11 ms·

People keep carrying on about peak oil, climate change, and "corporate greed" because those are less humiliating conversations than admitting that Europe made a

People keep carrying on about peak oil, climate change, and "corporate greed" because those are less humiliating conversations than admitting that Europe made a major tactical error in trying to sanction their primary energy supplier.

invalidname 4y ago
They didn't have a choice. What should they have done? Handed Ukraine while paying Putin for the privilege? There are lots of things they should have done: * Not shut down nuclear until they had alternatives * Reduced dependencies on Russian exports * Invested more in clean energy and reduced regulatory barriers to green projects Supporting Ukraine fully wasn't a mistake.
- thriftwy 4y ago
  How about making Ukraine observe ECRML rules instead of having a hundred NGOs actively promoting the ideas of suppressing Russian language use? How about not helping overthrow legally elected presidents?
  - invalidname 4y ago
    I have many Ukrainian friends. They aren't Russians and don't think of themselves as Russians. Why should they priorities that language when they want to be a part of the west more than they want to be a part of Russia? They elected a president who's policy is just that. The rebellion was against a puppet installed by Russia. You might not accept those facts and claim the west is lying here. That's an option and it won't be the first/last time that happened. In terms of track record for lying, I'm going to take the west as more reliable than the east. Pretty much all my Russian and Ukrainian friends would agree to that assertion.
    - thriftwy 4y ago
      > The rebellion was against a puppet installed by Russia By the means of democratic general elections? They won't have to be a 'part' of Russia provided that they has observed some basic precautions, which I have listed and whose violations you are vehemently defending.
      - invalidname 4y ago
        Russia guaranteed their independence. An independent country can teach its own language and stop teaching a foreign language. An independent country can seek other alliances. They didn't violate anything and Russia had no right to invade. There's a reason everyone sanctioned Russia and knowingly shot themselves in the foot while doing so. About elections. It's funny that you're so passionate about elections when results suite your opinions. Yanukovych was elected by a hair unlike the current president. So you show lack of respect to democracy.
        thriftwy 4y ago
        "An independent country can teach its own language and stop teaching a foreign language." Tell that to Belgium, Ireland, Italy or Canada. Ukraine is a deeply divided country and by violating ECRML they went not the Western but sub-Sakharan African way. They shouldn't have done that. They would have their whole country, including Crimea, no war and 2x economy, if only they did not listen to western NGOs sitting on their ears like you do right now. About all of the wonderful independent rights of suppressing their own population for their language or electoral preference. > Yanukovych was elected by a hair Yep, so? As are most of presidents of the USA. Or Brexit.
        invalidname 4y ago
        All those countries elect leaders who decide to keep the languages they teach. A foreign country doesn't threaten them with invasion because of school curriculum. That's an INSANE argument! Sure it's a divided country. No question. You don't bomb countries for being divided. Had Putin stayed in the Dunbas area that would have been a moderate excuse. He chose to attack the entire country and assassinate the elected president. You sound like the people who tell a beaten wife that she shouldn't have talked back... Putin is a criminal and you're making excuses for him. He tried to take Ukraine in the gentle way by installing a puppet. When that didn't work he's trying force. Ukraine was distancing itself from Russia because of Putins policies. You're picking small things to justify terrible HUGE things. If someone says something bad to you on the street shooting their head off would be justifiable? That's the level of excuses I'm reading here.
- wikitopian 4y ago
  I'm not going to engage the question of whether or not it was morally or tactically correct. This forum and the western public in general are not mature enough for that conversation. I am not having that conversation. My statement is limited to the fact that the energy crisis is a simple and proximate result of the ongoing sanctions and not peak oil, climate change, or corporate greed.
  - sidlls 4y ago
    This forum doesn’t attract a large number of people with the expertise to have the conversation. The non-western public isn’t any more mature than the western public.
    - wikitopian 4y ago
      Fair point.
  - djohnston 4y ago
    I think you're underestimating the willingness of people to suffer financial hardship this winter to divorce themselves of Russian energy. People in the West really don't like dictators invading their neighbors, and certainly there's a long standing distaste of Russia generally. While people are also blaming corporate greed for the price crisis, everyone is well aware that the sanctions are causing pain for both parties. There's no political or social support for going back into Putin's arms, so here we are.
    - wikitopian 4y ago
      You must be very confident with your calculation, as a miscalculation would empower and embolden domestic political factions that have been at the periphery of western politics for generations.
      - djohnston 4y ago
        Putin's conviction that the West was filled with spoiled brats who would kowtow when it got cold is the more impactful miscalculation.
- sillystuff 4y ago
  > What should they have done? Negotiate for peace. Just as the US would object to Mexico joining a military alliance with e.g., China, Russia objects to Ukraine joining a military alliance with the US. Even if you do not believe Russia when they said this is the main issue, calling their bluff would have cost nothing, but potentially saved many lives. Wars end with negotiation. Eventually these negotiations will take place. There will just be fewer Ukrainians and Russians around to witness them. And, if NATO membership was the primary issue, this war could have been avoided if the Clinton administration had not rebuffed Russia in their request to join NATO themselves. As to the US proposed sanctions, I suspect that if Germany had not agreed, the EU as a whole would not be participating. And, that if Merkel was still in power, that Germany would not have agreed.
