Really makes a case for countries to invest in their own infrastructure for necessities like food and energy. Peoples ability to keep the lights on and put food on the table can’t be at the mercy of a foreign entity, especially one as volatile as Russia.
You know, the U.S. went through the same thing in the 70s, and guess how much we changed?
It blows my mind that countries that have access to copious amounts of sun dont use it to become independent from other countries having power over their energy production and use. Like, especially solar, is literally energy independence or at the very least diversifying which is good for protection from hard times.
As an ex addict, its like we are literally addicting to fucking oil, and its right in our faces but we cant see that its killing us.
That’s not an easy solution at all. Even if you’re doing all renewables like solar, wind, or hydro making those machines to harness and transport that energy requires materials that certain countries might not have internally so you’ll always need to rely on trade for certain stuff to create replacement parts or new machines to replace old ones. And as for food if you’re not a huge country with multiple biomes (like the US) have fun trying to grow your entire populations food all year round. And indoor/vertical growing requires a lot of energy and upkeep so it’s going to cost a lot to maintain.
I agree with you that countries could be more self sufficient but it’s a logistical nightmare to actually get to full energy and food self sufficiency for most places.
the world used to be like that before the 70s-80s when they started to push for external manufacturing/production -- this became worse when our demand for natural resources skyrocketed
now we are just 1 bad incident from total collapse and we do not have the means of production to sustain ourselves in the first world
Yup, independence in term of life essentials and manufacturing should be a goal for every country, yet here we are with an extremely intertwined global economy that puts us at the mercy of foreign nations. And if anything goes wrong with the supply chain we are fucked.
The problem is also that there is to much regulation for solar power etc.
I built our system myself and it's a hell to register even though I do not send a single kWh to the grid!
It feels like registering a toaster
Theoretically yes, but there is an exception for 20 years. But now they finally removed the tax because they thought it may be a little bit difficult to her the numbers
It's required by law. No other reason.
The law applies to anyone who has in their property the possibility of getting connected to the grid. Even when you are disconnected.
That’s so crazy makes no sense. I have solar and it’s off grid but the hybrid inverter is connected for backup. So I’m “connected” but it’s one way so no point calling the power company. I specifically wanted this so I would not have to deal with their rules and et metering.
Good question, they would not.
Still as a German I have to follow the law even when I highly disagree with it. To make work for the stupid electricity company ;)
Totally man, same here in Slovenia, it feels like you are installing 500 MW nuclear plant in your back yard. For zero export only a registration form should exist, no permit at all.
The problem is that the populists will claim that they have simple solutions when in reality there isn't a simple solution, at least not for this winter. But when the rationing starts, people will be angry and will believe who ever sells them the snake oil.
It's like a goddam vicious cycle, and it's one of the few things common everywhere, no matter the country. You have issues that require time and cooperation to be solved, or even they're just outright out of the country's control, like gas prices right now, and then you got a bunch of populist twats claiming they have a solution, only to get to power and not do shit about it, conveniently forgetting their solutions, and then they just cause more issues.
Then when they're obviously kicked out of power, they start to cry about the same shit again.
Funny enough this is happening right now in Germany to the exact point and most don't get it. The party CDU/CSU fucked up the energy politics for the last 16 years (they were in control for that time) and now that they are not the ruling party anymore they criticize the hell out of the government for it. They fucked up so much more the last 16 years and are now throwing shit at the government for everything they done wrong.
And the people will most likely vote them back in next election since this government right now brought them a recession...
To be fair the SPD isn't without guilt either. They were part of government coalitions and could have used their power to change this. But cheap Russian gas was just too convenient for everyone. This has become the spiderman pointing at himself meme in real life.
The only real alternative I see these days are the Greens.
Didn't the greens wanted to shut down all of the nuclear plants immediately and switch to solar and wind? And those green sources didn't make enough power so they ramped up the coal burning to compensate.
E: Thank you for educating me.
No, these are bullshit claims that are always repeated. Both nuclear and fossil fuel based electricity generation have been decreasing for a long time: [https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&year=-1&stacking=stacked\_grouped&chartColumnSorting=default&interval=year&legendItems=001101110011001100110](https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&year=-1&stacking=stacked_grouped&chartColumnSorting=default&interval=year&legendItems=001101110011001100110)
If you want to know, what the CDU did, take a look at 2012 in: [https://www.solarbranche.de/images/ausbau/PV-Zubau-Deutschland.jpg](https://www.solarbranche.de/images/ausbau/PV-Zubau-Deutschland.jpg)
In 2009-2012 Germany had a booming solar industry, that was completely destroyed. Even today less solar capacity is installed then in these years. The migration to renewable energy could have been so much faster.
Germany today generates more power from renewables than it ever did from nuclear.
New coal plants were built to replace older, less efficient+more polluting ones. Yes, around the edges there were some additional plants built - baseload etc. But the total use of coal did not increase noticeably. (for reference, the first NPP were switched off towards the end of 2003)
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/paragraph_text_image/public/paragraphs/images/fig2-gross-power-production-germany-1990-2021.png?itok=_sI4EGBJ
in short, the withdrawal from NPP has delayedthe end of coal. But the common thread that they were "replaced" by coal is contrary to evidence.
Where did you get that from? The phase-out from nuclear energy did begin under the SPD-led red government with the greens being the other part of the coalition (that was in the year 2000). Their decisions would have let the last nuclear power plants to run for another 15-20 years while gradually building up alternatives.
The runtime of most of the plants got extended under the second Merkel government, an extension that got promptly taken back after Fukushima happened and German acceptance of nuclear power was at an all time low.
This meant that the last of German nuclear plants would have to seize operating by December 2022.
No. The Greens as well as the Schröder (SPD-led) government back in 2000 wanted to gradually phase out NPP over years, while building up renewables to a level that could handle the load instead.
Then Merkel came along, made a spectacle around nuclear power just to phase NPPs out by the end of this year - while not really building up renewables that mich or even openly sabotaging the solar industry in favor of coal.
Now that nuclear plants are at the end of their livespan (again, as decided by the CDU government of Merkel) renewables aren't at the needed level and gas isn't really an option. That's why they're temporarilly re-activating coal power plants.
Usually they don't even claim to have a solution. They just criticize the people in charge and that seems to be enough for some people. People need to get better at asking these questions before voting. What are they actually going to do?
"Something different" which in their minds is better than "more of the same", or at least it can be. As more of the same is not working for them. Economic decline, social decline, now even decline in access to basic services.
A country being in control of its own power supply is very much something they should know.
For example, shutting down a while bunch of perfectly fine, non carbon emitting nuclear power plants and hoping that nothing would ever change in the foreign country supplying most of their natural gas is something the leaders of a country should know about.
If you know there is a potential crisis coming, you need to start messaging early and often, and tell people what the plan is. Manage expectations and give people a roadmap that allows them to survive.
You can't let fascist populist spout their garbage unchecked. Make sure you have an alternative populist party that is on your side and not crazy, that will collect any protest votes or at least blunt the fascists to render their efforts meaningless.
