No, we just let non-populists like Schröder (a former German chancellor who literally became an official Russian agent after he left office..) and Merkel get in the way
The US is in the comfortable position to have oil and gas and to have neighbors that have oil and gas (Canada, Venezuela*). If they were in Europe's place, they would trade with Russia just the same. I mean, before the war the US was already among the biggest buyers of some of Russia's fossil fuels.
That said, I don't agree with the comment chain and I'm glad the US disrupts OPECs price fixing and I also see them overtaking Europe in renewable energy soon, simply because they are better suited for renewables.
In California, we're right around $1.20/gallon for fees and taxes. From what I've experienced, it helps keep the poor poor, and motivates the rich to buy luxury electric vehicles.
That’s more than double what people in the midwestern United States pay for gas, about a dollar more per gallon than CA. Makes it easy to see why economically it makes sense to keep your car longer and just keep burning gas in the Midwest.
For the uninitiated across the pond, California has one of if not the highest gas prices in the country; this is still cheap by international standards.
I would claim that this doesn't have the same effect on the poor, in Europe, since there's an alternative: public transportation. In many regions of America, including California, there's often no viable public transportation*. You still need to drive, and if you're poor, you usually have a less-than-efficient car, and you have long commutes because you can't afford to live close to the city.
Again, this is all from experience. Large gas price changes always hurt my family the most. Now that I'm wealthy, I, along with the majority of people at work, have a luxury electric car, partly to avoid the high gas prices. I'm guessing the downvotes are in the "wealthy" category, and giggled, as I did, when they silently passed by gas stations these last few years.
* As an example, where I am now, commute by car is 24 minutes. Commute by public transportation is 3 hours.
Gas prices hit everything, not only private cars. Gas and diesel go up and down in price together so it's all the items traveling on trucks to supermarkets where the poors find increased prices. Before that, gas moves the machines used in agricolture and fishing ships. There are probably many other impacts but you should get the idea.
I didn't mean to suggest it's one thing. Countries with expensive gas usually have public transportation, but that's mostly unusable here, and sprawl means affordable housing is far from the work, so there's a lot more required commuting for people who would, in Europe, be taking public transport. Gas is $4.80/gallos ($1.26/L) where I am, right now. That's not all that "cheap", even by European standards, when you consider average commute distance is around double (according to a quick search).
In Europe actual tax is like $7 per gallon and gas price, over $10 per gallon with people making about 1.5x less after tax. Fuel needs to be very pricey to discourage consumption and help move to renewables faster.
Europe just spent two decades funding the military force invading it right now by importing fossil fuels from its invader in great quantities. Simultaneously, Europe let its ability to defend itself atrophy. Now Europe is relying heavily on the US for both more fossil fuels and military support, and yet here you are looking down your noses at the US while praising China's leadership for selling you solar panels, allegedly at dumped prices which crushed your own local industry.
You really are great at seeing the bigger picture!
They had a golden opportunity and they took it, they created an empire for the modern era, turned on the fire hose of propaganda and convince us that the most warlike nation of the last century is some how the good guy.
> turned on the fire hose of propaganda and convince us that the most warlike nation of the last century is some how the good guy.
The more I grew the more I became hyper aware of American military propaganda in Hollywood movies. It's glaring when the same movies portray Soviet army and equipment - in that case everything is poor CGI and cheap dummies.
Nobody's perfect but the US with all it's flaws is vastly preferable to being conquered by a military dictatorship. Which basically was the other option for Europe during the past 80 years.
Look at what happens the very second the US seems weak - two semi-senile candidates and a nation divided, suddenly every indisputably bad guy in the world starts testing the waters. Where would their ambitions stop if democratic nations had no teeth?
You are also pointing out a major problem with fossil fuels. Had Europe gone renewable much earlier, it would not find itself with the same lack of energy now as it currently suffers. Did the world not learn anything in 1973?
I don't think that's even possible. Most of Europe (esepcially Northern Europe) is really, really dark, and solar in only now becoming vaguely viable. Wind is better, but even then only the North Sea is really an option. Hydro was tapped out decades ago.
What are the choices? Everyone will have to go renewable sooner or later because of global warming (and if you ignore global warming, you will still to do it, just bit more later, because fossil fuels will run out).
It's relatively easy to put together a package of renewable sources to cover all energy needs anywhere.
