Readit NewsAs a Dutch person whose country is equally dependent on gas (but happens to be sitting on gas as well, which can’t be used for political reasons), I’m flabbergasted by the optimism of the politicians.
Yes, it may be fine, but why bet on it? Why isn’t there more central EU coordination in case there actually will be a gas shortage, and we need to divide the gas? Who gets what and who should deliver to whom?
Look no further than back to early Covid again, remember the disparities and chaos wrt borders? When people finally realized the potential gravity of the situation, politicians went full "each man to himself". Saying "we distribute gas elsewhere while you are freezing" isn't part of any regular elected politicians playbook, don't you think?
To your first question, I haven't met anyone who openly doubts he'll be fine personally. The situation is tense, but not meteor heading towards dortmund tense.
Suddenly: money everywhere, zero red tape, worry about compliance later, get it done now.
So, if the political will is there, things are possible, and I can easily imagine our country going a lot harder than that if the danger was imminent enough.
Would you rather be colder in the winter for a couple years or live in a warzone and have your family killed and culture destroyed?
1. Party Z invades Country U. 2. Continent C denounces the invasion of U and sanctions Z. 3. Z retaliates against C.
Does an act of retaliation (weaponizing Gas) from Z towards C count a declaration of war? Because if not, who exactly did Russia declare war on? Europe is many things, most prominently a continent and an idea. Was Germany declared war on? If not, is it reasonable to assume that Germany will be declared war on, and if so, which escalations from which involved party would lead to that?
(As always, I don't have strong opinions, just trying to make up my mind on what to expect/how to read the situation)
Have a great weekend everyone!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_party
You can tell they are effective as they get regularly attacked by people here who seem to have a visceral hatred of them and very weird justifications for why (they're under the thrall of the fossil fuel companies apparently)
Anyone that advocates for increasing democracy generally, whether more representational democracy in existing democracies that have broken systens (US or UK) or spreading it further. People generally want action for climate change, the people who don't need to spend a lot of money and tell a lot of lies to hold this back. The more democracy the more they'll need to spend.
Electoral Reform Society
https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/voting-systems/what-are-...
George Soros's Open Society Foundation
https://voxeurop.eu/en/how-george-soros-was-transformed-from...
HN types might be more attracted to the business or analytical sides though. Carbon Tracker or Bloomberg New Energy Finance which proceed from the premise that climate change is inefficient and there's market based opportunities there to be exploited.
https://carbontracker.org/
https://about.bnef.com/contact/
Within big orgs like Google and Microsoft they have similar teams I believe, looking for the cheapest and most synergistic ways for them to save money and help the climate at the same time.
I find this take fascinating. In my model, increasing democracy correlates negatively with increasing long term planning, which only then wouldn’t be the case if our species was acting as a collective. Aggregating individual interests doesn’t magically lead to collective interests, just to the set of actions that map on individual demand. There are no real majorities in favor of the rather radical changes required to deal with the major problems of our time, the opposite is the case. People are willing to sacrifice the stability of the future in favor of their well being in the current legislative period, especially in countries with demographics skewed towards the elderly.
Democracy is not the solution unless a culture of sanity becomes prevalent, and that’s not on the horizon afaik.
Borrowing from a german idiom, the current model is “Eltern haften für ihre Kinder”, parents are liable for their children. What we need is the cultural change in the opposite direction, that being a heavy awareness of the fact that children are de facto liable for the actions of their parents.