Russia - threadbanned users in OP

There’s no question energy policies have been extremely naïve in Germany and in plenty of other places, including Ireland. I remember after Russia turned off the gas through Ukraine back in 2014 there was a panic in Brussels and everyone was talking about needing diversity of energy supplies and so on, but then it drifted back to business as usual.

We’ve recently had intense and successful lobbying recently to include natural gas as a “green transition energy source”.

We also had US warnings ignored and assumed to be about selling American gas. Again that’s rather understandable when they were coming at a time when the US had abysmal international relations, mixed messaging and a populist loon at the helm, who seemed to be quite the Putin fan himself and was simultaneously trying to undermine both NATO and the EU and even defunded the WHO during a pandemic ffs! The US is in no position to lecture anyone on that topic.

However, even here in Ireland we went utterly off the deep end about opening LNG storage facilities, seemingly our noisy anti everything fringes were happy enough to import any kind of gas, so long as it is as by pipe and they didn’t have to think about the sources, meanwhile freaking out about the potential of accidentally shipping in American or Canadian fracked gas, but somehow if it comes in from some authoritarian regime by pipe from who knows what source in terms of environmental impact or human rights impacts, nobody has to think about that so that’s grand.

Gas and oil aren’t clean fuels and their sources do have to be considered in geopolitical terms.

Moneypoint also appears to (at least until very recently) to have been running on Russian coal and accounts for a significant % of our power. But again, coal is a filthy fuel, both environmentally when burned and in terms of ecological, human rights and safety issues in terms of how it’s mined some cases too, but … lazy policies, NIMBYism and foot dragging …

And a large % of our oil imports were, depending on the market, Russian sourced and Ireland is hugely oil dependent for transportation: vast majority of cars, trucks, most trains, and we’re an island so all of our travel and imports / exports go by air or sea (oil fuelled). Somehow speeding up charging networks or rolling out a few electric trains is beyond our vast wealth, while far poorer countries so it without fuss … (another thread needed for that one.)

Meanwhile we’ve had foot dragging and endless objections to offshore and onshore wind and to all the overhead wiring infrastructure. Despite not a shred of scientific evidence supporting the claims about pylons, various politicians in Ireland and elsewhere and even courts in some countries have accepted that stuff as serious / facts based when it’s up there with theories on the earth being flat, but … both sides! Both sides!

All of that just keeps money flowing into Gasprom and the status quo continues.

The reality at the moment is a chunk of the EU probably can’t turn off its dependency on a Russian gas, because if it does the lights go out, industries slow down / stop, people go cold and if that happens, do you seriously think having the German or Italian economies falling into a mess would help the current situation? Particularly considering the fact that we’re facing a massive displacement of people who need to be supported in the EU, we are just coming out of a pandemic and you’ve a hostile actor that uses propaganda and everything else in a hybrid war effort that’s designed to destabilise…

It’s very easy to lecture and have absolute embargoes from a position where Russian gas or oil represents 3% of your energy intake.

There’s also now another fuel issue btw, and one it seems nobody knew about - Russian uranium is used in the nuclear sector as a source of fuel and the US for example has become dependent on it to the point that 1/3 of their power generation uranium comes from Russia. That’s been yet another strategic drift into buying energy from sources that are literally enemy states.

We’ve all been broadsided by this in my opinion. Russia was normalised and there was a far too optimistic view taken of it. It was showing all the signs of being a huge issue - the lack of human rights, the extreme anti lgbt stuff, the endless propaganda, the cyber attacks, the wars, the poisonings … including literally using a chemical weapon on an individual in the UK, but it kept going back to business as usual because we need cheap gas.

The same applies to several Middle Eastern oil oligarchies. They are utterly atrocious regimes but the western political parties are all prepared to swallow hard, park their principles and pretend they it’s all fine because they need to sign oil contracts.

Also we are completely ignoring a massive geopolitical risk from China because we need outsourced manufactured goods and electronics, and need them cheap!

I’m seeing condemnation of Germany and even of France from British sources too, while they’re shoulder deep in dirty money and you’ve their foreign secretary, Liz Truss utterly prematurely promising the end of sanctions if Russia withdraws. So it seems horrific war crimes are fine. No mention of The Hague or any of that, just get the money pumps flowing! All is forgiven?

The reality of this is plenty of people saw it coming and plenty more are utterly hypocritical and happily portraying themselves as holier than thou.

Jesus Christ. 😂

Undoubted paid for a few yacht upgrades.