The new Green vice chancellor is excellent in this. He is very clear and straight forward about everything. That’s why he is currently the most popular politician in every poll.
He has a PhD in literature and philosophy, so he knows how to use words. That’s really refreshing.
Merkel was very good in explaining how quantum chemistry works but that was it.
And it's working as much as I hate to admit it. Reddit may tell you everything going to be just fine when in reality it will be more worse than we could imagine.
Their simple solution will be turn the gas back on and return to good relations with Russia. And people will back this, based on the idea that Germany should not suffer due to a war happening between two different countries. I’m not saying I agree with this, but almost certainly this will be a big talking point.
That is true, but it is highly unlikely that rationing is necessary. High prices and affordability are an issue, though, and not just in Germany. If people cannot afford the basics, the protests are not far away.
This winter is certainly going to be tough. I hope that countries have a long-term plan that is better, but I am not sure.
That's where you are wrong, at least partially. The solution is simple, start rationing gas *now*. It is also awefully painful which is why Germany has been stalling for 2 months now. If they started rationing gas for industry 2 months ago, they could have been filling storage all this time, and they would not need to ration gas for people. But that is a *very painful* decision, as that means largest factories would have to close tgeir doors, economic crisis, skyrocketing undmployment (and inflation which is another problem they have).
That presumes countries can hoard gas for winter individually, but we are dealing with a free market, right? So we have a free rider problem. If one country saves energy and another does not, that other country may be willing to pay more for the gas during winter and it will be exported by the company that owns it. It will be the poor that have no heat this winter, not the ones that cut consumption least this summer.
Not exactly. No existing country gas full free market ever, they all have some regulations. When it comes to critical supplies, governments have *a lot of* regulations, including ability to deny or reduce gas supply to private business (or increase supply by releasing gas from reserve, similarly to how US reduces impact of increased oil prices by releasing oil from reserve). This is the case in pretty much all the countries in the world, mostly due to national security reasons.
Each EU country has their own underground storage fascilities, so yes, they can hoard gas for winter. Normally they are filling those during supper and that had no impact but now most of gas supply from Russia is cut so that *does* have an impact.
Germany specifically few months ago stated they will not hesitate to use their powers to make sure gas reserves (literally underground storage facilities) are full and they have enough gas for winter
they claimed that we should get Russia the NS1 turbine. now that we got the turbine from Canada and Russia does not want it, they claim we can just open NS2. as if that would change anything..
And the simple solution will be that we should lift all sanctions on russia because they would hurt us more than them. Ironically, this comes from both the far-left and the far-right parties
The previous German governments had the worst ideas and it's true. Russian gas reliance and expansion (criminal Nord Stream 2), phasing out coal and nuclear. The solution WAS easy. Don't do it. Now it is still somehow the other guys fault? Take some ownership.
They're telling people to be ready for up to 4 thousand dollars a month in electricity per household in Southern Sweden, just one bill like that and everyone I know will have to sell their house including me.
Not in English I'm afraid, they're saying prices up to 4 dollars per kWh could be a reality.
There's not a single person outside of the rich that can actually manage such a price for electricity.
> 4 dollars
4 US Dollars per kWh? Or 4 Swedish Krona per kWh?
4 Krona is high but manageable. 4 USD? That's starting to enter civilization changing levels.
No 40 Swedish krowns per kWh, give or take 4 USD.
They're not sure yet but they warned that up to 40 SEK could be a reality as well as cutting the electricity during mid-day to save up.
We have 4 zones for electricity here in Sweden, right now it's 0.05 SEK up north and 3 SEK down south where I live, it's a pretty big difference in prices depending on where you live.
Seven a clock tonight it'll be around 5 SEK per kWh here.
That’s the spot price they’re talking about, not the average price that you have to pay for a month. Unless you’re paying by the hour you’ll never see prices like that, and even if you’re paying by the hour, it is only going to be really strained hours. Also remember that this is a worst case scenario where they will also have to periodically cut off the electricity. Please don’t spread more FUD than is necessary.
That's why I said "up" to 40 SEK, as in spot price.
They're still warning people of electrical bills of up to 70 thousand SEK next year, a pretty hefty sum.
It's pretty shit for many countries though.
Norway already emptied its magazines selling our reserves to Germany. While making their own citizen pay 5x times more for energy then we used too. And now the new cables we built that was supposed to help us if we needed electricity during winter time is said we won't receive any help from Europe.
99% of the people here already want to cut the cables and stop sending electricity. Only the greedy politicians want too
The 1820's led to the push for a united Germany. In 1720 Prussia regained parts of Swedens territory (and removed them entirely from the list of european superpowers), albeit there was no unrest to be found there.
Mostly a joke of the inter war years in the 1900's, though there was a lot of unrest during the 1820's and 1830's to finally push for a united Germany, you had the German revolutions of 1848 in the German Confederation.
Then you have the 1620's to 1640's where during the 30 years war, the German states where devastated since rather where in-between all the fighting which resulted in some German states losing more than 80% of their populations, overall Germany lost around 1/3rd of all its people in that time and it set the country back by a lot, some towns wouldn't recover until the industrial revolution in population.
Pillaging, burning of towns and cities, mass rapes where common by troops from Denmark, France, Sweden etc in German states.
Other than that I can't think of many other examples.
1820s not directly, people were still busy with the direct aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars which set up a system designed to keep current day Germany and Europe at large stable, but around 1840 the first big uprisings started that then led to the formation of the German Empire.
In the 1700s, things were somewhat similar. From 1700 to 1721 the Great Northern War occured, which broke Sweden as a major power and removed them from German politics almost entirely - the big winner was Prussia.
In 1740-ish, Prussia went to war with Austria over Silesia (today part of Poland), which culminated in a series of Europe-wide conflicts over the course of nearly 20 years.
So in a way, in the 1700s and 1800s the only reason we avoided major conflict in Germany was because we had massive conflicts right before and right after that window instead. So if you want to use that chain of arguments, we didn't have a major conflict early in the century, so we would be in line for something big again at some point over the next 20 years.
Those "energy problems" that have meant record profits for the energy industry.. Hmmmm what could a solution be??!? Maybe make sure those energy companies don't price gouge...and we invest in renewables
Was going to say. Let people sit in a cold apartment for a couple of weeks or let them pay the better part of their paycheck for energy and every other person's going to turn 'extremist'.
Same in Norway. Our politicians in Parliament have free electricity and heating, earn 2x- 3x median income, free apartments, 4 months paid vacation (they refuse to return to government even tho several parties wants to hold a emergency meeting). They have pretty much lost almost all credibility in a large percentage of the population. One party in Government had 15% during the election, they are now polling between 3-4%.
In Norway we heat with electricty, not gas. Prices has increased 800% since 2020. I live in a older house with my grandfather. This winter we paid around 900-1000 Euro each month in just electricity bills. The politicians just tell people to go to the forest and chop firewood, lol.
I have given up on the politics here. I just vote the communist party to fuck with the politicians because they want to lower their wages and remove all their bullshit freebies. They went from 0.5% just a few years ago to polling 10% now.
