Comment by perihelions | Hacker News Reader

Comment by perihelions | Hacker News Reader

How can we expect to fight and win wars if we can't bear trivial negative consequences? US LNG from this port ships to Europe, it replaces the boycotted gas from the Russian pipelines [0,1]. The gas shortage is potentially going to be really bad this winter [2]. If these plants don't keep running, either many people will freeze to death (and the EU economy plunges into recession), or the boycott collapses (and Russia comes back to the negotiating table with extreme leverage).

Additional context: multiple European countries are backsliding to coal power right this week [3]. And Biden has waived federal air pollution regulations, to decrease reliance on imported oil [4]. It's not only Texas. This is a no-win scenario: we can't escape the tradeoff between air quality, climate goals, and the immediate war.

[0] https://www.ft.com/content/c1b8c308-b189-4a24-af67-6d18902e4...

[1] https://archive.ph/UZlCv (mirror of [0])

[2] https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-germany-government...

[3] https://hn.algolia.com/?&query=coal&dateRange=pastWeek

[4] https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-epa-issues-waiver-allow-...

> if we can't bear trivial negative consequences

The people being exposed to all this aren't being compensated in any way, any medical problems or other issues they have to fully pay for themselves.

Might be different if they got taken care of.

The Last Week Tonight episode on Environmental Racism is highly applicable here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-v0XiUQlRLw

It's very likely the people being exposed to this are marginalized and have little power to respond.

I wish people qould stop conflating "racism" with negative actions impacting low-income communities.

Yes, minorities are proportionally more likely to be in low-income communities, but the actions taken to harm these low-income communities hard the entire community, not just certain ethnicities within it.

If the intent was specifically to do this in black neighborhoods, regardless of that neighborhoods comparative wealth, then it would be racism. As is, it's a lot more complicated than that.

> if we can't bear trivial negative consequences?

Instead of we, how about you move right next to this plant..

But if the only consequence is price, I agree with you. I speculate that the Freeport LNG fire was sabotage. Of course I have no evidence, but many interests are served.. Russia, but also industrial natural gas users in the USA trying to limit the price..

The fire reduced our exposure to the global natural gas market, and the price in the USA immediately plunged:

https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/natural-gas

You don’t have to shut it down or cease production to improve air quality.

The relaxed standards suggest this plant is being allowed to operate dirtier than need be.

Europe needs to stop the energy sanctions with immediate effect. It has both a European and global effect that hurts us western people much more than Russia. Russia has prepared for this situation and has built a closed-circuit economy since 2014. Not to mention they have lost their trade partners suddenly in 1993, so they have rehearsed for this. Ruble hit strongest level for the past 7 years. The sanctions are _not_ working.

There are no energy sanctions, your Kremlin PR is obvious and boring.

Russia doesn't have a 'closed-cricuit' economy, it's fully dependent on western imports for their technology. Why have all auto plants shutdown? Why are tank factories shut down? Only in a pre-1917 way are they self reliant.

What do you mean there is no energy sanctions? https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insight... I just read an article today that 1 in 7 Belgian missed a meal in the last two weeks due to the inflation and elevated energy prices. Why do we need to suffer because of an agressive state attacked another one thousands of miles from me? You are right they might be pre-1917 but they don't seem to mind it. Us in Europe can't exist with pre-1917 tech/mindset.

How quickly do you think stopping the sanctions would bring the energy prices down? Russia already stopped gas exports to several countries.

I don't know, but what I do know is that in Hungary you can just buy 50 liters max, because there is a shortage already. If this situation has not affected your livelihood yet, that's great. But sh*t will hit the fan real hard come autumn in Central Europe.

Commodities are more than energy. Yes, the EU plans to stop using Russian oil and gas, but that's not the same as sanctions.

I guess you are right, seems like I was mislead by reading the headlines on Reddit. That just shows the power of media distorting facts. But semantics aside the situation starts to get a lot worse in some countries, like in Hungary there is a fuel shortage already.

Hungary is about the only EU country that doesn't stop using Russian oil.

Yeah, that's why interesting that they have a shortage. From friday you can only buy 50 liters per day. Some franchises limit it to 20.

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