Even after making an Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore personally advocated for natural gas as a transitional source of energy. Places like Germany built their entire grid off of it.
Even though Solar and Wind are exploding at unprecedented levels and they were never, ever going to be able handle all of the global energy needs within the half-century. But we're shutting down coal and no one wants nuclear so gas it is.
But you are correct, that some EU countries lost their source or natural gas (Nord stream 1 & 2 blowed up in 2022) and cannot transition on a whim and so needs gas (liquefied since all previous pipes are not working).
Blackballing nuclear has been the worst environmental decision our society has ever made. We would've solved this problem by now if we had just gone all in on nuclear energy
I think it is interesting that people accuse Germany of being "irrational" while if it was Italy for example, people would immediately call out the corruption.
They would be just as happy to sell Germany whatever technology the government wanted - it's just Germany's very strong green movement was vehemently anti-nuclear. If anything, it was their political entrapment with Russia that created their reliance on cheap natural gas.
But yeah, 20 years ago everyone asked "who's going to be the one to stop the third world from touching these resources" and no one had an answer so here we are.