In terms of electricity, that's already done in EU - fossil fuels only cover ~30% of consumption now (31.6% in 2023 and falling by ~3% points per year), and will be 0% by 2035, that looks easy today and does not require any new invention nor even existing tech getting cheaper. We currently deploy quite a bit more renewable capacity than needed every year to make it work.
As for all kinds of energy together, that's quite a bit harder and so far, we are not there, but it shouldn't take more than about 5 years to arrive to the necessary rates of deployment.
Bruh Europe literally saw Russia invade Georgia immediately after it said it wanted to be closer to Europe in 2008, that should have been it. It was for America, meanwhile the EU basically was a Kremlin mouthpiece:
I hate trump as much as the next dude but he was not kidding when he said at the NATO summit that there was some really bad people in the German government. That Russian invasion of Georgia report made by the EU? The mainstream acceptance of events is that Gazprom paid off some people in the German government to just make something up as long as it didn't blame Russia.
The US heavily encouraged the atrophy of Europe to defend itself, throwing a wrench every time they could through politically the UK, kneecapping the European defense industry by using the NSA to do industrial espionage to win contracts... The US didn't want an independent EU able to do things without them.
Maybe, before the EU tries again to better its defenses, can we have the security that our "ally" won't try to kneecap it once again? Because we invested billions in e.g. developing Rafale fighters, and then the US bankrolls its F-35 everywhere. This isn't tenable.
You mean the "client state" representatives promoted, pre-approved, wined, and dined by the US (ever since WWII and the Marshall plan, and to an even greated degree after the last decently strong and independent European statesmen faded off 2-3 decades ago)?
"The role played by the United States makes the situation worse. Efforts at improving defense industrial cooperation, namely by the EU, have often been met by fierce opposition from the United States. After all, American defense contractors greatly benefit from inking contracts across Europe that deprive European companies of business. Thus efforts by Europe to get its industrial act together are met by stiff resistance by American administrations, which channel the concerns of U.S. companies about being locked out of the European market. For instance, after the EU announced plans for a new European Defense Fund and an initiative to develop new weapons systems, U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis and other Trump administration officials strongly objected and aggressively lobbied for U.S. companies to have access to the paltry EU funds. This rather petty concern, U.S. access to the European defense market, has not gone away under Biden. In fact, the Biden administration has also forcefully lobbied EU member states on defense initiatives. Even with a war on, the major focus of the EU-U.S. security dialogue has been, at the insistence of Washington, finalizing an innocuous “administrative arrangement” granting the United States potential access to more EU defense euros.
U.S. opposition has had a significant chilling effect on attempts to improve coordination. It just takes a few skittish EU member states, worried about the reaction from their security guarantor, to pump the brakes on collective EU efforts. Partly because of such obstruction, European defense cooperation has declined over the past decade."
"Ultimately, of course, the perilous state of European armed forces is the fault of European governments. But NATO’s role in bringing about this state of affairs also deserves scrutiny. "
The worst part of debates is that every time you make predictions that will surely be tested correct or incorrect, people find away to shift the goalposts in a stupefying way.
US: "EU, please up your NATO spending, US is spending 3% GDP while some of you are dragging your feet with 1%. Also please stop funding Putin via nat. gas."
EU: "No. That's ridiculous."
US: "Russia will invade Ukraine presumably killing thousands."
Sycophants: "No. That's ridiculous and would be awful. Fake news. Propaganda."
Russia invades Ukraine
EU: "Actually US it's your fault we don't have much defense."
Sycophants: "Actually US it's your fault, and if it's not, well it's not so bad, and if it's bad, well it's not our problem."
>Europe just spent two decades funding the military force invading it right now by importing fossil fuels from its invader in great quantities.
Or, rather, spent decades doing pragmatic good deals for fossil fuels with a country whose resources could use to its benefits.
Then decided ("decided") to shoot itself in the foot by cutting them off, and be the useful idiot in the games between two countries and their proxy war, ignited after one recentlessly pushed to get its military bases to the other's borders.
>Now Europe is relying heavily on the US for both more fossil fuels and military support
The only reason Europe even asks for US military support is because European politicians, of the useless imbecilic kind that have been in power for the last 2-3 decades, are wined/dined/pushed around to do so (and to deal with the proxy wars the US pushes onto its lap).
This is a reminder to me how deceptive projections are. We were so sure before that we'd run out of economically-available oil on the planet soon. The numbers felt irrefutable. Now that point seems far away.
This is not a comment on whether that's good or bad in the case of oil, but it seems to happen a lot.