  - invalidname 4y ago
    Every single leader went there and begged Putin not to invade. They physically couldn't join NATO because they had disputed territories and the US would have kept the status quo. This is a Neville Chamberlain argument. No I'm not comparing Putin to Hitler but the motivations of any dictator are the same. The west *tried* repeatedly to appease Putin so this claim is just patently false and proven to be so. Let's prove: * Invasion of Crimea was a test from Putin's side. The west tried all political options to no avail. * Then he started a "rebellion" and again the west wasn't successful with negotiation * Before he invaded Biden went public and explained EXACTLY what he was going to do. A smart man would have retreated. This would have humiliated Biden and might have paved the way for Trump to get back into office. But he was stupid and invaded So no. He isn't a person to negotiate with. He's a liar who doesn't respect the agreements his country signed.
    - sillystuff 4y ago
      > Every single leader went there and begged Putin not to invade. Even if that were true, that is not negotiation. Negotiation implies give and take. Given that the US already agreed not to expand NATO to Russia's border (honored by Bush Sr., but broken by Clinton), a good starting point to negotiation would be to agree to honor past commitments. The vast majority of the people in Crimea (as Donbas) are Russian speaking, and voted to join Russia[1]. Part of the context leading up to the unrest in Crimea was a far-right government in Kieve that proposed policies against Russian speaking Ukrainian citizens[2]. I'm not opining on Russia's actions in 2014 or today, just pointing out that things were and are a lot more complicated than the dominant narrative in the west (I was surprised to find any US mainstream news source that reported on the referendum, at all, to use as a reference). [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/crimeans-vote-overwhelmingly-to-secede-from-ukraine-join-russia/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/crimeans-vote-overwhelmingly-to... [2] https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2019/4/9/why-ethnopolitics-doesnt-work-in-ukraine/ https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2019/4/9/why-ethnopolitic...
matthewdgreen 4y ago
Europe made a strategic mistake in having an expansionary dictatorship as their primary energy supplier. The current sanctions and supply threats were always inevitable, the only question was timing (and perhaps whether it would be a NATO country under attack by the time Europe was forced to respond.)
- selfhoster11 4y ago
  Exactly. Years before the Ukraine war, a blind man could’ve seen what a catastrophic error it was to build an energy supply policy based on fuels coming from Russia.
- AstralStorm 4y ago
  What would you propose instead? There were only these options: 1) Use Russian gas. 2) Build pipelines via Turkey and risk different dictators. 3) Build an enormous overcapacity for LNG via sea and eat the extreme differential in prices. 4) Build nuclear power plants and generate remaining necessary gas from hydrogen reforming.
  - matthewdgreen 4y ago
    It’s a really good question. Probably the answer was a mixture of (2), (3) and (4). As things stand now, Europe is going to have to answer this question right now in a hurry since reliable access to Russian gas no longer seems like a viable option. In other words: it wasn’t a choice whether Europe would need another option, but simply whether they would have to do it in a crisis mode.
    - AstralStorm 4y ago
      Yes, it was always felt that Russian gas was risky, but diversification was done with regard to energy before everyone tried to cut emissions by using gas...
polotics 4y ago
it's a brilliant move to cordon off the Carbon provider in chief, much easier than running after CO2 molecules in the air... Handling the consequences has to be done anyways, and the sooner the better. The nuke-plant turnaround will be something to behold.
rcarr 4y ago
The major error isn't a tactical one but a strategic one. Until recently, interest rates have been at historical lows for over a decade. Governments should have taken advantage of that to embark on massive scale investments in producing energy self sufficiency. We could have had a government funded scheme to put free solar panels on every single roof and a wall battery in every home. Then we would not be having the issues we are having right now. The majority of domestic energy use would be handled and we would only have to find the energy for industrial, which we could do with wind, solar farms and nuclear. The investment would pay for itself: if households no longer have energy bills to pay, they suddenly have a wad of extra cash each month that they will most likely spend which HMRC can enjoy taking it's VAT cut on (and most likely at 20% rather than the 5% they charge for fuel). So why didn't we do this? The cynic in me thinks it's because despite the progress we've made, the energy companies are still the ones with most power in this world and they are desperate not to give any of it up. Embarking on a program like this would be a massive redistribution of power and wealth to the common folk. The day when there is a solar panel on every roof will happen but the energy companies will do everything in their power to prevent it. They even tried getting legislation through in America to tax households with solar panels installed to make up for their lost revenue. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/13/solar-power-us-utility-companies-kansas https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/13/solar-power-...
- towaway15463 4y ago
  The German economy would still implode without natural gas as a feed stock and wither goes Germany goes the EU.
  - rcarr 4y ago
    Would it though if Angela Merkel et al hadn't banned nuclear energy and spent 16 years cosying up to Putin instead of setting up some back up plans?
    - towaway15463 4y ago
      Yes unless they started making their own gas out of electricity and air which is still economically unlikely even with nuclear power. The German petrochemical industry is not a small potatoes thing.

