A number of people who still are following the Russia-Ukraine war and its global spill-out may have noticed last week that the European Union voted to (try to) cut natural gas usage by 15 percent.
UnHerd spells out why it won't work, and worse, with Germany embracing austerity again, as it did in the Great Recession, why the Eurozone economy is set for a major crumble unless Vladimir Putin somehow benevolently turns the taps on. Of course, if the war is still ongoing, he won't, and no, the US doesn't have that much LNG, and definitely won't in the winter. Could the somewhat parallel NATO wind up shattering over this?
Nobody should be shocked over any of this.
Looking first at NATO, not the EU, it's part of why most of its member states have long resisted spending close to US amounts on defense. (Not that we don't spend way too much.) Spending more, especially if coupled with American minor reductions, would mean that Europeans would have to make decisions rather than following behind the US lead.
And, now that the EU has jumped in line with the US on sanctions, even while doing much more business with Russia than the US, it faces the same issue. Besides German austerity being likely to clusterfuck the whole EU economy, it now faces the problems of being the "leader" at least in part. It also faces the problems of being the leader after failure to do so. Remember post-Fukushima? Then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel ordered a hard — and fast — pivot away from nuclear. And, to dirty lignite coal. (It also appeased the former East Germany, which still mined some of that.)
But, she didn't address other diversification. (Personally, as long as the long-term waste disposal issue is solved, AND we build more efficient reactors — including breeder-type ones, as long as security is STRONG — I'm OK with nuclear.) Wind energy is more than in America, but, with no nukes, is still a kind of a patch. Yes, solar can provide SOME energy, but not as much as here. It's a matter of latitude, not just more cloudy weather.
Beyond that, when I hear about air conditioning in Hamburg, I shake my head. Germans are getting about as spoiled as Americans.
Independent Media Institute has more on the showdown, noting Spain and Portugal rejected the 15 percent call. Spain, to get to a 7 percent cut, has forbidden by decree public space AC thermostats from going below 27C, or 80.6F, which created a huge outcry. I could see them bargaining down to 25C/77F, but no lower. And, you know what? That's actually comfortable, and with box or ceiling fans, 27C is certainly "tolerable." I live in Tex-ass and it's where I keep our office AC set at. And, 19C in winter is 66.2F. Tolerable or even semi-comfortable. That said, unless all Spanish office buildings have "smart" thermostats, I don't see how you enforce this.
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