> independent of eastern natural gas. It's interesting how trade relationships that are centuries old, are now seen in a negative context solely on a foreign p

> independent of eastern natural gas. It's interesting how trade relationships that are centuries old, are now seen in a negative context solely on a foreign policy basis that's often dictated from across the Atlantic. Particularly when they go completely contrary to the other stated goal; Climate change. Western Europe has been dependent on Eastern Europe's resources for a very long time, as Siberia is the largest concentration of natural resources on the continent and one of the largest on the whole planet. It's not something anybody has much choice over; These resources are where they are, that geographic proximity also lead to their use being integrated all over the continent. We can't replace that with wishful thinking, we can't just wish metal ores and minerals into existence or gas for industrial manufacturing. Case in point; Germany's gas dependence, which is commonly framed as "Germany now uses more gas because it shut down nuclear reactors", when in reality only 14% of Germany's gas consumption is for electricity production [0]. The biggest chunk of German gas consumption is for industrial applications, like heavy smelting for the car industry or the chemical industry to create high demand chemicals like ammonia. Another huge chunk is household use for heating and kitchen appliances, together these two sectors account for 67% of Germany's gas consumption. Nuclear reactors do nothing for that demand, at least not without taking a detour trough hydrogen, a detour that traditional renewables can also do [1]. While trying to supply that demand with imported American NGL would be the complete opposite of "Think of the climate!". That's why declaring Eastern Europe's resources just as "taboo" is not a solution that will get us anywhere useful. Fighting climate change also means making the supply chains more local, you can't do that in Western Europe by declaring the largest collection of resources, in proxmity, as "off-limits for political reasons". At some point we have to decide what's more important; Fighting climate change as a species or instrumentalizing it for these kinds of foreign policy games that usually leave everybody worse off, at least on this side of the Atlantic. [0] https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/37985/umfrage/verbrauch-von-erdgas-in-deutschland-nach-abnehmergruppen-2009/ https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/37985/umfrage... [1] https://www.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/zv/de/ueber-fraunhofer/wissenschaftspolitik/Positionen/2019-10-a-hydrogen-roadmap-for-germany.pdf https://www.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/zv/de/ueber-fraunhofer...