invalidname 4y ago

They didn't have a choice. What should they have done? Handed Ukraine while paying Putin for the privilege? There are lots of things they should have done: * Not shut down nuclear until they had alternatives * Reduced dependencies on Russian exports * Invested more in clean energy and reduced regulatory barriers to green projects Supporting Ukraine fully wasn't a mistake.

thriftwy 4y ago
How about making Ukraine observe ECRML rules instead of having a hundred NGOs actively promoting the ideas of suppressing Russian language use? How about not helping overthrow legally elected presidents?
- invalidname 4y ago
  I have many Ukrainian friends. They aren't Russians and don't think of themselves as Russians. Why should they priorities that language when they want to be a part of the west more than they want to be a part of Russia? They elected a president who's policy is just that. The rebellion was against a puppet installed by Russia. You might not accept those facts and claim the west is lying here. That's an option and it won't be the first/last time that happened. In terms of track record for lying, I'm going to take the west as more reliable than the east. Pretty much all my Russian and Ukrainian friends would agree to that assertion.
  - thriftwy 4y ago
    > The rebellion was against a puppet installed by Russia By the means of democratic general elections? They won't have to be a 'part' of Russia provided that they has observed some basic precautions, which I have listed and whose violations you are vehemently defending.
    - invalidname 4y ago
      Russia guaranteed their independence. An independent country can teach its own language and stop teaching a foreign language. An independent country can seek other alliances. They didn't violate anything and Russia had no right to invade. There's a reason everyone sanctioned Russia and knowingly shot themselves in the foot while doing so. About elections. It's funny that you're so passionate about elections when results suite your opinions. Yanukovych was elected by a hair unlike the current president. So you show lack of respect to democracy.
      - thriftwy 4y ago
        "An independent country can teach its own language and stop teaching a foreign language." Tell that to Belgium, Ireland, Italy or Canada. Ukraine is a deeply divided country and by violating ECRML they went not the Western but sub-Sakharan African way. They shouldn't have done that. They would have their whole country, including Crimea, no war and 2x economy, if only they did not listen to western NGOs sitting on their ears like you do right now. About all of the wonderful independent rights of suppressing their own population for their language or electoral preference. > Yanukovych was elected by a hair Yep, so? As are most of presidents of the USA. Or Brexit.
        invalidname 4y ago
        All those countries elect leaders who decide to keep the languages they teach. A foreign country doesn't threaten them with invasion because of school curriculum. That's an INSANE argument! Sure it's a divided country. No question. You don't bomb countries for being divided. Had Putin stayed in the Dunbas area that would have been a moderate excuse. He chose to attack the entire country and assassinate the elected president. You sound like the people who tell a beaten wife that she shouldn't have talked back... Putin is a criminal and you're making excuses for him. He tried to take Ukraine in the gentle way by installing a puppet. When that didn't work he's trying force. Ukraine was distancing itself from Russia because of Putins policies. You're picking small things to justify terrible HUGE things. If someone says something bad to you on the street shooting their head off would be justifiable? That's the level of excuses I'm reading here.
wikitopian 4y ago
I'm not going to engage the question of whether or not it was morally or tactically correct. This forum and the western public in general are not mature enough for that conversation. I am not having that conversation. My statement is limited to the fact that the energy crisis is a simple and proximate result of the ongoing sanctions and not peak oil, climate change, or corporate greed.
- sidlls 4y ago