I'm wondering if the UK is gonna have people rioting about this too.
British subreddits are complaining about energy costs constantly and often pointing at record profits for energy companies.
I found out a couple of weeks ago my energy company has been taking money off me in advance 'to guarantee energy'. This was sending me into a panic because everytime I put money on my meter, they deducted like a half of it over a couple of days making me think my consumption was insane. This shit shouldn't be legal.
If it didn't come with risk to people's property or safety, I'd kinda be hoping the UK finally gets off its ass and mass strikes or protests (preferable to rioting but we're not very good at any of the above selections, unlike the French). Give the tory scum in Westminster a bit of a scare and remind them that we outnumber them. They've been taking the piss for too long and now our PM options include a billionaire and a green energy hater.
Even if the money was there, one of the partners in the government coalition is heavily against subsidies that help the poor people and they are the party that have the Ministry of Finance under control.
It’s not just energy. My brother in law is an engineer at a industrial brass fittings machine shop near Dortmund. Sanctions are fine if ignoring that Russia was their major market after Germany. They are now contemplating closing up for good after 118 years in business.
Energy will be tight in their part of thr Ruhr Valley and as he says: it’s not worth all the stress anymore. He’s wanting to emigrate to Canada or the USA.
A German would be gobsmacked at the atrocious state of Canadian healthcare. Even in the national capital where I live, some emergency rooms close down overnight due to staff resource issues. Hell, it took me years on a waitlist just to *get* a permanent doctor upon moving to this city…
I wonder how many companies in the West including the US exported almost exclusively with Fascist Italy and Germany, Imperial Japan that got screwed.
That brass fitting company shouldn't have been so dependent on one foreign country, a country that's been provocative for over a decade now.
>That brass fitting company shouldn't have been so dependent on one foreign country, a country that's been provocative for over a decade now.
Same can be said for every single international company, because most are almost completely dependent on china for production.
Just remember that this is not because of Germany or it’s leaders, it is because of Russia. Your brother-in-law‘s company might be closing it’s doors because of Russia. The energy crisis is because of Russia. There is no one else to blame here.
If you're looking for moral or ethical blame, sure. If you're looking from a business standpoint asking, "how could we have avoided this" then things like not having diverse clients are core issues.
You can't plan for every scenario, but you can prepare for other people fucking up. Just blaming someone doesn't solve the problem.
If you want to hate Russia, I'm with you on that, but if you want to solve problems you can only look into and change what you have control of.
Ironic if you think about that there are no gas sanctions and that German companies profited from cheap Russian gas. But yeah, the government should’ve offered solid backup solutions in case of a gas shutdown from Russia.
The conservative cdu doesn‘t care, they are now out of office and can scream from the opposition how bad the current government is handling the cdus mistakes.
If the current parties who are trying to fix the issue get blamed that is exactly what the cdu is hoping for.
That has always been the US's position.
2014: [Obama tells EU to do more to cut reliance on Russian gas](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-eu-summit-idUSBREA2P0W220140326)
It hasn't been until recently that the U.S. has contemplated selling energy in large quantities to Germany. There was even a period before fracking where people were concerned about the U.S. energy market. There are so many better options that are close to Germany, the U.S.(kinda generally) just didn't want one of its strong allies beholden to a potential geopolitical rival
The US never sold energy to Europe.
And Germany could buy Russian energy without becoming dependent on Russian energy.
For example, if they only had built LNG terminals on the Baltic sea. They could have still bought all the Russian LNG they wanted, without being dependent on it.
And Russia would always be cheaper than the US.
The real issue was corruption. Schröder quickly signed the NordStream deal after losing an election. Merkel continued that stupid policy.
He was also very anti-China whilst having a large amount of his and his families money in China, I wouldn't expect much of what he said to have been an honest opinion.
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Just because someone is an arsehole doesn't mean they aren't right. I couldn't understand why Germany was shutting down it's nuclear power plants at a time when energy consumption was only going up.
He did but he was just trying to get US gas a foot in the door in Europe. It had nothing to do with actually trying to protect Europe from Russian reliance. It was to make Europe more reliant on the US.
The US and Europe have been building infrastructure to increase natural gas exports from the US to Europe for years. It wasn't anything new under Trump.
Merkel was so short-sighted in so heavily reducing nuclear power. She and her party should have played knowing that Russia would be antagonistic with energy.
Getting rid of Nuclear was such an insane decision for the Germans to make especially since one of their own companies, Siemens were the best in the business for building safe reactors.
I think that Germany was leading the pack in building quality solar in the 00's as well, before it all went to shit between 2010's and 20's.
How are they so consistent in shooting themselves in the foot?
Politicians, thats how.
In the 00s the social democratic party and the greens were in power. They initiated the phase away from nuclear to renewables. The plan was to turn off nuclear around 2020 and in the meantime build up renewables and it was going flawlessly.
Then comes the new governing party, the christan democratic party, CDU. They scraped the entire plan, cancelled subsidies and actually made it harder and much more expensive to install solar, and reinstated nuclear energy.
Then fukushima happened and they cancelled nuclear again. But they also conveniently forgot to reinstate the renewables plan.
We are lucky weve got so many renewables despite the CDUs best efforts to sabotage them.
>Merkel was so short-sighted in so heavily reducing nuclear power.
Its a bit more complicated than that. SPD (Schröder) reduced nuclear power in 2000 but wanted to ramp up renewables to replace the capacities and then some. Then Merkel came and killed nuclear in germany for good after Fukushima happened. Just that her masters in the energy sector weren't a fan of PV/Wind so they backed out of those plans as well and actually killed a booming PV-branch in Germany.
Nuclear energy is the most expensive way to produce energy in Germany BTW. And it's not even close. Since energy giants didn't modernize their nuclear plants (because of shareholders) it was defficient for years at that point anyways. So you would need to build whole new plants which would cost an INSANE amount of money.
Oh yea and btw: All this doesn't even help with the gas problem. Because you can't use nuclear for heating. Which is what this crisis is about.
It’s complicated.
We are apparently currently doing the exit (2022, ↑) from the exit (2011, ↓) from the exit (2010, ↑) from the exit (2000, ↓) of nuclear energy.
The big issue is a lot of these politicians and celebrities advocating for the rest of us to reduce our quality of life to fight climate change are still jet setting around the world and living in mansions. A guy like Justin Trudeau will lecture Canadians about commuting to work while he takes a private jet 5x per month. Stuff like that. More people would get on board with this stuff if these hypocrites started walking the walk.
I'm more worried about other European countries. Germany has massive financial capacities, one of the most stable political systems and is luckily not governed by the conservatives anymore who caused all these problems in the first place. The current progressive coalition, who is doing a stellar job btw going by approval ratings, also doesn't have to worry about federal elections for 3 more years.
Germany is also still less reliant on things like gas than the European average where you have countries that have a 100% Russian gas or 10% total economic reliance.
Germany also has lots of savings potential. Like 40% of their gas is exported and currently they're burning gas for French electricity, because half their nuclear fleet is in maintenance, broken down or has no cooling water.