I think what we miss is that there are simply so many variables changing at any time that something that seems impossible all of a sudden becomes possible. And then we just take it for granted so quickly.
It makes me wonder if we will be saved from global warming by some series of changes that seem utterly ridiculous. Maybe AI, cheap space flight, and some other crazy thing we aren't paying attention to combine into a solution. That's not to say we shouldn't care about global warming: quite the opposite, we should keep trying to make improvements on every front, both reasonable (consume less wastefully) and crazy (ask ChatGPT to come up with a plan).
We will obviously save ourselves from climate change, even if we met every single climate target climate change is going to happen without humans anyways.
Way too many environment activists think that humans are the sole reason for climate change, not realizing that the climate is going to change regardless if we want it to or not, humans just speed it up. Continents move, jet streams migrate, space weather is a thing, and the sun is getting hotter as well (longer time scale obvs but you get my point). We have to deal with it, if that means putting up a huge mirror between the earth and the sun then so be it.
It's curious that HNers purport to be...smart, yet this comment is heavily downvoted.
Climate has changed before man. Climate will continue to change.
Beyond that, our understanding of our impact is nonexistent and naive. I have to laugh at the hyperfocus on CO2 as if the planet doesn't have a use for it already.
Never has global climate changed this quickly, as far as we can tell. Usually changes this big take tens of thousands of years, and they're handled fine-ish. A couple of times it has happened over centuries and that resulted in mass extinction. Over decades? Unprecedented.
Are you claiming that the Permian-Triassic and Triassic-Jurassic extinction events didn't happen, or that they weren't coincidental with rapid climate changes?
Way too many gun control activists think that guns are the sole reason for deaths, not realizing that people are going to die regardless if we want them to or not, guns just speed it up.
The speed of change is the entire problem. And if you have information sources that support your statement that humans aren't the major driver of climate change over the past roughly 50-100 years, please share it.
"even if we met every single climate target climate change is going to happen without humans anyways."
You then pointed out that the sun is getting hotter, and qualified that with "longer time scale obvs but you get my point."
Is your point that you believe human activity makes a slow and/or small enough contribution to observed changes in climate that we shouldn't bother changing anything about our behaviour ("climate change is going to happen without humans anyways")? If I misunderstand this, could you please correct my understanding?
I don't understand why you brought up the sun's luminosity increase. You yourself imply that you know the rate of increase is so slow that it's completely misleading to bring up in the context of the past few decades. For example: https://environmental-geology-dev.pressbooks.tru.ca/chapter/...
Your calling me unintelligent was uncalled for and I didn't appreciate it. I hope to foster kinder interactions than that in life.
I think people tend to underweight tech improvements which is largely what happened with oil - we got better drilling and fracking tech. Which I guess you can understand in projections as it can be hard to read the future.
I've always thought the global warming doom was a bit overdone as there are a bunch of potential changes that could happen including better solar and batteries, effective carbon pricing, fusion energy, AGI helping out, geo engineering and so on that could be done. Also living with it - things getting hotter or colder is not an ususual occurance really.
I think the strategy is solar, wind, … renewable. Still tactically you need to make sure no war on old energy be won. If USA did not produce gas to Europe, putin will win. If putin can get more money from india and china, putin will fight. Whilst he still is, at least it is not that a threat and not getting too much more from new buyers.
The confusion in and not or strategy is and strategy need a lot of work. Sometimes too much especially one of the component of and is very undesirabke
I don't think many people in America realize how absolutely overpowered the United States really is, this was basically inevitable after the Suez crisis
As a Japanese-American, we are well aware how utterly absurd we are:
* An absurdly absurd twenty aircraft carriers between (as of writing): 10 Nimitz-class carriers, 1 Ford-class carrier, 7 Wasp-class amphibious assault ships, and 2 America-class amphibious assault ships. Any one of the Strike Groups led by them can rival the military of an entire country and we field twenty of them, one for each carrier.
* The Coast Guard is geared to sail and operate right alongside the Navy, including blue waters. We effectively have two navies.
* Unparalleled air superiority between our F-15s and F-22s, complemented by F-16s, F/A-18E/Fs, and F-35s.
* Positively stupid air-to-ground firepower between the B-52, B-1, B-2, AC-135, A-10, and AH-64, along with the F-16, F/A-18E/F, and F-35.
* Ridiculous support fleet of tankers, AWACS, and more.
* The world's best tank, also known as the M-1 Abrams.
* Each US state has its own National Guard to complement and support the Army and Air Force.
