The Danish defence minister also said he sees “no imminent threat” to Denmark’s territorial integrity, despite Trump’s repeated threats to annex Greenland.
No I’m pointing out that Germany’s decisions about the energy market are driven by its participation in the US system, financialization neocolonialism and sanctions are the priority, not anticorruption, green energy, and industrialism as claimed. Quite the opposite
To compare the energy sovereignty issue, this is like believing the US can actually drill enough to become independent from OPEC countries. (Wouldn’t be alone, this was a popular talking point when the call to Drill Baby Drill was sounded!) The whole point of US drilling is to control the oil market. Actually this is a bad example because the US runs the petrodollar system but no Drill Baby Drill and OPEC cannot save Europe now. Opening up to Russia, China, and Iran and going full Asia mode could. The drilling in Norway and Canada you’re talking about is a price management thing. Oil wells that have more limited stores also become far less efficient to extract the more you pump. To say nothing of crap like tar sands lol
We will need a lot less oil in the future. Just one example: in my country the typical way to heat a house in winter was oil. We are now transitioning to heat pumps as fast as we possibly can. Another big consumer of oil are vehicles, which are also transitioning to electric. We will still import oil, of course, but much less. It’s not unreasonable to cut out one or two supplier countries if the demand halves.
Stop, I’m going to do a spit take. Look, I would love for Europe to go full solarpunk but that would take sudden growth of industrial capacity beyond its wildest dreams, not maximizing certain tech monopolies and rent seeking in industry. Europe has hitched itself to the US because their dependency relationship (encompassing both US influence and European participation in supply chains mediated by US power, requiring access to undercosted goods from poorer nations) is too important to European political & business leadership to consider industrial development. It’s playing a bad long game because elites can always run somewhere else & they have nothing to do but inherit and die. That’s really the main obstacle here, politics. It feels bad when I hear these common sense solutions combined with neolib premises and jingoism lol, Europe will pass off restrictions on Chinese solar panels, EVs, etc as being sound industrial policy, and you won’t see production increase there or prices drop. Look I may jokingly taunt Euros but it’s almost like you deserve better. Rhetorically you deserve better maybe not karmically
Well you should know from your experience with cutting out Russian oil that a gigantic & cheaper source is not easily replaced! If you think industry there is recovering from that blow to energy prices already you should talk to some pro-Europe people who study this more in-depth, because they’re not happy about it.
All I can say is that Europe doing that would be a huge win for us Asia development fanatics. You’d be handing us your own head on a plate. It’s politically impossible anyways, European access to lucrative trade and finance has all been mediated with US oversight that places them near the top of the food chain. The ruling class the US made rich is not going to bite the hand that feeds them, and Europe isn’t going to depose of its oligarchy overnight. We can dream though
The cheapest, most scalable sources of energy are solar and wind. So the European push has been in two directions, more expensive gas and oil but also, to offset the price issue, more electrification. Granted, it would be great if the right-wing could come to terms with that development rather than trying to block it, either because it sounds vaguely green and different from the past or because they’re actually paid off by Russia to stall any positive development in their home countries.
Lol of course you think it’s Russian infiltration that’s preventing you from taking advantage of solar and wind & not the US, which just got you utterly dependent on its natural gas shipments by increasing the cost of the Russian oil Europe still buys through secondary countries (oil is incredibly easy to launder as it is just grades of hydrocarbons lmfao)
Maybe you should consider what political forces in Europe are aligned against the chief producer of solar and wind technology (China) and whether they were createf by the Russian infiltration your ruling class orders you to attribute all of your problems to (you dutifully comply)
Yeah, lol of course I think that. I watched as Russia tried to pressure Germany with fossil gas, first by running Gazprom Germania’s gas storage low in the winter of 2021/2022, then by progressively cutting off gas flow in the Nord Stream pipelines over the first half of 2022. These pipelines being blown up finally put a hard stop on these tactics, thankfully.
