151–160 of 424 posts
Despite germany's strong dislike for east europeans I am glad to see they are taking measures to help their allies. This is a positive move in the right direction, I hope we figure a way to help germany solve it's dependency of russia in due time, as indeed their economy needs protection.
Why is protecting the economy more important than stopping the funding of the Russian army and their military invasion?
It's nice to see Germany start working towards energy independence. I think it's a crucial factor for both national security and a faster migration to more environmentally friendly energy sources.
Yeah, they got top minds on this. Top. Minds. Nuclear canceled by the Green Party and pre-March went all in on Russian oil and gas.
Who has been in power for the last 20 years exactly that could have built renewable power instead of quadrupling down on Russian gas? It wasn't the Green party.
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> Nuclear canceled by the Green Party .. after Fukushima. Trading one tail risk for another. (Germany has oddly lagged in deploying renewables, though. Possibly due to lack of offshore sites, meaning that wind farms have to be deployed against the efforts of NIMBYs)
> .. after Fukushima. Trading one tail risk for another. We don't stop flying after planes get into an accident. We evaluate and improve our designs and controls But with nuclear with go with knee-jerk reaction for some reason
That reason is propaganda. The anti-nuclear people use anything they can to whip people up into an irrational frenzy whenever anything happens, and it has worked pretty well.
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Yeah, they got top minds on this. Top. Minds. Nuclear canceled by the Green Party and pre-March went all in on Russian oil and gas.
Uranium is also imported. Overall the EU gets 20% of its uranium from Russia and another 20% from Kazakhstan, which is economically deeply tied with Russia.
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The Soviet Union was a reliable energy supplier to (West) Germany even at the height of the Cold War. Ostpolitik was the dominant mode of thinking across party lines. The West has never had any qualms about buying oil and gas from the worst regimes in the world. This outrage over buying from Russia while turning a blind eye to Arab monarchies seems rather perfomative.
> outrage over buying from Russia while turning a blind eye to Arab monarchies seems rather perfomative The Arab monarchies largely keep their messes in their own backyards. When there has been leakage, it has been limited. Russia rolling tanks into Europe is so harebrained it creates a new category of security risk we haven’t had close to home in a while: that of a madman.
The fundamental of all of these is oil and now, gas. Removing the demand for these will remove the necessity of engaging with these propped up monarchies and autocracies.
This doesn't make sense to me. Can i get an explanation? The German state seized a local German branch of the Russian Gazprom company. In order to secure its energy supplies... which come from Russia. Are they in essence capturing some reserves?
I read a great reader comment on the topic (also in German so try DeepL) https://blog.fefe.de/?ts=9cb54d35 Its a political push and pull about who defaults on the existing contracts on gas import, seeing as Russia wants to be payed in ruble now, while Germany would prefer the payments to be stuck on a EU bank account as a form of reparation payments to the Ukraine. To prevent this outcome, Russia in effect might be l…
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From what I've read, the contracts between Gazprom Germany and Gazprom Export (on the Russian side) do not have a fixed settlement currency. > This would have allowed them to require payments in Rubles instead of Euros "allowed" is a funny word - this situation is way past a point where cross-border contracts on either side hold any legal value. How are you going to hold anyone accountable for breach of contract?
One side does it with assassination.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assassinations_by_th...
Despite germany's strong dislike for east europeans I am glad to see they are taking measures to help their allies. This is a positive move in the right direction, I hope we figure a way to help germany solve it's dependency of russia in due time, as indeed their economy needs protection.
And what of the rest of the Western world's dependency on Middle Eastern oil? That was already weaponized in 1973 yet nobody seems to have learned from it.