* Special relationships with the United Kingdom and Japan, both militarily and overall.
Sourced from CNN not exactly reputable source for statistics reporting. It is like Foxnews but for left. Also, these numbers rarely get auditted. It is mostly self reporting. During time of crisis like war or inflation, numbers always "changes" drastically compare to previous year. And release of SPC sometime reported and mostly not. Artic oil and methane ice havn't come into most reporting as well.
68 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 80.6 ms ] threadThat said, I don't agree with the comment chain and I'm glad the US disrupts OPECs price fixing and I also see them overtaking Europe in renewable energy soon, simply because they are better suited for renewables.
Would help counter all the manufacturing jobs outsourced elsewhere.
But Americans (and many others) love income taxes (ie: work and value creation) instead of non-renewable energy taxes for some reason.
(Ok, not quite that, but Portugal has the most efficient euro vehicles and uses 43% less fuel than average US vehicle: https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/ma... )
Again, this is all from experience. Large gas price changes always hurt my family the most. Now that I'm wealthy, I, along with the majority of people at work, have a luxury electric car, partly to avoid the high gas prices. I'm guessing the downvotes are in the "wealthy" category, and giggled, as I did, when they silently passed by gas stations these last few years.
* As an example, where I am now, commute by car is 24 minutes. Commute by public transportation is 3 hours.
Europe just spent two decades funding the military force invading it right now by importing fossil fuels from its invader in great quantities. Simultaneously, Europe let its ability to defend itself atrophy. Now Europe is relying heavily on the US for both more fossil fuels and military support, and yet here you are looking down your noses at the US while praising China's leadership for selling you solar panels, allegedly at dumped prices which crushed your own local industry.
You really are great at seeing the bigger picture!
The more I grew the more I became hyper aware of American military propaganda in Hollywood movies. It's glaring when the same movies portray Soviet army and equipment - in that case everything is poor CGI and cheap dummies.
Look at what happens the very second the US seems weak - two semi-senile candidates and a nation divided, suddenly every indisputably bad guy in the world starts testing the waters. Where would their ambitions stop if democratic nations had no teeth?
I don't think that's even possible. Most of Europe (esepcially Northern Europe) is really, really dark, and solar in only now becoming vaguely viable. Wind is better, but even then only the North Sea is really an option. Hydro was tapped out decades ago.
What are you left with then?
It's relatively easy to put together a package of renewable sources to cover all energy needs anywhere.
In terms of electricity, that's already done in EU - fossil fuels only cover ~30% of consumption now (31.6% in 2023 and falling by ~3% points per year), and will be 0% by 2035, that looks easy today and does not require any new invention nor even existing tech getting cheaper. We currently deploy quite a bit more renewable capacity than needed every year to make it work.
As for all kinds of energy together, that's quite a bit harder and so far, we are not there, but it shouldn't take more than about 5 years to arrive to the necessary rates of deployment.
I hate trump as much as the next dude but he was not kidding when he said at the NATO summit that there was some really bad people in the German government. That Russian invasion of Georgia report made by the EU? The mainstream acceptance of events is that Gazprom paid off some people in the German government to just make something up as long as it didn't blame Russia.
Here is sone anti-americanists saying the same (except... they're not anti-americanists):
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/case-eu-defense/
Maybe, before the EU tries again to better its defenses, can we have the security that our "ally" won't try to kneecap it once again? Because we invested billions in e.g. developing Rafale fighters, and then the US bankrolls its F-35 everywhere. This isn't tenable.
You mean the "client state" representatives promoted, pre-approved, wined, and dined by the US (ever since WWII and the Marshall plan, and to an even greated degree after the last decently strong and independent European statesmen faded off 2-3 decades ago)?
"Ultimately, of course, the perilous state of European armed forces is the fault of European governments. But NATO’s role in bringing about this state of affairs also deserves scrutiny. "
https://archive.ph/4o4r5#selection-2067.0-2137.22
US: "EU, please up your NATO spending, US is spending 3% GDP while some of you are dragging your feet with 1%. Also please stop funding Putin via nat. gas."
EU: "No. That's ridiculous."
US: "Russia will invade Ukraine presumably killing thousands."
Sycophants: "No. That's ridiculous and would be awful. Fake news. Propaganda."
Russia invades Ukraine
EU: "Actually US it's your fault we don't have much defense."
Sycophants: "Actually US it's your fault, and if it's not, well it's not so bad, and if it's bad, well it's not our problem."