And yeah, lol of course I think that, knowing that various high-ranking CDU/SPD politicians like Kretschmer spend a lot of time trying to popularize the idea of a reopening of Nord Stream while they provably get a lot of mail from Gazprom somehow; knowing that SPD politician Ralf Stegner met ominous Russian fossil executives; knowing that Afd provably gets money from Russia and various Afd politicians give interviews to Russian propaganda outlets; knowing that Afd and Bsw somehow use the same regional bank whose director is known for his friendliness to the Russian regime.
And no, Germany is not mortally dependent on US LNG. LNG as a whole is just the last 10% or so of fossil gas imports in Germany. If our absurdist new government wasn’t quite as irrationally focused on increasing our dependence on fossil gas, we could easily wean ourselves off that in the near future; we already reduced fossil gas usage by 20% in the past three years. The countries we’re now actually dependent on in terms of gas imports are Norway and the Netherlands.
None of that is to say that there’s no influence from US private actors. KKR (an investor in Germany’s largest right-wing publishing house) and Black Rock (former employer of the new chancellor) certainly are major factors. There are also internal strictly domestic factors, such as BASF and Bayer who really like fossil stuff too. In other words, there certainly are colluding fossip interests here; but that doesn’t let Russia off the hook.
You have failed at every level of basic research here lmao Russia was German’s largest provider of all kinds of fossil fuel sources, and what country do you guess is the second largest? Trying to downplay the US as being “only the largest provider of energy” when the prior one had been bringing in three times as much. I mean let’s just not talk about prices at all right? Once we get into prices this is going to be a very bad look for you.
It would quite literally be in Russia’s best interest to have bilateral economic agreements with Germany increasing industrial capacity, geographically these neighboring regions have immense possibilities in rail transit networks for tourism and trade, and this whole division between them suits only Wall St, Brussels, London etc, it’s not in the national interest of Germany at all but the ruling class interest. So I hope that pretending evil spies and not the entire political and business leadership of Germany sold out the green revolution helps you sleep at night. Don’t forget to keep the heat down this winter could be even pricier. That’s not the issue - not being able to make cars and solar panels competitively is the issue
I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me in the first paragraph, sorry. Sure, fossil energy prices went up since Russia started a war. They did go down again too, though, but perhaps not to 2019 levels.
And sure, there are things that may be in Russia’s best interest. But are we really hoping that the weirdo who is in charge there will pursue them? Especially now, post-Covid isolation which apparently increased his imperial ambition. And no, I don’t want to be in a Russian-dominated economic zone between “Lisbon and Vladivostok”; that sounds like societal regression.
Look if you’re going to write fanfiction about Russia in every single reply it’s just reinforcing stereotypes about the surly German mindset. Stop trying to make me interested in your elections, they don’t fundamentally change the financial relationship between the US and Germany. That is the crux of the original point about the US anointing itself Germany’s top energy provider by eliminating Russia. The people you are talking about cutting the US off would never do it, it’s like talking about Europe rearming and becoming responsible for its military instead of the US, it’s a media debacle without any substance. Adding this whole lesser evil angle where Putin is personally replacing your toilet paper with 2 ply doesn’t add the 𝑛𝑢𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 that is intended when we’re missing the core relationship between the US and Europe since WWII when it took over the colonial empires and established the modern international debt system.
Notice how you count the percentage of natural gas which the US provides, but not the half of Germany’s natural gas that it was getting from Russia. Russia doesn’t have any hand in you destroying your entire industrial capacity because the US told you to. Yes, in this situation losing even 6% of your energy will be crushing because you haven’t yet diversified your energy sources by lowering costs significantly (again industry, which is dependent on labor and energy prices). Cutting out nuclear has made this all even more devastating
Destroying “your[sic] entire industrial capacity” is complete bogus, and you know that. The German economy has been in a recession for the most part, i.e. production was stable, rather than shrinking, that’s only changed lately. And there are multiple reasons for that recession too; being overly dependent on Russian fossil gas is one of those. Another is producing outdated overpriced crap like fossil-powered luxury cars and then hoping people in other countries are stupid enough to import those glossy turds.