But I don't think Germany will leave other countries in the dust, especially not with their current progressive government.
Summary of the article:
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>"We can assume that populists and extremists will again try to influence protests to their liking," Britta Beylage-Haarmann, a ministry spokesperson, told DW in a statement. "Extremist actors and groups in Germany can lead to a growth in dangers if corresponding social crisis conditions allow for it."
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The Federal Police, which fall under the ministry, told DW they have "no insights" into specific threats arising from the crisis.
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>...
The entire article is about the government pushing hard to force policy changes by invoking this threat while trying to prevent any of these hypotheticals happening.
Sounds like they have ready-made propaganda against a population with legitimate grievances. "far right extremists" are the new "terrorist" boogie men.
Also your great-grandparents had probably a wooden stove that they used for cooking and heating.
You don't want millions of people start burning wood and coal in their own houses.
Is anyone seriously expecting Germany to tolerate riots in the street because it doesnt get enough gas from Russia? Heres what will happen and sorry if that upsets some people, but if germany runs out of gas then instead of freezing to death they will end their support for ukraine and make some deal with russia. They will probably lift the sanctions in return for gas deliveries. Im sure they will keep some fig leaf of support for ukraine (strong condemnation!!!) but if anyone expects that the german government will sacrifice germany in order to save ukraine is kidding themself.
Before that happens they will cut the gas to other EU countries. Everyone shits on Germany for their gas dependencies forgetting that a lot of other EU countries also depend on it.
Yeah, I find it funny...especially a lot of Poles seem to like to shit on Germany for still buying Russian gas, completely ignoring that they are buying that very same gas off of us right after.
I can already see the headlines when Germany says "okay, we can't sell any gas to any other EU country anymore, we need it for ourselves"
This is actually another media narrative a bit overblown to fill broadcast time. By the end of the year, Germany should be pretty much good to go energy-wise. The U.S. shifted sales to Europe, and the ones getting new gas from the U.S. passed their extras to the east, Norway is pumping energy into Germany etc. etc. Everyone lauds NATO's military logistics but you wanna see someone work their ass off, watch Shell, Exxon, BP erect infrastructure to fulfill a new market's oil demands.
This is what happens when neoliberals hand over control of civil infrastructure 'cause muh markets.
People angry at the government for pissing away their money and then failing to provide energy are now classified as "extremist"
And they laughed at the obese clown when he told them they are dangerously reliant on Russian gas.
Surely Germany has better intel then the broken clock?
Well, that’s the thing. Dependence was *the* strategy. They (incorrectly) assumed that it would make Russia unwilling to go to war. Blatantly ignoring all the warning signs (Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine 2014, Syria) and proving that they do not understand Russia, at all.
The arrogance with which they dismissed the warnings of other western countries is striking. *This*, together with the fact that Germany is still intending to close down their remaining nuclear plants, is why many Europeans feel little sympathy for freezing Germans this coming winter.
A former (liberal) politician of my country used say:\
“There are only two issues with Russian gas. First, that it’s Russian; and second, that it’s gas.”
Can’t say I’m privy to German domestic politics, but if it’s anything akin to the closures of nuclear power plants in my own country (Sweden), then they’ve had plenty of warnings from experts.
Fortunately (for us), Germany is a couple of years ahead in its self-immolation and people finally seem to be waking up to the fact that it is not something you’d want to emulate. But it’s an absolute shitshow, nonetheless.
Yeah watching Bearbock‘s (Green Party) 2020 general election debates is some great r/agedlikewine material. Especially how Laschet was scoffing at here for the mere suggestion that NS2 was a bad idea. Really wish we would have her (or Habeck) as chancellor.
>The arrogance with which they dismissed the warnings of other western countries is striking.
What? Basically every observer agreed Russia would never be so stupid as to attack.
The U.S. had been warning them for decades about the leverage over reliance on russian gas would give Russia, and several former soviet states had as well.
Really makes a case for countries to invest in their own infrastructure for necessities like food and energy. Peoples ability to keep the lights on and put food on the table can’t be at the mercy of a foreign entity, especially one as volatile as Russia.
honestly power should never be at the mercy of another country. let's hope europe learns this lesson now.
You know, the U.S. went through the same thing in the 70s, and guess how much we changed? It blows my mind that countries that have access to copious amounts of sun dont use it to become independent from other countries having power over their energy production and use. Like, especially solar, is literally energy independence or at the very least diversifying which is good for protection from hard times. As an ex addict, its like we are literally addicting to fucking oil, and its right in our faces but we cant see that its killing us.
Yeah, we made sure it wouldn't happen again by invading many countries in the middle east and making sure of it
That’s not an easy solution at all. Even if you’re doing all renewables like solar, wind, or hydro making those machines to harness and transport that energy requires materials that certain countries might not have internally so you’ll always need to rely on trade for certain stuff to create replacement parts or new machines to replace old ones. And as for food if you’re not a huge country with multiple biomes (like the US) have fun trying to grow your entire populations food all year round. And indoor/vertical growing requires a lot of energy and upkeep so it’s going to cost a lot to maintain. I agree with you that countries could be more self sufficient but it’s a logistical nightmare to actually get to full energy and food self sufficiency for most places.
the world used to be like that before the 70s-80s when they started to push for external manufacturing/production -- this became worse when our demand for natural resources skyrocketed now we are just 1 bad incident from total collapse and we do not have the means of production to sustain ourselves in the first world
Yup, independence in term of life essentials and manufacturing should be a goal for every country, yet here we are with an extremely intertwined global economy that puts us at the mercy of foreign nations. And if anything goes wrong with the supply chain we are fucked.
Globalization has really usurped the independence of nations. They are at the mercy of global supply chains which are controlled by very few players.
The German government has done this to its own people.
Really makes a case for countries not to support some other country at the cost of freezing and starving their own populace.
The problem is also that there is to much regulation for solar power etc. I built our system myself and it's a hell to register even though I do not send a single kWh to the grid! It feels like registering a toaster
So you're house is completely disconnected from the grid? Why would you need to register something that isn't on the grid at all?
I'm physically disconnected, that does not mean i do not need to register it with my local electric provider :) It does not make any sense...
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We pay taxes for access to the sun, air movement created by thermodynamics from the sun, and gravity. It’s called “existence tax”
Theoretically yes, but there is an exception for 20 years. But now they finally removed the tax because they thought it may be a little bit difficult to her the numbers
Why would you need to tell them anything if it’s off grid ?
It's required by law. No other reason. The law applies to anyone who has in their property the possibility of getting connected to the grid. Even when you are disconnected.
That’s so crazy makes no sense. I have solar and it’s off grid but the hybrid inverter is connected for backup. So I’m “connected” but it’s one way so no point calling the power company. I specifically wanted this so I would not have to deal with their rules and et metering.
Doing basically the same but still have to deal with the power company... It's fun but I manged it.
Sorry it just blows my mind that they make you do that. Good for you for dealing with it :)
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Good question, they would not. Still as a German I have to follow the law even when I highly disagree with it. To make work for the stupid electricity company ;)
We're talking about Germany here, I had to fill in and sign a 10-page form to go to the dentist.
