The wave of mass hysteria in Germany, after the Japan incident, to kill nuclear (which I personally suspect was driven by Russian influence operations) came with broad public support.
...so no, I continue to have little sympathy to any issues Germany will have this winter.
Well German politicians had little other options. The country is so hilariously anti-nuclear and you clearly can't bank on renewables without storage, what other then gas should they have done?
Well, that may all be the case, but ignores the messing around of American lobbyism in Germany and the Ukraine regarding this, leading to the current situtation.
They are responsible. Democracy doesn't mean that the people get to pick their scapegoats. It means that the people have a choice in steering the country, and consequently a responsibility to steer it right.
Assigning someone with dumb ideas to run the country, not checking and correcting them, and then scapegoating them when it goes wrong... That's not democracy, that's laziness and cowardice.
TBH, the majority is responsible for electing right-wing governments or coalitions that have put their head where their wallet is: pumping up profits of their friends and well-doers, lowering taxes, and privatizing and further ignoring infrastructure and governmental duties (and ignoring climate change, long-term changes in society, etc.). It hurts me to say that the many of the former social-democratic, and quite a few of the green, parties simply participated.
So the majority might be partially responsible. If you disagree hard, we'll be heading into "politeia" discussions, king-philosophers and what not.
> It hurts me to say that the many of the former social-democratic, and quite a few of the green, parties simply participated.
In Sweden, the green and socialists have been running the show for the past 8 years and during this period shut down 4 nuclear reactors that had at least 20+ years left of steam.
Saying the equivalent of "no u" when no one else even brought up the USA is weird but I guess typically european way to deflect criticism . Not that comparing a regional blackout due to exceptional weather conditions, to a continent wide energy shortage cause by policy that has been going on for more than a year now makes any sense.
(Even quebec, which is very used to extreme winters, lost electricity for nearly a month back in 1998. On the other hand, I can't think of anything similar to this train wreck situation europe managed to get itself into, not since the 70s at least. So it is a pretty unique fuck up due to very bad policy, and one that's been happening in slow motion)
> but I guess typically european way to deflect criticism
It'd be great if you didn't lower yourself to name calling as well. (Note: I don't much like the comment you're responding to, but let's be civil here)
Texas is the opposite of this situation because they purposely didn’t connect their grid to anyone else. The US equivalent for mismanagement would be the Colorado River.
The real problem with this situation is we are at a point at which deploying fixes to these problems take so long that even discussing it feels useless.
This is more similar to California than Texas. Europe is not facing a shortage of energy but a shortage of generation and transmission capacity in times of peak demand. Luckily, as we know from California, there are plenty of responsible people in the society. When there is a risk of shortage and blackouts, many people will voluntarily lower their power consumption for a while.
Also, because this is about peak demand, increasing base load generation is of limited help. There is a shortage of power plants that are cheap enough to keep idle most of the time but can be adjusted quickly. That means hydro and natural gas. Even coal is too expensive. Storage may be the long-term solution, but we are not there yet.
Structurally, the reason Germany has so many coal plants compared to gas is that coal was third cheapest on the marlets, right aftet wind and PV. That priced gas out of the market, simpky because gas was more expensive than coal and CO2 certificates to cheap to compensate.
> increasing base load generation is of limited help
Of course, but in a system trying to avoid fossil fuel use, it smooths out the rough edges in significant ways: during non-peak times, by preventing blackouts or brownouts when there are medium to long term wind & solar outages (which no realistic storage can cover yet in places without pumped hydro), and during peak times by reducing the amount of additional energy required.
The intention of your comment appears solely to deflect, however what happened in Texas and what is happening in the EU right now are not even remotely comparable. The cause of the Texas grid failure in February 2021 was a Winter storm and a poor decision to cut power to parts to the parts of the supply chain that powered the natural gas infrastructure. The problem was not the result of not having the energy supplies. This has actually been well-documented.[1][2].
The real irony of your comment however is that you are actually looking to Texas now. The EU is now relying in large part on the US for LNG and much of the LNG is being shipped from the Gulf Coast in Texas. The majority of the US excess natural gas supply is now being shipped to Europe. As of April that was 74%. [3]. I'm guessing it's even more now.
And the latter part is wrong: France is mostly nuckear, Germany to a huge extent coal, gas has close to no significance when it comes to electricity in Germany. Norway is hydro, as is Austria.
And the share of renewables in Texas was negligible when the frid broke down, that was due to failing gas power plants because of low temperatures.
Not being hugely dependent on him would've been a good start. The war in ukraine didn't start in 2022. It started 8 years ago, which would've been plenty of time to move away from russian energy for any competent leadership/government.
Look on the bright side. At least Europe has made it clear that they won't bow down to force. It should ideally have made the obvious policy choices eight years ago at the latest.
But doing the short-term irrational thing and joining the economic (and in weapons support, kinetic) war against Russia is exactly what the fucked-up initial conditions require. When you've worked yourself into that kind of lose-lose situation, making the rational choice has a long-term game theoretic downside.
The next Putin that manages to maneuver a Western country into a bind can't count on them rolling onto their backs and crying for mercy, even if that seemed like the rational choice. We've seen it demonstrated, also disproving that Westerners are lazy, fat, spoiled and unable to handle significant pain for a greater cause.
This is certainly a lesson for the West, but it's also a lesson for the autocrats.
