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Comment by Garvi | Hacker News Reader

The doubling of energy prices pretty much wiped out the heavy industry sector around here. I remember the German heavy industry Rhein area unions protesting this in Berlin without much media coverage a few months ago.

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That's because Germany exports its image of being rational and methodical so hard they accidentally believed in it and forgot they're all naturalistic-mystic Green Party hippies and shut their nuclear plants down.

I agree in principle. But the shutdown of nuclear reactors and subsequent switch to lignite coal burning power plants didn't affect the economy as much as it did the environment. Coal power is not more expensive, it's dirtier.

>lignite coal burning power plants didn't affect the economy as much as it did the environment. Coal power is not more expensive, it's dirtier.

Yeah, but us humans live in that environment. I wonder hoe many years less life expectancy will be thanks to lignite burning and breathing in that coal dust.

> and subsequent switch to lignite coal burning power plants

Didn't happen. It's still being used but it didn't replace nuclear, lignite use is down, it was roughly constant until 2018 and is in decline since 2019.

Industry sectors are not being wiped out that fast so.

What is that statement based on? In my country heavy industry has halved in the past 12 months. I know multiple engineers who are now getting into software development because of it.

On an European level, that doesn't seem to be the case so:

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

Except the global dip during Covid, development is either stable or slightly increasing. A 50% drop in production sounds like a strong claim, requiring equally strong sources to back up.

Let them eat environmental fanatics

The protesters were quite clear it wasn't about any misguided environmental policies, but political ones. We used to get a lot of cheap energy from Russia. Now that pipelines are getting blown up mysteriously, it's a different world.

And before someone accuses me of not badmouthing "the enemy" enough, know that even Ukraine is still importing billions worth of Russian gas and petrol products and thus financing the war against itself. Funny how that works.

> And before someone accuses me of not badmouthing "the enemy" enough, know that even Ukraine is still importing billions worth of Russian gas and petrol products and thus financing the war against itself. Funny how that works.

Ukraine doesn't want to cut of Europes supply of Russian gas until they are ready.

Russian gas transits via Ukraine but it remains to seen how long that will last for.

War is the best seller of weapons. It promotes crisis and allow price inflation beyond reasonable. It also allow bizarre social movements to blame some enemy

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