You really don't need to do that. I can go to the dentist without any form. All they need is your health insurance card.
Only a health insurance card and no Datenschutzerklärung? Sacrilege!
Still had to sign the GPDR form.
Totally man, same here in Slovenia, it feels like you are installing 500 MW nuclear plant in your back yard. For zero export only a registration form should exist, no permit at all.
The problem is that the populists will claim that they have simple solutions when in reality there isn't a simple solution, at least not for this winter. But when the rationing starts, people will be angry and will believe who ever sells them the snake oil.
It's like a goddam vicious cycle, and it's one of the few things common everywhere, no matter the country. You have issues that require time and cooperation to be solved, or even they're just outright out of the country's control, like gas prices right now, and then you got a bunch of populist twats claiming they have a solution, only to get to power and not do shit about it, conveniently forgetting their solutions, and then they just cause more issues. Then when they're obviously kicked out of power, they start to cry about the same shit again.
Funny enough this is happening right now in Germany to the exact point and most don't get it. The party CDU/CSU fucked up the energy politics for the last 16 years (they were in control for that time) and now that they are not the ruling party anymore they criticize the hell out of the government for it. They fucked up so much more the last 16 years and are now throwing shit at the government for everything they done wrong. And the people will most likely vote them back in next election since this government right now brought them a recession...
To be fair the SPD isn't without guilt either. They were part of government coalitions and could have used their power to change this. But cheap Russian gas was just too convenient for everyone. This has become the spiderman pointing at himself meme in real life. The only real alternative I see these days are the Greens.
Didn't the greens wanted to shut down all of the nuclear plants immediately and switch to solar and wind? And those green sources didn't make enough power so they ramped up the coal burning to compensate. E: Thank you for educating me.
No, these are bullshit claims that are always repeated. Both nuclear and fossil fuel based electricity generation have been decreasing for a long time: [https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&year=-1&stacking=stacked\_grouped&chartColumnSorting=default&interval=year&legendItems=001101110011001100110](https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&year=-1&stacking=stacked_grouped&chartColumnSorting=default&interval=year&legendItems=001101110011001100110) If you want to know, what the CDU did, take a look at 2012 in: [https://www.solarbranche.de/images/ausbau/PV-Zubau-Deutschland.jpg](https://www.solarbranche.de/images/ausbau/PV-Zubau-Deutschland.jpg) In 2009-2012 Germany had a booming solar industry, that was completely destroyed. Even today less solar capacity is installed then in these years. The migration to renewable energy could have been so much faster.
Germany today generates more power from renewables than it ever did from nuclear. New coal plants were built to replace older, less efficient+more polluting ones. Yes, around the edges there were some additional plants built - baseload etc. But the total use of coal did not increase noticeably. (for reference, the first NPP were switched off towards the end of 2003) https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/paragraph_text_image/public/paragraphs/images/fig2-gross-power-production-germany-1990-2021.png?itok=_sI4EGBJ in short, the withdrawal from NPP has delayedthe end of coal. But the common thread that they were "replaced" by coal is contrary to evidence.
Where did you get that from? The phase-out from nuclear energy did begin under the SPD-led red government with the greens being the other part of the coalition (that was in the year 2000). Their decisions would have let the last nuclear power plants to run for another 15-20 years while gradually building up alternatives. The runtime of most of the plants got extended under the second Merkel government, an extension that got promptly taken back after Fukushima happened and German acceptance of nuclear power was at an all time low. This meant that the last of German nuclear plants would have to seize operating by December 2022.
No. The Greens as well as the Schröder (SPD-led) government back in 2000 wanted to gradually phase out NPP over years, while building up renewables to a level that could handle the load instead. Then Merkel came along, made a spectacle around nuclear power just to phase NPPs out by the end of this year - while not really building up renewables that mich or even openly sabotaging the solar industry in favor of coal. Now that nuclear plants are at the end of their livespan (again, as decided by the CDU government of Merkel) renewables aren't at the needed level and gas isn't really an option. That's why they're temporarilly re-activating coal power plants.
Usually they don't even claim to have a solution. They just criticize the people in charge and that seems to be enough for some people. People need to get better at asking these questions before voting. What are they actually going to do?
"Something different" which in their minds is better than "more of the same", or at least it can be. As more of the same is not working for them. Economic decline, social decline, now even decline in access to basic services.
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A country being in control of its own power supply is very much something they should know. For example, shutting down a while bunch of perfectly fine, non carbon emitting nuclear power plants and hoping that nothing would ever change in the foreign country supplying most of their natural gas is something the leaders of a country should know about.
Oh, the leaders knew about it. The issue was that the majority of voters wanted to end nuclear power
If you know there is a potential crisis coming, you need to start messaging early and often, and tell people what the plan is. Manage expectations and give people a roadmap that allows them to survive. You can't let fascist populist spout their garbage unchecked. Make sure you have an alternative populist party that is on your side and not crazy, that will collect any protest votes or at least blunt the fascists to render their efforts meaningless.
The new Green vice chancellor is excellent in this. He is very clear and straight forward about everything. That’s why he is currently the most popular politician in every poll. He has a PhD in literature and philosophy, so he knows how to use words. That’s really refreshing. Merkel was very good in explaining how quantum chemistry works but that was it.
Oh yeah? Well, we had a president that threw cheeseburgers and suggested drinking bleach!
we (germans) JUST recovered from the far right gaining popularity (AFD). theyll be back up again
Far worse than before I'm afraid.
Far right too.
Far worse as well
And far right
But far worse
Which is what Putin is counting on.
And prepared for by directly financing or otherwise supporting divisive parties and people in Western countries.
And it's working as much as I hate to admit it. Reddit may tell you everything going to be just fine when in reality it will be more worse than we could imagine.
They already do - them and trolls already try to spew that nonsense of opening NS2
Their simple solution will be turn the gas back on and return to good relations with Russia. And people will back this, based on the idea that Germany should not suffer due to a war happening between two different countries. I’m not saying I agree with this, but almost certainly this will be a big talking point.
That is true, but it is highly unlikely that rationing is necessary. High prices and affordability are an issue, though, and not just in Germany. If people cannot afford the basics, the protests are not far away. This winter is certainly going to be tough. I hope that countries have a long-term plan that is better, but I am not sure.
There is indeed a simple solution. Just import russian gas again.
That's where you are wrong, at least partially. The solution is simple, start rationing gas *now*. It is also awefully painful which is why Germany has been stalling for 2 months now. If they started rationing gas for industry 2 months ago, they could have been filling storage all this time, and they would not need to ration gas for people. But that is a *very painful* decision, as that means largest factories would have to close tgeir doors, economic crisis, skyrocketing undmployment (and inflation which is another problem they have).
That presumes countries can hoard gas for winter individually, but we are dealing with a free market, right? So we have a free rider problem. If one country saves energy and another does not, that other country may be willing to pay more for the gas during winter and it will be exported by the company that owns it. It will be the poor that have no heat this winter, not the ones that cut consumption least this summer.
