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Wed, 18 May 2022 21:42:13 +0200

hans@social.woefdram.nl

Thank you, mr. Putin, we needed that.

The Guardian wrote the following post Wed, 18 May 2022 21:20:04 +0200

EU plans ‘massive’ increase in green energy to help end reliance on Russia

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/may/18/eu-plans-massive-increase-in-green-energy-to-rid-itself-of-reliance-on-russia

#TheGuardian #RSS #News #Bot #Fossilfueldivestment #Renewableenergy #EuropeanUnion #Greeneconomy #Environment #Fossilfuels #Commodities #Worldnews #Business #Europe #Energy #Russia #Oil #Oil #Gas #Gas

show all 19 comments

Wed, 18 May 2022 23:10:22 +0200

Hans van Zijst

hans@social.woefdram.nl

@Piero Filippin He got quite the opposite of what he wanted, pretty ironic.

Thu, 19 May 2022 01:16:03 +0200

Monkeymind

monkeymind@pod.geraspora.de

Fracking gas is green now. Yay!

Thu, 19 May 2022 07:53:07 +0200

Martijn Vos

mcv@pluspora.com

We should have been switching to green energy for the past 30 years. Instead we used that time to become dependent on Russian gas.

Thu, 19 May 2022 08:56:41 +0200

Wilco Roos

wroos@diasp.org

Mostly because Gas & Oil have spend the last 30 years or so, lying and cheating, spending millions to make sure politicians did not feel any urge to look closer.. We should settle most of the transition cost on the bloody bastards.

Thu, 19 May 2022 11:45:37 +0200

Hans van Zijst

hans@social.woefdram.nl

@Martijn Vos

We should have been switching to green energy for the past 30 years.

Yup, we've known for a long time that fossil was unsustainable, but we kept procrastinating. The catching up that we're going to have to do now will cause all sorts of problems.

Thu, 19 May 2022 14:17:17 +0200

Alexander Goeres 𒀯

jabgoe2089@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

this is really a good incentive. even the marketradical fdp-party here in germany are now in favour of more investments into green energy. the main fpd-pundit, lindner, even called renewable energy "freiheitsenergie". just as if this was something new (but for the marketradicals it possibly was..)

Thu, 19 May 2022 14:20:34 +0200

Hans van Zijst

hans@social.woefdram.nl

Freiheitsenergie, that's a nice find.

Thu, 19 May 2022 14:34:42 +0200

Alexander Goeres 𒀯

jabgoe2089@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

it reminds me a little of the famous us-american freedom fries ...

Thu, 19 May 2022 17:09:35 +0200

Monkeymind

monkeymind@pod.geraspora.de

In reality, the German Freedom Energy seems to be mostly LNG - i.e. fracking gas from the US and Canada, and liquid fossil gas from the Middle East.

https://m.dw.com/en/does-germany-really-need-lng-terminals/a-61005220

Good for Ukraine hopefully, but I don't see the "green" angle apart from Lindner claiming it is.

Thu, 19 May 2022 18:24:47 +0200

Doc Edward Morbius

dredmorbius@diaspora.glasswings.com

@Monkeymind:

Breaking reliance on Russian energy supplies.
Breaking reliance on coal
Eventually, pivoting to carbon-neutral / sustainable energy

Baby steps. It's a large ship. Course corrections take time, and foresight.

Thu, 19 May 2022 22:54:27 +0200

Monkeymind

monkeymind@pod.geraspora.de

@Doc Edward Morbius: Yeah, I get that we don't want to buy natural gas from Russia right now. Right? I get it.

What I don't get is how buying natural fracking gas from Canada and the US or natural gas from some Middle Eastern dictatorship is "green". I think we are kidding ourselves if we think it is about the two other points you mention, about coal and

We just swapped one supplier of CO₂-generating fuel (which natural gas is, despite its name suggesting otherwise), for another one. This is not "green". Fracking gas is arguably less "green" than natural gas from Russia even. For one, you don't need a nuclear power plant to power the fracking operations.

