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That's a pretty cynical take. Setting up oil and gas reserves is a longterm thing, I think it's viable to not want to invest in new climate damaging infrastruct

That's a pretty cynical take. Setting up oil and gas reserves is a longterm thing, I think it's viable to not want to invest in new climate damaging infrastructure, even if moving off of exist damaging fuel isn't immediate.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> it's viable to not want to invest in new climate damaging infrastructure The EU has flowed like a trillion dollars into LNG infrastructure with longer payback timelines than wells.
mhh__ 2y ago
I do care about the environment but at the moment I'm watching Britain (i.e. home, there are many like it but this one is mine) basically sacrifice itself at the alter of net zero while India proudly announces that it's extracted a _billion_ tons of coal this year. Energy is expensive and unreliable. Why? Well, its either because we aren't doing enough net zero, or because we have an _enormous_ supply-side restriction enforced by the state. Not all of which is due to environmentalism, to be clear. I remember having conversations with "serious" adults when I was 14 about why it was mad to bet the house on wind and solar (Nuclear was very uncool at the time). Lo and behold a decade later, we really, really, need that baseload. There are no energy-poor rich countries. Some are completely happy being poorer and colder but I think something will snap soon in Britain in particular. Blair will have Ed Miliband disapeared soon.
- pjc50 2y ago
  > (Nuclear was very uncool at the time). Lo and behold a decade later Over that decade, the UK's one nuclear reactor under construction has gone from site approval to .. still not finished. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_... Mind you, quite a lot of the no-progress-on-anything can be blamed on Britain's NIMBYs and press. People want electricity but hate pylons; what can you do?
- benrutter 2y ago
  > Energy is expensive and unreliable. Why? Well, its either because we aren't doing enough net zero, or because we have an _enormous_ supply-side restriction enforced by the state. Not all of which is due to environmentalism, to be clear. I work in the energy sector and there's a huge amount of misinformation/confusion around why energy is expensive (I'm gonna ignore unreliable because that's a whole other can of worms). The energy price is almost entirely set by natural gas, the UK doesn't yet have the ability to turn away natural gas as a source, meaning it basically has to pay whatever's asked. Even if you don't care about the environment (although I think you should!) and just want cheap energy, more renewable energy and flexibility in the market is exactly what you're looking for. You can actually see this on charts super clearly. Take a look on https://grid.iamkate.com/ https://grid.iamkate.com/ specically at the energy mixup and the wholesale energy cost. You'll see that the amount of gas being used is an inverted graph of the cost (i.e. when we're using gas as a nation, that's driving up the price, when we don't have to, energy is a lot cheaper, and sometimes negatively priced)
  - mhh__ 2y ago
    Of course it does, if the wind doesn't blow what else can we burn?
    - benrutter 2y ago
      You don't have to burn anything. You can store energy and release it later with batteries and hydraulic pumps (maybe not enough to take ypu all the way just yet, but a lot further than where we currently are). Although, if you do want to burn something, you can burn biofuel (basically wood). The UK's only company that does this, Drax, are really not great ecologically, but just focusing on cost, diversifying from gas to a mix with more biofuel would have huge benefits.
rapnie 2y ago
A long-term thing. In the Netherlands decades ago a huge gas reserve was found. And it made us Dutch (and esp. Exxon and Shell) rich. And the region where it was discovered? The Dutch government left the people in the province of Groningen with billions of earthquake damage, destroyed homes, and a fight of a lifetime to get proper compensation. This has been a huge topic in Dutch politics for some time now, and finally the decision was to close the gas fields to spare further damages to the inhabitants living above them.
- yread 2y ago
  Just to put things in perspective, there is still ~3 billion m3 of gas (roughly 7 years of EU consumption). And the biggest earthquake was 3.6 on Richter scale (they are pretty shallow though, ~3km). 0 dead, 0 injured. I am pretty sure Russia had a hand in amplifying the concerns of people hit by those earthquakes. edit: when writing about stress for Dutch people, you can also mention the stress caused by not being able to afford heating/reducing heating to 16 deg C
brink 2y ago
> That's a pretty cynical take Okay, so is Trump playing the tarrif game to bring manufacturing back home, or is cynicism and bad faith only okay when it's about US conservatives? Because the hypocrisy is on full display here. I'm fine with being fair to the EU and giving them the benefit of the doubt, but only if we're fair to everyone.
Analemma_ 2y ago
This kind of behavior is totally in-character for Europe though. Europeans want to have all the fruits of a high-income society, but they want to outsource all the morally dicey bits. This pattern is constant: immigration (they want the migrants to go away, but want to seem enlightened and progressive, so they pay Tunisia and Morocco a bunch of money to have the concentration camps stay out of sight and out of mind), defense (they want national defense but don't want to pay for it or look militarized, so they underspent for decades and offloaded all the costs onto America, which was a viable strategy until all of a sudden it wasn't), and so on. It's not hard to see European energy policy following exactly the same pattern.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> it's viable to not want to invest in new climate damaging infrastructure The EU has flowed like a trillion dollars into LNG infrastructure with longer payback timelines than wells.

