It's also that Europeans aren't willing to suspend their gas-fuelled comforts.
I'm not aware of EU wide polling around this theme, but look at page 7 of the latest Infratest-Dimap survey[0] for example. A majority of Germans want an oil boycott, even if that is forecast to bring a -3% negative effect on German GDP. The only population subgroup with a clear majority against a boycott are AfD supporters.
[0] https://www.infratest-dimap.de/fileadmin/user_upload/DT2204_...
Sadly most people I have suggested this to think I'm nuts. And Ireland isn't that cold.
> Sadly most people I have suggested this to think I'm nuts.
there's probably thousands of times more gas used to produce all the commodities you buy and use in your everyday life. so this strategy of individualist 'sacrifice' (vs. systemic change) is merely a fart in the wind.
It makes you feel better for having a moral high ground, sure. Objectively it's not that big of a change, while systemic social changes take time. For the most people, it feels like not in their lifetime.
I agree my individual action is not very relevant but I think a widespread adoption of such measures would have an impact on political thinking in Europe. Obviously that hasn't happened.
no it isn't.
does Germany produce the smartphones its citizens use? does it mine the rare earth minerals inside those phones? to pretend that we originate from inside of imaginary lines on a map and therefore should only be concerned with national issues is false. our world is one whole and we are all children of the same tribe.
Global North capitalists hoard science, send commoditized 'intellectual property' recipes for black boxed hardware to the Global South, collect rents on those recipes while not physically producing anything themselves... all while plundering the resources and labor/life-energy of people in the Global South.
this is a dirty rentierist black-box technological hellworld through and through. causing ecological and social damage and externalizing responsibility/costs is the name of the game here.
adding this as a source these highlights from a recent paper (especially the last point is relevant to this convo):
• Rich countries rely on a large net appropriation of resources from the global South.
• Drain from the South is worth over $10 trillion per year, in Northern prices.
• The South’s losses outstrip their aid receipts by a factor of 30.
• Unequal exchange is a major driver of underdevelopment and global inequality.
• The impact of excess resource consumption in the North is offshored to the South.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095937802...
The problem we have right now is: we literally don’t know what the consequences of going cold turkey would be. It’s very likely, that creature comfort would be _completely_ unaffected. The problem lies within the industry. And it’s unclear how elastic the demand there can even be. E.g. things like ceramic burners, it’s unclear whether you can reactivate them after you let them cool down or whether they’d burst. Same goes for nearly every intermediate stage in chemical processes and storages. It’s unclear if “pausing” production doesn’t also imply “rebuilding”. And depending on the elasticity of the demand (which will probably be surprisingly high, since these companies are _extremely_ well motivated to find solutions to a problem they hadn’t had before) it’s unclear how much gas we need (both in storage and by implication still buying from Russia).
We now have best-case scenarios talking about ~6% GDP loss max. But that assume practically no second order effects and is based on GDP numbers. Ie i wouldn’t be surprised, if that requires gas to go where there simply is no pipeline.
As I said in the beginning: The problem is we don’t know how things are interconnected. Yes by all means: if you feel comfortable with a lower room temperature then lower your temp. But these 1-2% things… we don’t have 30 of those. And they are extremely costly in terms of political capital
Seriously, what is it with far right groups and Russophilia ? One would think they'd be against the menacing nationalistic foreign power. Like the various quislings, it's funny how they square their nationalism with cooperation with another people's nationalism against their own's.
Or maybe it's simpler and it's just a matter of money. It's well documented Le Pen was saved by Russian loans, who knows if AfD aren't also on Russian payroll.
It would have been smart to invest in energy diversity before the war started. Too late for that now.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
So 74% of consumption is not households. What am I missing?
Translated: It doesn't matter if people freeze, to death or otherwise.
I guess you also don't mind food shortages, as long as they don't affect you personally.
Isn't it interesting how you admit that the lives of so many depend on natural resources they don't control?
But if burnt corpses start piling up in Brussels, I'll come back to this thread and admit to being wrong.
True, industrial users can't just start using something else instead of gas in their processes. And if they go out of business, that's production gone, supply chains gone, workplaces gone. Certainly not a good thing, but please – it's not elderly frozen to death by this Christmas.
My point being, it's not about individual heaters and house heating. That would be a solvable problem – an expense. However, making that expense is a different thing, since now you'd gotta convince your citizens that they must – not should, but must pay up in taxes for that solution to be enacted. And why? Because some other country got invaded and that pro-o-o-obably might cause something bad in the future for your country.
The other side of the coin being that some things are harder to solve: you can't import on a short notice a replacement for, say, chemical plants that need gas and everything that's connected to them.
Does this matter? The embargoes are putting up a heavy strain on the world's logistic supply chains. The price of everything that depends on logistics is going up, including things in theory not directly related to not-embargoed electric heaters.
Does the old man just not own enough clothes? If so, why would gas prices be the problem instead of his lack of clothes?
How could one overcome this in a short period of time without shutting down the whole economy? These aren't "comforts", they are necessities.
That being said: the problem is not necessarily gas-powered heating. The problem is an industry that is hugely dependant on gas, and - specific Ural-originated gas (yes, the factories can be modified to accept gas with a different chemical composition, but that takes time and money).
Absolutely not. American expansionism got us into the migrant crisis mess, but Russia invading Ukraine is 100% on Russia.
In Puttin's point of view, any new NATO member is yet another US territory to deploy weapons from.
Exactly this. NATO literally ignored Putin. We unfortunately found that the events a while ago were the straw that broke the camel's back. Putin is now angry, and ignoring what he thinks or wants turned out to be stupid.
> or wants.
I don't think not caring about the Ukraine situation is the right call either.
Did it really? NATO is now in a stronger position than ever.
No, Russian expansionism is.
NATO expansion is among the many (some mutually contradictory) excuses Russia has give for it's expansionism.