But of course Russia has a massive hand in the recession. Before Nord Stream was blown up, Gazprom already progressively reduced deliveries. Gazprom even already reduced supply before the war began, to be able to later pressure Germany into supporting its Russia’s war.
And then, about those 6%: We just need to install heat pumps to massively cut primary energy usage. Over 50% of German gas usage is just heating. Those 50+% can be cut down easily with heat pumps.
The entire basis of the reduction of German energy use has been the export of manufacturing, you can’t then sanction the main manufacturer of green tech and have your revolution, I mean every aspect of this is failing in front of our eyes lol playing this blame game won’t help you
We’re talking about the industrial capacity required for a green revolution, though! Aside from energy prices, that requires maintaining a stable talent pool of engineers, many different kinds of skilled workers! Just massacring the whole gas car industry isn’t even a good idea for that sake. We’re working from completely different premises. You’re just fitting anything to this Russia bad narrative you possibly can and you have zero interest in the structure of the neocolonial financial system that keeps the German ruling class in sync with the US in the first place. I should come back with a more serious post that lays out the parameters of this whole discussion instead of having you recite every conspiracy theory you can concoct, this is probably the fifth essay I’ve given an IOU for so at this point though so no promises.
You can’t decry a recession caused by evil Russian spies and then turn around and say the things which are contributing to that recession are good. Using your measure of recession is fraudulent anyways since western economists count everything from rent increases to stocks to legal fees to German hookers as GDP and it isn’t a realistic figure for industry or the livelihoods of actual workers
“Watched” as in you greedily slopped up everything coming out of the German press about this and repeat it as gospel. You’re truly warped if you’ve convinced yourself that blowing up the pipeline was in German’s national interest. Are you one of Bareback’s goblins or something?
Oh yeah where are you gonna get your oil then, Iran? Hahahahaha
You’re acting like getting oil from Iran is somehow less moral than getting it from the US.
No I’m pointing out that Germany’s decisions about the energy market are driven by its participation in the US system, financialization neocolonialism and sanctions are the priority, not anticorruption, green energy, and industrialism as claimed. Quite the opposite
Canada, Brazil, Norway any OPEC country.
To compare the energy sovereignty issue, this is like believing the US can actually drill enough to become independent from OPEC countries. (Wouldn’t be alone, this was a popular talking point when the call to Drill Baby Drill was sounded!) The whole point of US drilling is to control the oil market. Actually this is a bad example because the US runs the petrodollar system but no Drill Baby Drill and OPEC cannot save Europe now. Opening up to Russia, China, and Iran and going full Asia mode could. The drilling in Norway and Canada you’re talking about is a price management thing. Oil wells that have more limited stores also become far less efficient to extract the more you pump. To say nothing of crap like tar sands lol
We will need a lot less oil in the future. Just one example: in my country the typical way to heat a house in winter was oil. We are now transitioning to heat pumps as fast as we possibly can. Another big consumer of oil are vehicles, which are also transitioning to electric. We will still import oil, of course, but much less. It’s not unreasonable to cut out one or two supplier countries if the demand halves.
Stop, I’m going to do a spit take. Look, I would love for Europe to go full solarpunk but that would take sudden growth of industrial capacity beyond its wildest dreams, not maximizing certain tech monopolies and rent seeking in industry. Europe has hitched itself to the US because their dependency relationship (encompassing both US influence and European participation in supply chains mediated by US power, requiring access to undercosted goods from poorer nations) is too important to European political & business leadership to consider industrial development. It’s playing a bad long game because elites can always run somewhere else & they have nothing to do but inherit and die. That’s really the main obstacle here, politics. It feels bad when I hear these common sense solutions combined with neolib premises and jingoism lol, Europe will pass off restrictions on Chinese solar panels, EVs, etc as being sound industrial policy, and you won’t see production increase there or prices drop. Look I may jokingly taunt Euros but it’s almost like you deserve better. Rhetorically you deserve better maybe not karmically
Well you should know from your experience with cutting out Russian oil that a gigantic & cheaper source is not easily replaced! If you think industry there is recovering from that blow to energy prices already you should talk to some pro-Europe people who study this more in-depth, because they’re not happy about it.