mhh__ 2y ago

I do care about the environment but at the moment I'm watching Britain (i.e. home, there are many like it but this one is mine) basically sacrifice itself at the alter of net zero while India proudly announces that it's extracted a _billion_ tons of coal this year. Energy is expensive and unreliable. Why? Well, its either because we aren't doing enough net zero, or because we have an _enormous_ supply-side restriction enforced by the state. Not all of which is due to environmentalism, to be clear. I remember having conversations with "serious" adults when I was 14 about why it was mad to bet the house on wind and solar (Nuclear was very uncool at the time). Lo and behold a decade later, we really, really, need that baseload. There are no energy-poor rich countries. Some are completely happy being poorer and colder but I think something will snap soon in Britain in particular. Blair will have Ed Miliband disapeared soon.

pjc50 2y ago
> (Nuclear was very uncool at the time). Lo and behold a decade later Over that decade, the UK's one nuclear reactor under construction has gone from site approval to .. still not finished. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_... Mind you, quite a lot of the no-progress-on-anything can be blamed on Britain's NIMBYs and press. People want electricity but hate pylons; what can you do?
benrutter 2y ago
> Energy is expensive and unreliable. Why? Well, its either because we aren't doing enough net zero, or because we have an _enormous_ supply-side restriction enforced by the state. Not all of which is due to environmentalism, to be clear. I work in the energy sector and there's a huge amount of misinformation/confusion around why energy is expensive (I'm gonna ignore unreliable because that's a whole other can of worms). The energy price is almost entirely set by natural gas, the UK doesn't yet have the ability to turn away natural gas as a source, meaning it basically has to pay whatever's asked. Even if you don't care about the environment (although I think you should!) and just want cheap energy, more renewable energy and flexibility in the market is exactly what you're looking for. You can actually see this on charts super clearly. Take a look on https://grid.iamkate.com/ https://grid.iamkate.com/ specically at the energy mixup and the wholesale energy cost. You'll see that the amount of gas being used is an inverted graph of the cost (i.e. when we're using gas as a nation, that's driving up the price, when we don't have to, energy is a lot cheaper, and sometimes negatively priced)
- mhh__ 2y ago
  Of course it does, if the wind doesn't blow what else can we burn?
  - benrutter 2y ago
    You don't have to burn anything. You can store energy and release it later with batteries and hydraulic pumps (maybe not enough to take ypu all the way just yet, but a lot further than where we currently are). Although, if you do want to burn something, you can burn biofuel (basically wood). The UK's only company that does this, Drax, are really not great ecologically, but just focusing on cost, diversifying from gas to a mix with more biofuel would have huge benefits.

rapnie 2y ago

A long-term thing. In the Netherlands decades ago a huge gas reserve was found. And it made us Dutch (and esp. Exxon and Shell) rich. And the region where it was discovered? The Dutch government left the people in the province of Groningen with billions of earthquake damage, destroyed homes, and a fight of a lifetime to get proper compensation. This has been a huge topic in Dutch politics for some time now, and finally the decision was to close the gas fields to spare further damages to the inhabitants living above them.

yread 2y ago
Just to put things in perspective, there is still ~3 billion m3 of gas (roughly 7 years of EU consumption). And the biggest earthquake was 3.6 on Richter scale (they are pretty shallow though, ~3km). 0 dead, 0 injured. I am pretty sure Russia had a hand in amplifying the concerns of people hit by those earthquakes. edit: when writing about stress for Dutch people, you can also mention the stress caused by not being able to afford heating/reducing heating to 16 deg C

brink 2y ago

> That's a pretty cynical take Okay, so is Trump playing the tarrif game to bring manufacturing back home, or is cynicism and bad faith only okay when it's about US conservatives? Because the hypocrisy is on full display here. I'm fine with being fair to the EU and giving them the benefit of the doubt, but only if we're fair to everyone.

Analemma_ 2y ago

This kind of behavior is totally in-character for Europe though. Europeans want to have all the fruits of a high-income society, but they want to outsource all the morally dicey bits. This pattern is constant: immigration (they want the migrants to go away, but want to seem enlightened and progressive, so they pay Tunisia and Morocco a bunch of money to have the concentration camps stay out of sight and out of mind), defense (they want national defense but don't want to pay for it or look militarized, so they underspent for decades and offloaded all the costs onto America, which was a viable strategy until all of a sudden it wasn't), and so on. It's not hard to see European energy policy following exactly the same pattern.