You know what? That’s fine. I’m prepared to let this one slide.
If they are looking for the ones to blame, jail Merkel. Her sabotage made the country dependent on russian resources while russian invasion was already ongoing.
A sound judicial system is the cornerstone of any democracy. An act of terror against any nation or company should thus be brought to court. Naturally you are free to try to put merkel in jail; but on what law, for what would you prosecute her? Luckily enough we are not living in Russia, but in countries where law and order rule.
From the perspective of the US it was pretty absurd seeing the duplicity between what was happening in the real world in terms of war and power grabs and on the other how structurally reliant Europe stubbornly kept on being.
Not that my country hasn’t done way more batshit crazy stuff in pursuit of oil, it is just seeing it from the outside you get more of the funhouse mirror effect I guess.
I hope the lesson from this wasn’t that Germany was too optimistic about alternative energy and needed to cynically embrace more oil and gas infrastructure because I think the lesson should be the precise opposite.
This war, more than almost any other war, is a fossil fuel war, because it delineates the beginning of the true end of fossil fuel dominance.
longish response..
The oil powers of the world are now in a musical chairs environment where the music has stopped, oil and other fossil fuels are still very valuable and will be extracted and processed for a long time going forward of course… but the intense strategic value of oil is beginning to unmoor.
If any particular state/oil corporation doesn’t secure a political, industrial and economic structure for continuing to extract and process fossil fuels they might not necessarily be able to make anywhere near as much money doing it and thus the behavior of Trump towards Venezuela, Greenland and Canada (all have significant oil reserves) along with the Ukraine war I think has to be understood in this context.
If anything the Ukraine war should be an intense reaffirmation that Green Energy is vital for independence from imperial powers. Solar and wind energy don’t require the same immense levels of global infrastructure development and political and economic contracts as fossil fuels do. If Europe had invested more seriously into alternative energy sooner and had transitioned to green energy sooner and had pursued Electriv Vehicles and battery technology sooner than there would be much less strategic and economic value to fossil fuels, and Europe wouldn’t have been fighting itself by trying to resist a power it was simultaneously funding…
In otherwords, I hope the lesson is that valuing green energy and environmentalism/climate action more in the past would have lead to direct strategic security benefits for Europe now, it would have lead to a much less empowered Russia and a much less cash flush one.
Again, I say this as someone from the US so… I don’t say this condescendingly I say it to re-emphasize the same stupid point my country is intent on ignoring in a spectacularly catastrophic fashion.
:::.
Yep. Europe should never make that mistake again; they must stop buying oil and gas from the USA too and focus on renewables.
Shocking. The article suggests strongly that the polish government has interfered in a judicial matter… that’s very borderline. Politics and independent courts are crucial for democracy. We are not living in Trumpland or Russia.