All I can say is that Europe doing that would be a huge win for us Asia development fanatics. You’d be handing us your own head on a plate. It’s politically impossible anyways, European access to lucrative trade and finance has all been mediated with US oversight that places them near the top of the food chain. The ruling class the US made rich is not going to bite the hand that feeds them, and Europe isn’t going to depose of its oligarchy overnight. We can dream though
The cheapest, most scalable sources of energy are solar and wind. So the European push has been in two directions, more expensive gas and oil but also, to offset the price issue, more electrification. Granted, it would be great if the right-wing could come to terms with that development rather than trying to block it, either because it sounds vaguely green and different from the past or because they’re actually paid off by Russia to stall any positive development in their home countries.
Lol of course you think it’s Russian infiltration that’s preventing you from taking advantage of solar and wind & not the US, which just got you utterly dependent on its natural gas shipments by increasing the cost of the Russian oil Europe still buys through secondary countries (oil is incredibly easy to launder as it is just grades of hydrocarbons lmfao)
Maybe you should consider what political forces in Europe are aligned against the chief producer of solar and wind technology (China) and whether they were createf by the Russian infiltration your ruling class orders you to attribute all of your problems to (you dutifully comply)
Yeah, lol of course I think that. I watched as Russia tried to pressure Germany with fossil gas, first by running Gazprom Germania’s gas storage low in the winter of 2021/2022, then by progressively cutting off gas flow in the Nord Stream pipelines over the first half of 2022. These pipelines being blown up finally put a hard stop on these tactics, thankfully.
And yeah, lol of course I think that, knowing that various high-ranking CDU/SPD politicians like Kretschmer spend a lot of time trying to popularize the idea of a reopening of Nord Stream while they provably get a lot of mail from Gazprom somehow; knowing that SPD politician Ralf Stegner met ominous Russian fossil executives; knowing that Afd provably gets money from Russia and various Afd politicians give interviews to Russian propaganda outlets; knowing that Afd and Bsw somehow use the same regional bank whose director is known for his friendliness to the Russian regime.
And no, Germany is not mortally dependent on US LNG. LNG as a whole is just the last 10% or so of fossil gas imports in Germany. If our absurdist new government wasn’t quite as irrationally focused on increasing our dependence on fossil gas, we could easily wean ourselves off that in the near future; we already reduced fossil gas usage by 20% in the past three years. The countries we’re now actually dependent on in terms of gas imports are Norway and the Netherlands.
None of that is to say that there’s no influence from US private actors. KKR (an investor in Germany’s largest right-wing publishing house) and Black Rock (former employer of the new chancellor) certainly are major factors. There are also internal strictly domestic factors, such as BASF and Bayer who really like fossil stuff too. In other words, there certainly are colluding fossip interests here; but that doesn’t let Russia off the hook.
You have failed at every level of basic research here lmao Russia was German’s largest provider of all kinds of fossil fuel sources, and what country do you guess is the second largest? Trying to downplay the US as being “only the largest provider of energy” when the prior one had been bringing in three times as much. I mean let’s just not talk about prices at all right? Once we get into prices this is going to be a very bad look for you.
It would quite literally be in Russia’s best interest to have bilateral economic agreements with Germany increasing industrial capacity, geographically these neighboring regions have immense possibilities in rail transit networks for tourism and trade, and this whole division between them suits only Wall St, Brussels, London etc, it’s not in the national interest of Germany at all but the ruling class interest. So I hope that pretending evil spies and not the entire political and business leadership of Germany sold out the green revolution helps you sleep at night. Don’t forget to keep the heat down this winter could be even pricier. That’s not the issue - not being able to make cars and solar panels competitively is the issue
I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me in the first paragraph, sorry. Sure, fossil energy prices went up since Russia started a war. They did go down again too, though, but perhaps not to 2019 levels.