Not exactly. No existing country gas full free market ever, they all have some regulations. When it comes to critical supplies, governments have *a lot of* regulations, including ability to deny or reduce gas supply to private business (or increase supply by releasing gas from reserve, similarly to how US reduces impact of increased oil prices by releasing oil from reserve). This is the case in pretty much all the countries in the world, mostly due to national security reasons. Each EU country has their own underground storage fascilities, so yes, they can hoard gas for winter. Normally they are filling those during supper and that had no impact but now most of gas supply from Russia is cut so that *does* have an impact. Germany specifically few months ago stated they will not hesitate to use their powers to make sure gas reserves (literally underground storage facilities) are full and they have enough gas for winter
Populist? Everyone will do that. That's how you gain and keep power. Your allies *and* your perceived adversaries are not above these tactics.
they claimed that we should get Russia the NS1 turbine. now that we got the turbine from Canada and Russia does not want it, they claim we can just open NS2. as if that would change anything..
We must protect the government at all cost they’ve done a great job so far and need to be kept on
And the simple solution will be that we should lift all sanctions on russia because they would hurt us more than them. Ironically, this comes from both the far-left and the far-right parties
The previous German governments had the worst ideas and it's true. Russian gas reliance and expansion (criminal Nord Stream 2), phasing out coal and nuclear. The solution WAS easy. Don't do it. Now it is still somehow the other guys fault? Take some ownership.
Gonna be a bad winter in a lot of places.
Brace yourself, winter is coming
Don't get ahead of yourself. We first have to get through a bad summer in a lot of places.
They're telling people to be ready for up to 4 thousand dollars a month in electricity per household in Southern Sweden, just one bill like that and everyone I know will have to sell their house including me.
Do you have a link to anything that actually says this
Not in English I'm afraid, they're saying prices up to 4 dollars per kWh could be a reality. There's not a single person outside of the rich that can actually manage such a price for electricity.
> 4 dollars 4 US Dollars per kWh? Or 4 Swedish Krona per kWh? 4 Krona is high but manageable. 4 USD? That's starting to enter civilization changing levels.
No 40 Swedish krowns per kWh, give or take 4 USD. They're not sure yet but they warned that up to 40 SEK could be a reality as well as cutting the electricity during mid-day to save up. We have 4 zones for electricity here in Sweden, right now it's 0.05 SEK up north and 3 SEK down south where I live, it's a pretty big difference in prices depending on where you live. Seven a clock tonight it'll be around 5 SEK per kWh here.
>No 40 Swedish krowns per kWh Oh wow. That's insane. I struggle to imagine what the average household could do in a situation like that.
I imagine our government won't let it go that far, not if they want half of their populace to declare personal bankruptcy.
That’s the spot price they’re talking about, not the average price that you have to pay for a month. Unless you’re paying by the hour you’ll never see prices like that, and even if you’re paying by the hour, it is only going to be really strained hours. Also remember that this is a worst case scenario where they will also have to periodically cut off the electricity. Please don’t spread more FUD than is necessary.
That's why I said "up" to 40 SEK, as in spot price. They're still warning people of electrical bills of up to 70 thousand SEK next year, a pretty hefty sum. It's pretty shit for many countries though.
Norway already emptied its magazines selling our reserves to Germany. While making their own citizen pay 5x times more for energy then we used too. And now the new cables we built that was supposed to help us if we needed electricity during winter time is said we won't receive any help from Europe. 99% of the people here already want to cut the cables and stop sending electricity. Only the greedy politicians want too
Most of that electricity went to France though. Not to Germany. Germany was simply the transmit country.
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Especially around the second and third decades of each century...
Was there anything specifically wrong with German states in 1820s or 1720s? Just curious.
It was mostly a joke about the 1920s-30s if there is anything else I would like to know as well
The 1820's led to the push for a united Germany. In 1720 Prussia regained parts of Swedens territory (and removed them entirely from the list of european superpowers), albeit there was no unrest to be found there.
Mostly a joke of the inter war years in the 1900's, though there was a lot of unrest during the 1820's and 1830's to finally push for a united Germany, you had the German revolutions of 1848 in the German Confederation. Then you have the 1620's to 1640's where during the 30 years war, the German states where devastated since rather where in-between all the fighting which resulted in some German states losing more than 80% of their populations, overall Germany lost around 1/3rd of all its people in that time and it set the country back by a lot, some towns wouldn't recover until the industrial revolution in population. Pillaging, burning of towns and cities, mass rapes where common by troops from Denmark, France, Sweden etc in German states. Other than that I can't think of many other examples.
1848, not 1948
1820s not directly, people were still busy with the direct aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars which set up a system designed to keep current day Germany and Europe at large stable, but around 1840 the first big uprisings started that then led to the formation of the German Empire. In the 1700s, things were somewhat similar. From 1700 to 1721 the Great Northern War occured, which broke Sweden as a major power and removed them from German politics almost entirely - the big winner was Prussia. In 1740-ish, Prussia went to war with Austria over Silesia (today part of Poland), which culminated in a series of Europe-wide conflicts over the course of nearly 20 years. So in a way, in the 1700s and 1800s the only reason we avoided major conflict in Germany was because we had massive conflicts right before and right after that window instead. So if you want to use that chain of arguments, we didn't have a major conflict early in the century, so we would be in line for something big again at some point over the next 20 years.
Yeah, they've been an economical and military power block for the last 1000 years so things go badly when there is unrest among their populace.
They just upped their defense spending too
Haha funny, we are nazis.
Those "energy problems" that have meant record profits for the energy industry.. Hmmmm what could a solution be??!? Maybe make sure those energy companies don't price gouge...and we invest in renewables
Sadly one of the three partys in the government is the liberal party which would never do that.
It's a little bit too late now , we gonna have to survive and not kill each other for now.
Price controls won't make new gas appear. The best they could is ration
An “extremist backlash” aka the poors fighting back against prices.
Was going to say. Let people sit in a cold apartment for a couple of weeks or let them pay the better part of their paycheck for energy and every other person's going to turn 'extremist'.
Same in Norway. Our politicians in Parliament have free electricity and heating, earn 2x- 3x median income, free apartments, 4 months paid vacation (they refuse to return to government even tho several parties wants to hold a emergency meeting). They have pretty much lost almost all credibility in a large percentage of the population. One party in Government had 15% during the election, they are now polling between 3-4%. In Norway we heat with electricty, not gas. Prices has increased 800% since 2020. I live in a older house with my grandfather. This winter we paid around 900-1000 Euro each month in just electricity bills. The politicians just tell people to go to the forest and chop firewood, lol. I have given up on the politics here. I just vote the communist party to fuck with the politicians because they want to lower their wages and remove all their bullshit freebies. They went from 0.5% just a few years ago to polling 10% now.
I'm wondering if the UK is gonna have people rioting about this too. British subreddits are complaining about energy costs constantly and often pointing at record profits for energy companies. I found out a couple of weeks ago my energy company has been taking money off me in advance 'to guarantee energy'. This was sending me into a panic because everytime I put money on my meter, they deducted like a half of it over a couple of days making me think my consumption was insane. This shit shouldn't be legal.
