Re:Europe’s energy crisis hits science
by kmeisthax on Thursday September 08, 2022 @11:52AM
(#32767395)
...So you want to sue voters for wanting cheap energy in 1997?
The rut that Europe is now in is the direct result of the following:
- Until very recently[0], energy demands could only be met with a significant amount of fossil fuels. Europe is notoriously poor in fossil fuel reserves[1] and must import them.
- Fossil fuels are fungible in substance but not in location. A barrel of oil is a barrel of oil, but oil in Saudi Arabia is not oil in Germany. Transport adds cost, and the cheapest and safest way to transport oil is with a pipeline.
- Out of all of Europe's close neighbors, Russia has the biggest fossil fuel reserve. There really isn't a suitable "backup supplier" that could bring fuel in cheaply.
- People and politicians in 1997 assumed economic ties with Russia would put their military on a leash in the same way that the ECSC, EEC, and EU had put West Germany's military on a leash.
That last consideration might seem quaint given that Russia invaded Ukraine, but globalization was something that had already worked in Europe and people thought it was exportable.
Even then, it might still work out. The economic problems Europe is looking at are nothing compared to the damage that the current slate of broad sanctions have done and are doing to Russia. Europe is looking at one particularly cold winter, but Russia is seeing a slow-motion economic collapse on the same scale as the collapse of the Soviet Union. The real mistake was not that we built Nord Stream, but that we waited until 2022 to actually punish Putin for invading Russia's neighbors.
[0] Specifically, cheap solar and wind did not exist in 1997 and nuclear was and still is expensive to build.
[1] This is also why the US is obsessed with oil. Running out of it was one of the deciding factors in the fall of Nazi Germany.
The rut that Europe is now in is the direct result of the following:
- Until very recently[0], energy demands could only be met with a significant amount of fossil fuels. Europe is notoriously poor in fossil fuel reserves[1] and must import them.
- Fossil fuels are fungible in substance but not in location. A barrel of oil is a barrel of oil, but oil in Saudi Arabia is not oil in Germany. Transport adds cost, and the cheapest and safest way to transport oil is with a pipeline.
- Out of all of Europe's close neighbors, Russia has the biggest fossil fuel reserve. There really isn't a suitable "backup supplier" that could bring fuel in cheaply.
- People and politicians in 1997 assumed economic ties with Russia would put their military on a leash in the same way that the ECSC, EEC, and EU had put West Germany's military on a leash.
That last consideration might seem quaint given that Russia invaded Ukraine, but globalization was something that had already worked in Europe and people thought it was exportable.
Even then, it might still work out. The economic problems Europe is looking at are nothing compared to the damage that the current slate of broad sanctions have done and are doing to Russia. Europe is looking at one particularly cold winter, but Russia is seeing a slow-motion economic collapse on the same scale as the collapse of the Soviet Union. The real mistake was not that we built Nord Stream, but that we waited until 2022 to actually punish Putin for invading Russia's neighbors.
[0] Specifically, cheap solar and wind did not exist in 1997 and nuclear was and still is expensive to build.
[1] This is also why the US is obsessed with oil. Running out of it was one of the deciding factors in the fall of Nazi Germany.