This is economic warfare. Which is fine by me - like I said, I understand how it's not the done thing right now to do business with Russia. War is not "green", even when the tanks run on biofuels.

Whatever. If it makes you feel better, go ahead and keep pretending that natural gas from places other than Russia is somehow greener. We all need a break from the doom and gloom.

I'll have a beer, thank you very much.

Thu, 19 May 2022 23:45:42 +0200

Hans van Zijst

hans@social.woefdram.nl

@Monkeymind 🖕 Nobody ever said that fracking was green. But there are several priorities at the moment: going green and isolating Putin. We can't stop using natural gas cold turkey, so we need something to span the time between telling Putin to go fuck himself and the time when we don't need (a lot of) natural gas anymore.

Putin's war in Ukraine can't suddenly end our dependence on natural gas, but it sure has driven the message home that we should stop using it asap.

Fri, 20 May 2022 03:11:23 +0200

Doc Edward Morbius

dredmorbius@diaspora.glasswings.com

@Hans van Zijst +1

Fri, 20 May 2022 09:20:18 +0200

Monkeymind

monkeymind@pod.geraspora.de

@Hans van Zijst Yeah. Maybe I'm just bitter that we've been trying to drive the point home about fossil fuels for decades only to be laughed at by wankers like Lindner, and now all of a sudden the same wankers are like "we must go green because Putin". You know, as if Putin were a legitimate reason, where scientists and NGOs weren't.

Maybe I'm not believing it. Let's see how quickly the market forces will cause Lindner and his ilk to forget all about climate change once Putin is gone. I'm not holding my breath.

But you guys go on believin'. Hope you are right. For the sake of all of us.

Fri, 20 May 2022 11:33:36 +0200

Hans van Zijst

hans@social.woefdram.nl

@Monkeymind 🖕

Maybe I'm just bitter that we've been trying to drive the point home about fossil fuels for decades

I share that frustration, and I think the vast majority of people here do. If we had acted from the moment the Club of Rome published its shocking report The Limits to Growth HALF A CENTURY AGO, we would be in a very different situation now.

But it's no use crying over spilt milk: we can only change the future, not the past.

Fri, 20 May 2022 14:44:08 +0200

Monkeymind

monkeymind@pod.geraspora.de

Word.

Fri, 20 May 2022 15:15:18 +0200

Doc Edward Morbius

dredmorbius@diaspora.glasswings.com

If it makes anyone feel better, Vaclav Smil's latest book, How the World Really Works, points out at length that awareness of climate change dates to the early 19th century.

Humanity has been asleep at the wheel, or deliberately racing at the cliff's edge, for two centuries.

(The book is good. It's awareness-raising more than solution-promoting, so if you're anxious for the latter, you're not the audience. It's also a middle path between little or no action, and the cold-turkey approach. All of which attracts attacks from across the spectrum.)

Fri, 20 May 2022 16:20:50 +0200

Martijn Vos

mcv@pluspora.com

I can totally understand not immediately acting on the Club of Rome's report. But the UN already made in agreement about this back in 1992; 30 years ago! (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Framework_Convention_on_Climate_Change). Kyoto was 5 years later, 25 years ago now. Al Gore tried to wake everybody up 20 years ago. And only now, things are finally, finally moving. Glacially.

We had political agreement that climate change was a problem 30 years ago! Everything since then is just willfull inaction because the pollution industry didn't want to lose their easy profits.

Fri, 20 May 2022 16:26:52 +0200

Hans van Zijst

hans@social.woefdram.nl

Yup. Money. Always money...

Shell's researchers flagged that climate change could have major implications for the fossil fuel industry as far back as the 1980s—and predicted that environmental groups could sue following damages from extreme weather.

https://www.ecowatch.com/shell-climate-change-lawsuits-2556439414.html