is on the basis *with& the available workforce to do it, which of course Europe doesn't have any more.
Mass purchase of the Hualong One reactor might be a solution if the Chinese can make them fast enough. Either that, or dig up some more coal and burn that for the next decade or two, so goodbye climate change goals. It's an absolute mess, pain has started to percolate now, but will reverberate for years
If so, then the trans-Atlantic unity will come under serious strain as well. This is happening just as Europe began to climb into a bigger suit, that of an independent economic and military bloc to be reckoned with (not that it was at any moment a realistic ambition). Instead Europe will be forced to take a back seat again, have thousands of US troops on the ground for protection, while the US escapes unscathed if not considerably strengthened.
It's going to be a bitter pill to swallow.
For military it's not a reality today, but pre-pandemic it was absolutely a realistic goal many were working towards. Economically, it rivals the US in GDP terms and has some extremely strong sectors. Politically it's the main leader in human rights and regulation of new stuff that needs it (GDPR, Digital Markets and Services acts).
With the US in the process of imploding politically, the EU needs to maintain all of those and go even further.
Sure, but that's always the case. The question is, how much more expensive. And that's going to vary a lot depending on how much the natural gas and electricity required is part of the overall price.
No doubt we're in for a rough transition, which we should have avoided by embarking on it twenty years ago, but I see any evidence for long term ruin. Not due to loss of energy imports from Russia, anyway.
German and Italian.
But at least we got something something demoncrency to some random country 90% of us have not been able to identify on a map before the war. I mean.. come on, it is not some brown-people shithole like Syria, Iraq, Yemen that it was totally OK to bomb. This is the evil Russia who we are talking here about!
And we are the good guys.
Better to live poor in a recession than having some random corrupt country where people anyway dont care who robs them being part of Russia.
NOT MY WAR.
You're quite a moron, or willfully ignorant, if you can't identify the second biggest country on the European continent.
> Better to live poor in a recession than having some random corrupt country where people anyway dont care who robs them being part of Russia.
No, if 'some random corrupt country' becomes part of Russia, you're next. You have a choice to live in recession, or to live under the Russian yoke. And these days, the first time you speak out against being under the Russian yoke, you're going to find yourself in a gulag deep in siberia. You may want to get yourself sized for your coffin in that case, you won't make it out alive.
The german government is not deciding against the people in this case. (i believe... a german). German people are highly against nuclear and think that renewables could immediately solve our problems. This is just a lack of information and a ton of ignorance on the peoples side.
Apart from that our politicians are really "soft" in my eyes and i don't believe they will help the situation much in relation to Russia.
edit: Don't know about the rest of EU. That's why i state "my" countries perspective more.
Why should it be not true? Planned maintenance is fully normal and certainly occurs on that infrastructure. The differences to normality are:
-- that sanctions have made the maintenance operations problematic: e.g. one turbine was held in Canada, and its release was agreed days ago only upon request from Germany. Why and how this process was impacted by the sanctions I do not know: it is what is reported by journalists;
-- that during normal operations, during maintenance on the main pipeline the gas is redirected to the secondary pipeline in Ukraine, hiding the technical works through such backup system. The secondary pipeline is inactive because of the war.
What decision do you have in mind?
Throwing nuclear out the window and becoming so dependent on Russian gas? Not predicting Russian Imperial dreams of ruling the Europe?
OR
Trying to curb Russia during the war the best they can.
Because we need not to forget that Europe is at war. It is Ukrainians who are doing all the fighting ATM but all the western world is very much involved.
Europe is not at war. Or at least it wasn't until some politicians decided it was their business to intervene in somebody else's war. This is certainly against their own citizen.
I am an EU citizen myself and I did not consent to join this war.
> Not predicting Russian Imperial dreams of ruling the Europe?
Sorry, but that was never the case and will never be the case.
> Throwing nuclear out the window and becoming so dependent on Russian gas?
Bingo! However, that was not Russia's fault. It was definitely self-sabotage.
The EU did not reduce their attempts of buying gas from Russia.
[0] https://www.politico.eu/article/russias-rt-sputnik-ban-raise...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Enforcement_Act
[2] https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-rt-media-telegram-ukr...
[3] https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-to-prosecute-use-of-...
[4] https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/03/30/pers-m30.html
In it, the author argues that the end of global trade and energy has arrived, and that the endless economical growth of the past ~ 70 years will never return.
It's scary how much the war in Ukraine seems to be triggering exactly those phenomena the book talks about. Energy crisis, food crisis, economical downturns.
Observing how the world changes with this war (and also how covid completely fucked our globalized supply chain) it's clear to me how brittle globalization and capitalism actually is.
The coming 10-20 years will be hella interesting.
And I am meeting more Russian colleagues than ever in the office, so I do not think that there is less desire by the peoples to work together and trade and travel. It is single heads of state which are disrupting the global community and trade, even if it is to the clear detriment to them and their population.
So yes, I am worried quite a bit about them succeeding and in consequence setting back humanity, but I remain fundamentally optimistic, that common sense prevails.
That's interesting, because I had the opposite impression. In the midst of a very complex situation, with a significant percentage of the world literally frozen in place, not only did we not experience famine but also managed to create economic growth. The book you describe could have (and has been) written any time in the past 100 years and still sound true, while being ridiculously inaccurate.
The numbers worry, but as the article says, 1/3 of deliveries is from Europe itself. If people need do with that, it's bad, but not catastrophic.
Europe and Russia are both getting destroyed economically.
I’d imagine that Europe will be looking to quickly bring around “peace” in Ukraine, much to Ukraine’s detriment starting Q1 2024