  This forum doesn’t attract a large number of people with the expertise to have the conversation. The non-western public isn’t any more mature than the western public.
  - wikitopian 4y ago
    Fair point.
- djohnston 4y ago
  I think you're underestimating the willingness of people to suffer financial hardship this winter to divorce themselves of Russian energy. People in the West really don't like dictators invading their neighbors, and certainly there's a long standing distaste of Russia generally. While people are also blaming corporate greed for the price crisis, everyone is well aware that the sanctions are causing pain for both parties. There's no political or social support for going back into Putin's arms, so here we are.
  - wikitopian 4y ago
    You must be very confident with your calculation, as a miscalculation would empower and embolden domestic political factions that have been at the periphery of western politics for generations.
    - djohnston 4y ago
      Putin's conviction that the West was filled with spoiled brats who would kowtow when it got cold is the more impactful miscalculation.
sillystuff 4y ago
> What should they have done? Negotiate for peace. Just as the US would object to Mexico joining a military alliance with e.g., China, Russia objects to Ukraine joining a military alliance with the US. Even if you do not believe Russia when they said this is the main issue, calling their bluff would have cost nothing, but potentially saved many lives. Wars end with negotiation. Eventually these negotiations will take place. There will just be fewer Ukrainians and Russians around to witness them. And, if NATO membership was the primary issue, this war could have been avoided if the Clinton administration had not rebuffed Russia in their request to join NATO themselves. As to the US proposed sanctions, I suspect that if Germany had not agreed, the EU as a whole would not be participating. And, that if Merkel was still in power, that Germany would not have agreed.
- invalidname 4y ago
  Every single leader went there and begged Putin not to invade. They physically couldn't join NATO because they had disputed territories and the US would have kept the status quo. This is a Neville Chamberlain argument. No I'm not comparing Putin to Hitler but the motivations of any dictator are the same. The west *tried* repeatedly to appease Putin so this claim is just patently false and proven to be so. Let's prove: * Invasion of Crimea was a test from Putin's side. The west tried all political options to no avail. * Then he started a "rebellion" and again the west wasn't successful with negotiation * Before he invaded Biden went public and explained EXACTLY what he was going to do. A smart man would have retreated. This would have humiliated Biden and might have paved the way for Trump to get back into office. But he was stupid and invaded So no. He isn't a person to negotiate with. He's a liar who doesn't respect the agreements his country signed.
  - sillystuff 4y ago
    > Every single leader went there and begged Putin not to invade. Even if that were true, that is not negotiation. Negotiation implies give and take. Given that the US already agreed not to expand NATO to Russia's border (honored by Bush Sr., but broken by Clinton), a good starting point to negotiation would be to agree to honor past commitments. The vast majority of the people in Crimea (as Donbas) are Russian speaking, and voted to join Russia[1]. Part of the context leading up to the unrest in Crimea was a far-right government in Kieve that proposed policies against Russian speaking Ukrainian citizens[2]. I'm not opining on Russia's actions in 2014 or today, just pointing out that things were and are a lot more complicated than the dominant narrative in the west (I was surprised to find any US mainstream news source that reported on the referendum, at all, to use as a reference). [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/crimeans-vote-overwhelmingly-to-secede-from-ukraine-join-russia/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/crimeans-vote-overwhelmingly-to... [2] https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2019/4/9/why-ethnopolitics-doesnt-work-in-ukraine/ https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2019/4/9/why-ethnopolitic...

