Hacker News Reader

Comment by linuxftw | Hacker News Reader

I fail to see how western Europe survives another 20 years. They don't have energy resources, they don't really produce industrial raw materials like iron and steel. They don't produce enough food for themselves. The engineering gap between them and the 3rd world is rapidly closing.

View on HN

It seems you've forgotten about the organisation that grew out of the European Coal and Steel Community with a common agricultural policy towards self-sufficiency? They've been doing some work in this area?

https://www.eurofer.eu/assets/publications/brochures-booklet... : "a turnover of around €125 billion and directly employs around 310,000 highly-skilled people, producing on average 153 million tonnes of steel per year."

https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/infographics/how-eu-count... : EU remains one of the largest exporters.

You're going to have to quantify "survive". And stop reading doomy implications out of fairly minor news changes.

Western Europe isn't mining iron ore and making the raw steel. They're most likely importing steel ingots and finishing them. Everything has to be shipped in: the energy, the iron and raw steel. And then everything has to be shipped back out to it's final destination.

At some point, these industries are going to pivot closer to the raw materials and the actual consumers, the growth economies in the 3rd world. Western Europe won't be a major player.

Finland or Sweden not part of Western Europe then, for example? Steel makers in Germany don't exist?

In contrast, I don't see how Europe can survive with dependence for Energy on Russia. Europe has some fossil energy sources but what Europe actually has is fusion energy source in the sky and that's where EU should be getting its energy from.

Interdependence works only with full democracies. When EU countries need to provide high living standards and their energy source doesn't have to do that, the leaders of the energy source can choose to play EU since they will have more tolerance to economical pain. Even if they don't misbehave, their corruption hurts regular EU citizens when this energy money comes back into EU to disturb the housing market in an attempt to launder the Russian money.

What we do need is that European politicians wake up and realise that maintaining stable supplies in time of crisis is more important than short-term profits during relatively good times. Some investments in self-sufficiency are definitely needed, but the EU as a whole should have no problem ramping up production of the basics like food, steel, concrete and energy. That is, of course, assuming someone does something about it. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has rattled a lot of people and while the EU is a slow moving beast it is already responding.

I'm more worried about how to make the economy of it all work out. Someone is going to pay for all that it's going to be through taxes, and whomever gets that lottery ticket might not respond as expected (big Tech may decide to leave, smaller business could decide to simply shut down, regular people may cheat on taxes or start building guillotine replicas in public places, and so on.).

> like food, steel, concrete and energy.

Honest question, exactly how are they planning to do that absent cheap and abundant energy? Afaik the energy resources present in the Northern Sea are not up to the task (for re-industrialising the whole of Western Europe, that is).

There are some oil reserves in the Baltic and there's a reason the EU is very interested in getting Ukraine on board (Black Sea oil), but frankly, it's more likely we'll just buy it from somewhere else once fossil fuels have been phased out.

Until now there's been over-investment in renewables, but too little in modernizing the power grids. The result has been windmills being stopped during production peaks, because there's nowhere to send the power.

I'd guess investing in grid upgrades, storage and cheap baseload capacity will be the main focus for the European energy the next 20 years.

Could use the huge shale gas reserves in Poland, France, and Germany if really needed.

> They don't have energy resources...

What? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea_oil

These reserves are rapidly dwindling. How much will be left in 20 years? It seems almost none, unless they find new reserves.

Germany does have a plan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energiewende

I'd be surprised if we'd completely emptied the Baltic and Baltic seas of oil in 20 years, and if we do, there are alternatives.

Afaik they are not abundant enough.

The have huge shale gas reserves. They produce enough food for themselves. They even have huge iron ore deposits.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com