You read the part of the article where they mentioned Russia and Turkmenistan, right? The executives there won't be impressed by a protest.
Russia and Turkmenistan might not care, but what about the companies in Algeria and the United States? Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Russia will be on the first line of climate change, they have quite few incentives to make the right call.
Algeria for what I know is corrupt like hell and this undermines everything. Public policies if decided, won't have any impact.
In the US the federal gvt can have quite a huge impact if the chambers follow. But you need indeed to convince a lot of people with conflicting interests.
As if you were saying that you’d gain Alaska if you get rid of the permafrost. Yeah sure but you’ll lose all the rest.
The biggest issue with global warming is that it’s a non linear phenomenon.
There’s threshold effects involved followed by exponentially worsening situation until we reach a new equilibrium.
They can’t maintain a regime that sacrifices the majority of the population. If they do so, they’ll be kings of… nothing.
Judging by excess deaths, Russia lost 1 million people to Corona[0]. The government's response is either nothing, or saber-rattling in Ukraine (depending whether you buy the view of their recent actions as a domestic distraction).
It's always been very difficult to overestimate the indifference of the Russian government to its own populace's well being, especially when they gain monetaraily and internationally from being indifferent.
[0] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-...
You should start the analysis from the population and its reality. Even Staline and Krutchev didn’t manage to get rid of high vodka consumption and alcoholism, where Putin managed while being less brutal. And he’s still popular among the population.
I mean there that usually we judge them by our own values, but you need to take into account their reality.
They built a great scientific elite over the last century but on the other hand, the rest of the population is not worth more than a third country’s one in terms of education, work and “lumières ethics”. And that gap is huge.
Russia has incentives, but the Russian government does not. Its fortunes are entirely tied to the petro-ruble.
And when it comes to choosing between what's good for Russia, and what's good for whomever is governing Russia, Russians will choose the latter eight times out of ten.
After 1991, a lot of illegitimate fortunes built up, controlling important parts of different industries but also weapons, including nuclear ones.
Even with the govt power and the brutal nature of the regime, they had hard times to make the oligarchs yield to his wishes.
History will certainly say that somewhat Putin was a necessity before the country’s dislocation threat.
Where? And how?
>>using alternatives, such as green gas
You mean synthetic gas? There is absolutely no capacity to produce anywhere near enough to satisfy even a single percent of European needs.
>>or heat pumps
Heat pumps are not a universal solution, they don't work in all climates, or they require digging trenches or wells to actually be efficient - again, not possible everywhere and for everyone.
And even if it was - with what money? Where I'm from in Poland I know lots of people who still heat their houses with coal, purely because gas is too expensive as it is. And you want to switch their source of heat to an even more expensive one? I'm sure they will be super happy to do that, sure.
You only need as much gas as is required to fill the gap that alternative gas providers and heat pumps can't provide to compensate the lost gas.
Another option is to improve the houses such they leak much less heat.
Money allocation could be managed through a variety of ways, such as EU funds
Politicians tend to make delusional promises which can never happen. Something like this is a long term thing it’s not… stop using gas now!
Governments are trying hard to artificially keep the prices low, but the reality is that the market really really wants people to give up on fossil fuels.
I mean electric boilers, heating panels, ranges and car chargers will easily increase peak loads by 15-25 kilowatts per house, that's 2-4x as much as they currently pull. Do that times hundreds of thousands of houses and you see the issue.
The right conclusion is that now they need to buff up the power grid extremely quickly TOO (it needs not take such a long time, some choices like solar or wind are quite quick to install).
Both the consumer endpoints and production endpoints have to change, of course.
As for the billions required for the transition, since when absolute figures make for good decisions? What is required is a comparison with alternatives. And one sure thing is that the cost of a failed transition, of a climate catastrophe, or indirect consequences like wars, are tremendously more expensive.
And nuclear energy, while having no carbon emissions, has the problem that nobody wants it in their backyard. Plus, huge upfront investments and costs.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/07/fireplac...
To clarify however, I didn't mean to say that Europe is clearly going to stop buying from these sources, just that _there are other means_. Too often with the climate crisis, options are there, but the nature of how we humans organized ourselves seem to stand in the way of taking them. Thinking of this as "well there's nothing we can do because it's in Turkmenistan" might sometimes be just a way to clear our conscious while not doing anything.
That's incredibly naive, if you excuse me saying so. 300 million people depend on Russian gas supplies, yes, most EU countries have emergency supplies for few weeks in case of a major disruption, but those are for emergencies - not for threats of "do X or else".