matthewdgreen 4y ago

Europe made a strategic mistake in having an expansionary dictatorship as their primary energy supplier. The current sanctions and supply threats were always inevitable, the only question was timing (and perhaps whether it would be a NATO country under attack by the time Europe was forced to respond.)

selfhoster11 4y ago
Exactly. Years before the Ukraine war, a blind man could’ve seen what a catastrophic error it was to build an energy supply policy based on fuels coming from Russia.
AstralStorm 4y ago
What would you propose instead? There were only these options: 1) Use Russian gas. 2) Build pipelines via Turkey and risk different dictators. 3) Build an enormous overcapacity for LNG via sea and eat the extreme differential in prices. 4) Build nuclear power plants and generate remaining necessary gas from hydrogen reforming.
- matthewdgreen 4y ago
  It’s a really good question. Probably the answer was a mixture of (2), (3) and (4). As things stand now, Europe is going to have to answer this question right now in a hurry since reliable access to Russian gas no longer seems like a viable option. In other words: it wasn’t a choice whether Europe would need another option, but simply whether they would have to do it in a crisis mode.
  - AstralStorm 4y ago
    Yes, it was always felt that Russian gas was risky, but diversification was done with regard to energy before everyone tried to cut emissions by using gas...

polotics 4y ago

it's a brilliant move to cordon off the Carbon provider in chief, much easier than running after CO2 molecules in the air... Handling the consequences has to be done anyways, and the sooner the better. The nuke-plant turnaround will be something to behold.

rcarr 4y ago

The major error isn't a tactical one but a strategic one. Until recently, interest rates have been at historical lows for over a decade. Governments should have taken advantage of that to embark on massive scale investments in producing energy self sufficiency. We could have had a government funded scheme to put free solar panels on every single roof and a wall battery in every home. Then we would not be having the issues we are having right now. The majority of domestic energy use would be handled and we would only have to find the energy for industrial, which we could do with wind, solar farms and nuclear. The investment would pay for itself: if households no longer have energy bills to pay, they suddenly have a wad of extra cash each month that they will most likely spend which HMRC can enjoy taking it's VAT cut on (and most likely at 20% rather than the 5% they charge for fuel). So why didn't we do this? The cynic in me thinks it's because despite the progress we've made, the energy companies are still the ones with most power in this world and they are desperate not to give any of it up. Embarking on a program like this would be a massive redistribution of power and wealth to the common folk. The day when there is a solar panel on every roof will happen but the energy companies will do everything in their power to prevent it. They even tried getting legislation through in America to tax households with solar panels installed to make up for their lost revenue. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/13/solar-power-us-utility-companies-kansas https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/13/solar-power-...

towaway15463 4y ago
The German economy would still implode without natural gas as a feed stock and wither goes Germany goes the EU.
- rcarr 4y ago
  Would it though if Angela Merkel et al hadn't banned nuclear energy and spent 16 years cosying up to Putin instead of setting up some back up plans?
  - towaway15463 4y ago
    Yes unless they started making their own gas out of electricity and air which is still economically unlikely even with nuclear power. The German petrochemical industry is not a small potatoes thing.