Where in Red Velvet's post is he fundementally wrong though? We Europeans were warned that it would come to this and more to the point we failed to see the long game in favour of cheap Russian gas (rather than seeing cheap Russian gas as an opportunity to invest in longer term solutions).
There was enough time and resources to produce more nuclear power stations, not shut them down, but the Green movement, infiltrated by Gazprom and the FSB, made it their "black ball" issue in many countries. A lot of these Green movements were founded by flower power people who conflated nuclear power with nuclear weapons and because they became maintstream and climate is a very serious issue, as is environmental protection, air quality, etc. It's why I and so many others voted Green.
Renewable net zero will take a massive structural effort and another 10 years of economic depression. It requires mobilizing a war capacity effort that Europe does not have because of neo-liberalism and cost cutting in public policy circles being seen as efficient, good governance (see also, pandemic preparedness). My generation already had to contend with a drop in living standards due to 2008 and Covid, it's now being faced with a massive drop in order to satisfy net zero targets while India and China hide behind the "we're underdeveloped and definitely not colonialist" card to pollute massively. To top it all off, the migration question is being instrumentalised well by a far right to blow the dog whistle as Europe will have to genuinely contend with the issue of housing climate refugees all because their favorite footballers on instagram live the high life, and this coupled with its energy transition will have to again take a massive state capacity effort that our current modern state is simply not prepared for.
Expect a whole host of little dictators with mustaches to pop up unless we, the sane democratic Left, admit we have to make some Faustian pacts on things like net zero by 2035. The far right will dismantle the European project and start the old revisionist border disputes to hide their glaring incompetence. At that point I'll be trying by any means necessary to leave for Greenland.
With respect (and genuinely so, you are one poster here whose contributions I always read properly) you are very good at saying what "can't" be done - but what *can* be done?
So the "sane left" should jettison net zero - to what end exactly, and with what reward?? And given that you aren't a climate change denier, how should the fundamental underlying reason for having it as a policy be dealt with instead?
In the short term I cannot see anything other than rationing some energy uses, but also doing some things that may upset the ecologist movement, like opening coal plants again, re-opening the Groningen gas plant (compensating the citizens around there with Russian-owned mansions) and basically boosting industrial production as long as the latter has a net return on the overall goal of being self-sufficient. I don’t believe there is any reasoning as to why Europe should make the most efforts while Asia and Africa continue to also have unsustainable lifestyles despite efforts to frame us as the root of all problems. And that’s not even counting North America who take the piss with their Hummers and aircon.
I’d like the people who are paying negative energy bills for installing solar panels that were created with Uyghur slave labour and have 2 cars in the driveway to be taxed more than city dwellers. I’d also say that anyone who enters a car must prove they have done a certain amount of kilometers or be taxed to death. Other half-measures can include :
Less football matches under floodlights, less activities overall under floodlights. Probably shutting down private swimming pools too.
Banning private jets
Trying to move digital based workers to hotter climates in the winter period (free train tickets, empty holiday homes must be occupied kind of thing)
Investing in smart AI tech to regulate when lights come on and off
Moving several non-essential industrial sectors to work on energy production sectors
I mention the first because I am acutely aware that my favorite hobbies will be impacted but I can already predict that just as with Covid every single sector will try to lobby the government to have exemptions and in the end it will be who has the biggest lobby machine rather than some genuine prioritization based on what we really need. That needs to come to an end.
I also think that for example limitations on red meat are far less impacting people's lifestyles than banning airtravel. And a much more effective policy. Simply because the replacement is much easier to find.
Politically changes need to happen too.
I’d implement a rule of 7 year terms, and that anyone whose mother or father or immediate family was involved in politics cannot stand for public office or even so much as communicate with a political party. That’ll end short termism and nepotism, which are the cancers of the European political class.
I’d end the monopoly that Ivy League/Oxbridge/College of Europe economists have in the public sector, themselves essentially high priests of at the margin thinking who are unable to find concrete solutions that engineers and multidisciplinary practitioners of policy have. Cummings is a cockhead but he is totally right about the public service needing the type of profiles that are better than just being able to budget and think at the margin.
I’d jettison Italy from the EU, cut it from all trade and try and annex parts of it so we can crank up the interest rates and start tanking the European asset-holding class who made their wealth off the back of free money and initially cheap but overall expensive energy class. Also I hold Italians in Brussels responsible for the culture of “charm and warm fuzzy feelings before output” around here that has to change.
I would blockade Switzerland until it submits to our terms on things like energy, trade and releases all the banking details of our political class and billionaire class.
I would grow some balls as a European geopolitical power.
