spicy takes on global energy and geopolitics
getting serious about the deeply unserious ESG policies that made this mess
in the time honored contest of dogmatic eco-social hallucination vs the laws of supply and demand, supply and demand remain undefeated.
what can one really say apart from:
spicy take, jordan! do germany next!
because that sure does look like it’s coming.
you think that’s bad?
“halte mein bier und sieh dir das an!”
(probably not an entirely accurate translation)
On calendars in Germany’s industrial heartland and the halls of power in Berlin, July 11 has been marked in red for weeks.
When the main conduit for Russian gas to Europe goes down for 10-day maintenance on Monday, Germany and its allies are bracing for President Vladimir Putin to use the opportunity to cut off flows for good.
If Moscow signals the Nord Stream pipeline won’t come back as planned, Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government would likely trigger emergency measures such as rationing and company bailouts. The consequences would almost certainly mean a deep recession for Europe’s largest economy and create ripple effects across the continent.
“Are we worried? Yes, we’re very worried,” said Christian Kullmann, chief executive officer of German chemical giant Evonik Industries AG. “It would be naive and starry-eyed not to be worried.”
“naïve and starry eyed.”
what a very interesting statement.
unfortunately, this is exactly what got germany into this mess.
trump was never more reviled than when he was right and love him or hate him:
he sure called this one.
he flat out told germany that wind and solar were not real options, that they needed to keep their nuclear power, and that if they didn’t they would be at russia’s mercy.
watch the expressions on the german delegation as they make “willy wonka” face at him.
they ought to keep this video on replay in the bundestag as a cautionary tale about hubris and nemesis.
and so we land here.
the hausfrau handwringing of the germans as they realize the corner into which they have painted themselves has been building to a crescendo.
doopsie.
BERLIN, June 24 (Reuters) - Germany is heading for a gas shortage if Russian gas supplies remain as low as they are now, and certain industries would have to be shut down if there is not enough come winter, Economy Minister Robert Habeck told Der Spiegel magazine.
"Companies would have to stop production, lay off their workers, supply chains would collapse, people would go into debt to pay their heating bills, that people would become poorer," Habeck told Der Spiegel on Friday, saying it was part of Russian President Vladimir Putin's strategy to divide the country.
This is "the best breeding ground for populism, which is intended to undermine our liberal democracy from within," Habeck said, adding that Putin's plans must not be allowed to work out.
Habeck held out the prospect of further relief for companies and people affected by the lack of gas but warned that it would not be possible to absorb all the effects, reported Der Spiegel.
Consumers could see a doubling or tripling of their energy costs, which in some cases are already between 30% and 80% higher due to price increases from last fall, Klaus Mueller, the head of Germany's Bundesnetzagentur network regulator, told broadcaster ARD on Friday.
and let’s be honest, it took a very special sort of hallucinatory worldview to create the kind of echo chamber where you could not see this coming.
germany has been playing at ESG and letting the greens run riot in yet another attempt to prove out the age old adage about
“what did socialists use for light before candles?”
“electricity.”
the german citizens can see what’s coming:
and the memelords have known it for ages.
and it just keeps getting worse:
the west has become a seriously unserious place.
the people who took over institutions in the late 90’s and started these collectivist and ill-founded eco-pushes are seeing their projects come to fruition. at least they knew they were lying and grifting.
the folks running these institutions now never knew any better. they came of age and to power having seen nothing else. they actually think this is (or ever was real) and lack any context to think outside the self-referential circularity of “the way of the watermelon.” (green on the outside, red on the inside)
their “facts” are fabrications. and this is how we keep getting it so wrong.
these people literally were taught to believe that down is up. (or not to care as long as they and theirs get to grift from greenmail.)
they seek to address supply shocks with demand subsidy and quick fixes like selling SPR reserves. this never works out like it’s supposed to.
we impose sanctions and cut leases and up their costs. we cancel pipelines.
every one of these things blows the price of oil into the stratosphere. this is not hurting putin. it’s hurting us and handing him ever more power while pushing china and india into alliance with him. they are only too happy to take what we will not.
US foreign policy has basically become “i’m going to pay you to watch me punch myself in the face until you give up!”
if the west wants to deter aggression, jacking up the price of the aggressor’s chief exports to maximize their gains while hamstringing our own economies and becoming ever more dependent on the russia/china axis that such policies benefit seems a pretty funny way to go about it.
even neville chamberlain would laugh at these people.
we hamper our own industry then hector them for being hampered.
the winning path here for the US is obvious: drill.
stop trying to break the price signal, and stop oil production. let’s go pedal to the floor. we’ve done it before, we can again. the oil and gas are there. OPEC cannot save us (and why would we want them to?)
the US is dangerously low on refining capacity, mostly because there has not (for EPA reasons) been a major refinery built in the US since ~1976 and some of the old capacity has reached end of life (esp in northeast) and was recently shuttered.
this is in our hands and we’re utterly fumbling it.
these people seem to have no idea how bad this can and will get if we don’t get our act together. cheap, reliable energy is economic lifeblood.
turn off the power, shut the factories, idle the combines, and see what happens.
keep an eye on germany. the price of these conceits seems poised to become apparent.
oil, gas, and nuclear are america’s path here. wind and solar and EV’s are not and cannot be. they are unreliable, overpriced grifts that lead to expensive energy and unreliable grids. we could not support a meaningful shift to EV and it’s not clear it’s a good (or eco) choice if we could.
the world’s most sensible chicken has some strong ideas here.
i agree with him.
ESG is a crony corporatist paradise but a blight on the rest of us. it sets what must be bought and sold by fiat, not markets. it enriches and empowers the few at great expense to the rest of us. adding it to SEC filings will create a massive industry of “compliance consultants” all to add a metric that tells us nothing objectively useful but that will provide wonderful pretext for future targeting of tax policy and subsidy. you can hear the command and control pigouvian malthusians salivating at the prospect.
left unchecked this is society scale metastatic cancer.
this is not rocket science. it’s simple, well known physics and painfully obvious geopolitics. we’ve just decided to once more to sacrifice that which works upon the altar of that which sounded good and to quote thomas sowell:
“many of today’s problems are a result of yesterday’s solutions.”
i wonder if he gets tired of being right all the time…
It ain't just the West. Morons are everywhere, the more educated the merrier.
When my greatly unlamented highly-educated late ex-father-in-law built his dream house in a place far, far away, he included no fireplaces because electric heaters were *better. * In a place with regular load-shedding in winter for hours at a time. Though it wasn't like our winters, it can get mighty cold in houses built to keep out summer heat.
Whenever it got unbearable for me, I'd walk down the street to the relatives who had, you know, buckets of charcoal burning in their hearths. (Disputes between provincial governments ensured that their province had no gas pipelines. Propane was used for cooking in wealthier houses.)
I guess the whole purpose of higher education has been to breed common sense entirely out of the population. Project seems to be going nicely.
The real question is: how much of this deliberate or is it truly just incompetence? Two years ago, I would have blamed this disaster on bumbling idiots but now I have a hard time believing it is not intentional.