Or, rather, spent decades doing pragmatic good deals for fossil fuels with a country whose resources could use to its benefits.
Then decided ("decided") to shoot itself in the foot by cutting them off, and be the useful idiot in the games between two countries and their proxy war, ignited after one recentlessly pushed to get its military bases to the other's borders.
>Now Europe is relying heavily on the US for both more fossil fuels and military support
The only reason Europe even asks for US military support is because European politicians, of the useless imbecilic kind that have been in power for the last 2-3 decades, are wined/dined/pushed around to do so (and to deal with the proxy wars the US pushes onto its lap).
This is not a comment on whether that's good or bad in the case of oil, but it seems to happen a lot.
I think what we miss is that there are simply so many variables changing at any time that something that seems impossible all of a sudden becomes possible. And then we just take it for granted so quickly.
It makes me wonder if we will be saved from global warming by some series of changes that seem utterly ridiculous. Maybe AI, cheap space flight, and some other crazy thing we aren't paying attention to combine into a solution. That's not to say we shouldn't care about global warming: quite the opposite, we should keep trying to make improvements on every front, both reasonable (consume less wastefully) and crazy (ask ChatGPT to come up with a plan).
Way too many environment activists think that humans are the sole reason for climate change, not realizing that the climate is going to change regardless if we want it to or not, humans just speed it up. Continents move, jet streams migrate, space weather is a thing, and the sun is getting hotter as well (longer time scale obvs but you get my point). We have to deal with it, if that means putting up a huge mirror between the earth and the sun then so be it.
Climate has changed before man. Climate will continue to change.
Beyond that, our understanding of our impact is nonexistent and naive. I have to laugh at the hyperfocus on CO2 as if the planet doesn't have a use for it already.
We can't tell very far.
There is a lot of research over decades into that very question, and it overwhelmingly points to humans as the main cause.
> A couple of times it has happened over centuries and that resulted in mass extinction.
You just said, without proof, that all (apparently 2 according to you) rapid climate changes have resulted in mass extinction events.
You cannot fight for change if you look like an idiot.
The speed of change is the entire problem. And if you have information sources that support your statement that humans aren't the major driver of climate change over the past roughly 50-100 years, please share it.
"even if we met every single climate target climate change is going to happen without humans anyways."
You then pointed out that the sun is getting hotter, and qualified that with "longer time scale obvs but you get my point."
Is your point that you believe human activity makes a slow and/or small enough contribution to observed changes in climate that we shouldn't bother changing anything about our behaviour ("climate change is going to happen without humans anyways")? If I misunderstand this, could you please correct my understanding?
I don't understand why you brought up the sun's luminosity increase. You yourself imply that you know the rate of increase is so slow that it's completely misleading to bring up in the context of the past few decades. For example: https://environmental-geology-dev.pressbooks.tru.ca/chapter/...
Your calling me unintelligent was uncalled for and I didn't appreciate it. I hope to foster kinder interactions than that in life.
I've always thought the global warming doom was a bit overdone as there are a bunch of potential changes that could happen including better solar and batteries, effective carbon pricing, fusion energy, AGI helping out, geo engineering and so on that could be done. Also living with it - things getting hotter or colder is not an ususual occurance really.
The confusion in and not or strategy is and strategy need a lot of work. Sometimes too much especially one of the component of and is very undesirabke
That blue water navy is really paying dividends
* An absurdly absurd twenty aircraft carriers between (as of writing): 10 Nimitz-class carriers, 1 Ford-class carrier, 7 Wasp-class amphibious assault ships, and 2 America-class amphibious assault ships. Any one of the Strike Groups led by them can rival the military of an entire country and we field twenty of them, one for each carrier.
* The Coast Guard is geared to sail and operate right alongside the Navy, including blue waters. We effectively have two navies.
* Unparalleled air superiority between our F-15s and F-22s, complemented by F-16s, F/A-18E/Fs, and F-35s.
* Positively stupid air-to-ground firepower between the B-52, B-1, B-2, AC-135, A-10, and AH-64, along with the F-16, F/A-18E/F, and F-35.
* Ridiculous support fleet of tankers, AWACS, and more.
* The world's best tank, also known as the M-1 Abrams.
* Each US state has its own National Guard to complement and support the Army and Air Force.
* Special relationships with the United Kingdom and Japan, both militarily and overall.
* But wait! There's more!(tm)
Trust me, we know how 'Murica we are.