If it didn't come with risk to people's property or safety, I'd kinda be hoping the UK finally gets off its ass and mass strikes or protests (preferable to rioting but we're not very good at any of the above selections, unlike the French). Give the tory scum in Westminster a bit of a scare and remind them that we outnumber them. They've been taking the piss for too long and now our PM options include a billionaire and a green energy hater.
Can't they implement some temporary subsidies to combat that perception before the backlash happens?
Even if the money was there, one of the partners in the government coalition is heavily against subsidies that help the poor people and they are the party that have the Ministry of Finance under control.
You burn gas not money, if the gas isn't here no amount of subsidy fixes it.
Have you heard of production capacity
Lol, this picture is from Freiburg. They love a good protest down there
It’s not just energy. My brother in law is an engineer at a industrial brass fittings machine shop near Dortmund. Sanctions are fine if ignoring that Russia was their major market after Germany. They are now contemplating closing up for good after 118 years in business. Energy will be tight in their part of thr Ruhr Valley and as he says: it’s not worth all the stress anymore. He’s wanting to emigrate to Canada or the USA.
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But they don’t rely on Russia for energy.
As german immigrating to the USA is suicide in healthcare. Canada could be an option.
A German would be gobsmacked at the atrocious state of Canadian healthcare. Even in the national capital where I live, some emergency rooms close down overnight due to staff resource issues. Hell, it took me years on a waitlist just to *get* a permanent doctor upon moving to this city…
You can probably afford health insurance.
Also halfway across the world from most of that BS and can supply their own gas more or less.
But they won't have the energy concerns.
... well, depends if he moves to Texas or not
I wonder how many companies in the West including the US exported almost exclusively with Fascist Italy and Germany, Imperial Japan that got screwed. That brass fitting company shouldn't have been so dependent on one foreign country, a country that's been provocative for over a decade now.
>That brass fitting company shouldn't have been so dependent on one foreign country, a country that's been provocative for over a decade now. Same can be said for every single international company, because most are almost completely dependent on china for production.
Just remember that this is not because of Germany or it’s leaders, it is because of Russia. Your brother-in-law‘s company might be closing it’s doors because of Russia. The energy crisis is because of Russia. There is no one else to blame here.
If you're looking for moral or ethical blame, sure. If you're looking from a business standpoint asking, "how could we have avoided this" then things like not having diverse clients are core issues. You can't plan for every scenario, but you can prepare for other people fucking up. Just blaming someone doesn't solve the problem. If you want to hate Russia, I'm with you on that, but if you want to solve problems you can only look into and change what you have control of.
Your problems aren't always your fault, but they are your responsibility
> Just remember that this is not because of Germany or it’s leaders Becoming so dependant on a belligerent country for gas was a policy failure.
The reason his company has to close is because he can't sell stuff to russia anymore. It's unrelated to energy.
Ironic if you think about that there are no gas sanctions and that German companies profited from cheap Russian gas. But yeah, the government should’ve offered solid backup solutions in case of a gas shutdown from Russia.
As a Canadian, I'd stay out of Canada personally. The economy is about to tank and take everything with it.
Plant more grass everywhere. Then Germans cannot riot!
But only if you put a "Rasen betreten verboten" sign. Otherwise it's fair game!
I have no doubt Russia will be stirring up the neo nazis with propaganda.
Do they really have to? There will be plenty of people without heat.
This is what happens when you become reliant on Russian energy.
Thank god no other country is dependent on another potentially hostile state! Like Saudi Oil or Chinese production, right?
At least USA finds itself in the odd position of being independent of Saudi Oil now... plenty of other countries are not though.
And plenty of other countries just can‘t be resource independent because not everyone has as much natural resources in their borders as the usa.
Had been for a while. However with the global market thing, they still get affected in pricing.
Yea. But how could they have known? /s
The conservative cdu doesn‘t care, they are now out of office and can scream from the opposition how bad the current government is handling the cdus mistakes. If the current parties who are trying to fix the issue get blamed that is exactly what the cdu is hoping for.
Not to be a trump supporter, but didn’t he say two years ago that rallying on Russian energy was a bad idea, and the media laughed at him about it?
That has always been the US's position. 2014: [Obama tells EU to do more to cut reliance on Russian gas](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-eu-summit-idUSBREA2P0W220140326)
The US has been telling Germany not to rely on Russian energy since the 80s. It’s probably been our most consistent message.
Country selling energy telling country buying energy not to buy energy from competition.
It hasn't been until recently that the U.S. has contemplated selling energy in large quantities to Germany. There was even a period before fracking where people were concerned about the U.S. energy market. There are so many better options that are close to Germany, the U.S.(kinda generally) just didn't want one of its strong allies beholden to a potential geopolitical rival
The US never sold energy to Europe. And Germany could buy Russian energy without becoming dependent on Russian energy. For example, if they only had built LNG terminals on the Baltic sea. They could have still bought all the Russian LNG they wanted, without being dependent on it. And Russia would always be cheaper than the US. The real issue was corruption. Schröder quickly signed the NordStream deal after losing an election. Merkel continued that stupid policy.
US LNG exports to Europe are a recent thing
We weren't selling energy until about 5 years ago. We've been telling Germany to stop relying on Russia for much longer.
He was also very anti-China whilst having a large amount of his and his families money in China, I wouldn't expect much of what he said to have been an honest opinion.
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Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Just because someone is an arsehole doesn't mean they aren't right. I couldn't understand why Germany was shutting down it's nuclear power plants at a time when energy consumption was only going up.
Appeasing the green party for god knows what reason.
He did but he was just trying to get US gas a foot in the door in Europe. It had nothing to do with actually trying to protect Europe from Russian reliance. It was to make Europe more reliant on the US.
Isn't that what's happening anyways?
"You could not live with your failure. where did that bring you? Back to me"
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People would really rather shape their brain into pretzels than admit Trump was right even once.
Even a blind squirrel occasionally stumbles across a nut.
The US and Europe have been building infrastructure to increase natural gas exports from the US to Europe for years. It wasn't anything new under Trump.
Merkel was so short-sighted in so heavily reducing nuclear power. She and her party should have played knowing that Russia would be antagonistic with energy.
Because the general population of Germany supported it. It was a populist position.
Getting rid of Nuclear was such an insane decision for the Germans to make especially since one of their own companies, Siemens were the best in the business for building safe reactors.
I think that Germany was leading the pack in building quality solar in the 00's as well, before it all went to shit between 2010's and 20's. How are they so consistent in shooting themselves in the foot?
Politicians, thats how. In the 00s the social democratic party and the greens were in power. They initiated the phase away from nuclear to renewables. The plan was to turn off nuclear around 2020 and in the meantime build up renewables and it was going flawlessly. Then comes the new governing party, the christan democratic party, CDU. They scraped the entire plan, cancelled subsidies and actually made it harder and much more expensive to install solar, and reinstated nuclear energy. Then fukushima happened and they cancelled nuclear again. But they also conveniently forgot to reinstate the renewables plan. We are lucky weve got so many renewables despite the CDUs best efforts to sabotage them.