And sure, there are things that may be in Russia’s best interest. But are we really hoping that the weirdo who is in charge there will pursue them? Especially now, post-Covid isolation which apparently increased his imperial ambition. And no, I don’t want to be in a Russian-dominated economic zone between “Lisbon and Vladivostok”; that sounds like societal regression.
Look if you’re going to write fanfiction about Russia in every single reply it’s just reinforcing stereotypes about the surly German mindset. Stop trying to make me interested in your elections, they don’t fundamentally change the financial relationship between the US and Germany. That is the crux of the original point about the US anointing itself Germany’s top energy provider by eliminating Russia. The people you are talking about cutting the US off would never do it, it’s like talking about Europe rearming and becoming responsible for its military instead of the US, it’s a media debacle without any substance. Adding this whole lesser evil angle where Putin is personally replacing your toilet paper with 2 ply doesn’t add the 𝑛𝑢𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 that is intended when we’re missing the core relationship between the US and Europe since WWII when it took over the colonial empires and established the modern international debt system.
Notice how you count the percentage of natural gas which the US provides, but not the half of Germany’s natural gas that it was getting from Russia. Russia doesn’t have any hand in you destroying your entire industrial capacity because the US told you to. Yes, in this situation losing even 6% of your energy will be crushing because you haven’t yet diversified your energy sources by lowering costs significantly (again industry, which is dependent on labor and energy prices). Cutting out nuclear has made this all even more devastating
Destroying “your[sic] entire industrial capacity” is complete bogus, and you know that. The German economy has been in a recession for the most part, i.e. production was stable, rather than shrinking, that’s only changed lately. And there are multiple reasons for that recession too; being overly dependent on Russian fossil gas is one of those. Another is producing outdated overpriced crap like fossil-powered luxury cars and then hoping people in other countries are stupid enough to import those glossy turds.
But of course Russia has a massive hand in the recession. Before Nord Stream was blown up, Gazprom already progressively reduced deliveries. Gazprom even already reduced supply before the war began, to be able to later pressure Germany into supporting its Russia’s war.
And then, about those 6%: We just need to install heat pumps to massively cut primary energy usage. Over 50% of German gas usage is just heating. Those 50+% can be cut down easily with heat pumps.
How solipsistic bro
The entire basis of the reduction of German energy use has been the export of manufacturing, you can’t then sanction the main manufacturer of green tech and have your revolution, I mean every aspect of this is failing in front of our eyes lol playing this blame game won’t help you
We’re talking about the industrial capacity required for a green revolution, though! Aside from energy prices, that requires maintaining a stable talent pool of engineers, many different kinds of skilled workers! Just massacring the whole gas car industry isn’t even a good idea for that sake. We’re working from completely different premises. You’re just fitting anything to this Russia bad narrative you possibly can and you have zero interest in the structure of the neocolonial financial system that keeps the German ruling class in sync with the US in the first place. I should come back with a more serious post that lays out the parameters of this whole discussion instead of having you recite every conspiracy theory you can concoct, this is probably the fifth essay I’ve given an IOU for so at this point though so no promises.
You can’t decry a recession caused by evil Russian spies and then turn around and say the things which are contributing to that recession are good. Using your measure of recession is fraudulent anyways since western economists count everything from rent increases to stocks to legal fees to German hookers as GDP and it isn’t a realistic figure for industry or the livelihoods of actual workers
“Watched” as in you greedily slopped up everything coming out of the German press about this and repeat it as gospel. You’re truly warped if you’ve convinced yourself that blowing up the pipeline was in German’s national interest. Are you one of Bareback’s goblins or something?