What are the choices? Everyone will have to go renewable sooner or later because of global warming (and if you ignore global warming, you will still to do it, just bit more later, because fossil fuels will run out).

It's relatively easy to put together a package of renewable sources to cover all energy needs anywhere.

In terms of electricity, that's already done in EU - fossil fuels only cover ~30% of consumption now (31.6% in 2023 and falling by ~3% points per year), and will be 0% by 2035, that looks easy today and does not require any new invention nor even existing tech getting cheaper. We currently deploy quite a bit more renewable capacity than needed every year to make it work.

As for all kinds of energy together, that's quite a bit harder and so far, we are not there, but it shouldn't take more than about 5 years to arrive to the necessary rates of deployment.

Had you ever been directly employed by any of them, you'd be absolutely certain of their flawless ethical intentions. /s

>No blame at all for EU leaders?

You mean the "client state" representatives promoted, pre-approved, wined, and dined by the US (ever since WWII and the Marshall plan, and to an even greated degree after the last decently strong and independent European statesmen faded off 2-3 decades ago)?

"The role played by the United States makes the situation worse. Efforts at improving defense industrial cooperation, namely by the EU, have often been met by fierce opposition from the United States. After all, American defense contractors greatly benefit from inking contracts across Europe that deprive European companies of business. Thus efforts by Europe to get its industrial act together are met by stiff resistance by American administrations, which channel the concerns of U.S. companies about being locked out of the European market. For instance, after the EU announced plans for a new European Defense Fund and an initiative to develop new weapons systems, U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis and other Trump administration officials strongly objected and aggressively lobbied for U.S. companies to have access to the paltry EU funds. This rather petty concern, U.S. access to the European defense market, has not gone away under Biden. In fact, the Biden administration has also forcefully lobbied EU member states on defense initiatives. Even with a war on, the major focus of the EU-U.S. security dialogue has been, at the insistence of Washington, finalizing an innocuous “administrative arrangement” granting the United States potential access to more EU defense euros. U.S. opposition has had a significant chilling effect on attempts to improve coordination. It just takes a few skittish EU member states, worried about the reaction from their security guarantor, to pump the brakes on collective EU efforts. Partly because of such obstruction, European defense cooperation has declined over the past decade."

"Ultimately, of course, the perilous state of European armed forces is the fault of European governments. But NATO’s role in bringing about this state of affairs also deserves scrutiny. "

https://archive.ph/4o4r5#selection-2067.0-2137.22

Don't worry, I blame both.

Here is sone anti-americanists saying the same (except... they're not anti-americanists):

https://www.americanprogress.org/article/case-eu-defense/

Maybe, before the EU tries again to better its defenses, can we have the security that our "ally" won't try to kneecap it once again? Because we invested billions in e.g. developing Rafale fighters, and then the US bankrolls its F-35 everywhere. This isn't tenable.

Crimea wasn't 2 decades ago. Georgia isn't "them", it's not Europe

They had a golden opportunity and they took it, they created an empire for the modern era, turned on the fire hose of propaganda and convince us that the most warlike nation of the last century is some how the good guy.

I would claim that this doesn't have the same effect on the poor, in Europe, since there's an alternative: public transportation. In many regions of America, including California, there's often no viable public transportation*. You still need to drive, and if you're poor, you usually have a less-than-efficient car, and you have long commutes because you can't afford to live close to the city.

Again, this is all from experience. Large gas price changes always hurt my family the most. Now that I'm wealthy, I, along with the majority of people at work, have a luxury electric car, partly to avoid the high gas prices. I'm guessing the downvotes are in the "wealthy" category, and giggled, as I did, when they silently passed by gas stations these last few years.

* As an example, where I am now, commute by car is 24 minutes. Commute by public transportation is 3 hours.

That’s more than double what people in the midwestern United States pay for gas, about a dollar more per gallon than CA. Makes it easy to see why economically it makes sense to keep your car longer and just keep burning gas in the Midwest.

I didn't mean to suggest it's one thing. Countries with expensive gas usually have public transportation, but that's mostly unusable here, and sprawl means affordable housing is far from the work, so there's a lot more required commuting for people who would, in Europe, be taking public transport. Gas is $4.80/gallos ($1.26/L) where I am, right now. That's not all that "cheap", even by European standards, when you consider average commute distance is around double (according to a quick search).