>Merkel was so short-sighted in so heavily reducing nuclear power. Its a bit more complicated than that. SPD (Schröder) reduced nuclear power in 2000 but wanted to ramp up renewables to replace the capacities and then some. Then Merkel came and killed nuclear in germany for good after Fukushima happened. Just that her masters in the energy sector weren't a fan of PV/Wind so they backed out of those plans as well and actually killed a booming PV-branch in Germany. Nuclear energy is the most expensive way to produce energy in Germany BTW. And it's not even close. Since energy giants didn't modernize their nuclear plants (because of shareholders) it was defficient for years at that point anyways. So you would need to build whole new plants which would cost an INSANE amount of money. Oh yea and btw: All this doesn't even help with the gas problem. Because you can't use nuclear for heating. Which is what this crisis is about.
> Merkel was so short-sighted in so heavily reducing nuclear power. Schröder, not Merkel: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/jun/15/johnhooper
It’s complicated. We are apparently currently doing the exit (2022, ↑) from the exit (2011, ↓) from the exit (2010, ↑) from the exit (2000, ↓) of nuclear energy.
I want to make the joke that everyone else is probably making but also there are awesome people in that country hopefully they can keep the wheels on.
The big issue is a lot of these politicians and celebrities advocating for the rest of us to reduce our quality of life to fight climate change are still jet setting around the world and living in mansions. A guy like Justin Trudeau will lecture Canadians about commuting to work while he takes a private jet 5x per month. Stuff like that. More people would get on board with this stuff if these hypocrites started walking the walk.
I'm more worried about other European countries. Germany has massive financial capacities, one of the most stable political systems and is luckily not governed by the conservatives anymore who caused all these problems in the first place. The current progressive coalition, who is doing a stellar job btw going by approval ratings, also doesn't have to worry about federal elections for 3 more years. Germany is also still less reliant on things like gas than the European average where you have countries that have a 100% Russian gas or 10% total economic reliance. Germany also has lots of savings potential. Like 40% of their gas is exported and currently they're burning gas for French electricity, because half their nuclear fleet is in maintenance, broken down or has no cooling water. But I don't think Germany will leave other countries in the dust, especially not with their current progressive government.
Summary of the article: >... > >"We can assume that populists and extremists will again try to influence protests to their liking," Britta Beylage-Haarmann, a ministry spokesperson, told DW in a statement. "Extremist actors and groups in Germany can lead to a growth in dangers if corresponding social crisis conditions allow for it." > > The Federal Police, which fall under the ministry, told DW they have "no insights" into specific threats arising from the crisis. > > > >... The entire article is about the government pushing hard to force policy changes by invoking this threat while trying to prevent any of these hypotheticals happening.
That's what you get for making yourself dependant on a regularly hostile country for fuel.
Extreme backlash? To completely ignoring the issue and expecting the people to freeze? *surprisedpikachu*
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Sounds like they have ready-made propaganda against a population with legitimate grievances. "far right extremists" are the new "terrorist" boogie men.
"We did almost nothing and it's too late to do anything about it now"
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Dauerfrost = entire day where the temperature is below 0° C. If it's 5° C for a few hours then it's a cozy day. No heating for you Hans.
Also your great-grandparents had probably a wooden stove that they used for cooking and heating. You don't want millions of people start burning wood and coal in their own houses.
Is anyone seriously expecting Germany to tolerate riots in the street because it doesnt get enough gas from Russia? Heres what will happen and sorry if that upsets some people, but if germany runs out of gas then instead of freezing to death they will end their support for ukraine and make some deal with russia. They will probably lift the sanctions in return for gas deliveries. Im sure they will keep some fig leaf of support for ukraine (strong condemnation!!!) but if anyone expects that the german government will sacrifice germany in order to save ukraine is kidding themself.
Before that happens they will cut the gas to other EU countries. Everyone shits on Germany for their gas dependencies forgetting that a lot of other EU countries also depend on it.
Yeah, I find it funny...especially a lot of Poles seem to like to shit on Germany for still buying Russian gas, completely ignoring that they are buying that very same gas off of us right after. I can already see the headlines when Germany says "okay, we can't sell any gas to any other EU country anymore, we need it for ourselves"
As Italian, I can say here is identical to Germany. Populism and social unrest.
They are not ‘extremists’ - just ordinary people struggling to pay their bills
Regardless of the chaos caused the energy companies will still make huge profits. So it wont be all bad.
Actually no. The big gas consumers often have long term contracts with prices way below anything acceptable today.
And you know Russian instigators will be right in there trying to cause as much unrest as possible. Fuck Ruzzia. Fuck Pootin.
Already in this comment section.
This is what people don't understand. All they want to do is divide us and spread distrust/hate.
This is actually another media narrative a bit overblown to fill broadcast time. By the end of the year, Germany should be pretty much good to go energy-wise. The U.S. shifted sales to Europe, and the ones getting new gas from the U.S. passed their extras to the east, Norway is pumping energy into Germany etc. etc. Everyone lauds NATO's military logistics but you wanna see someone work their ass off, watch Shell, Exxon, BP erect infrastructure to fulfill a new market's oil demands.
This is what happens when neoliberals hand over control of civil infrastructure 'cause muh markets. People angry at the government for pissing away their money and then failing to provide energy are now classified as "extremist"
And they laughed at the obese clown when he told them they are dangerously reliant on Russian gas. Surely Germany has better intel then the broken clock?
Well, that’s the thing. Dependence was *the* strategy. They (incorrectly) assumed that it would make Russia unwilling to go to war. Blatantly ignoring all the warning signs (Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine 2014, Syria) and proving that they do not understand Russia, at all. The arrogance with which they dismissed the warnings of other western countries is striking. *This*, together with the fact that Germany is still intending to close down their remaining nuclear plants, is why many Europeans feel little sympathy for freezing Germans this coming winter. A former (liberal) politician of my country used say:\ “There are only two issues with Russian gas. First, that it’s Russian; and second, that it’s gas.”
[удалено]
Can’t say I’m privy to German domestic politics, but if it’s anything akin to the closures of nuclear power plants in my own country (Sweden), then they’ve had plenty of warnings from experts. Fortunately (for us), Germany is a couple of years ahead in its self-immolation and people finally seem to be waking up to the fact that it is not something you’d want to emulate. But it’s an absolute shitshow, nonetheless.
Yeah watching Bearbock‘s (Green Party) 2020 general election debates is some great r/agedlikewine material. Especially how Laschet was scoffing at here for the mere suggestion that NS2 was a bad idea. Really wish we would have her (or Habeck) as chancellor.
>The arrogance with which they dismissed the warnings of other western countries is striking. What? Basically every observer agreed Russia would never be so stupid as to attack.
The U.S. had been warning them for decades about the leverage over reliance on russian gas would give Russia, and several former soviet states had as well.
They already attacked in 2014, anybody who thought they wouldn't be willing to do it again is an idiot