Congratulations EU, you played yourself
It’s so funny. The US government can continue being a clown show, and Europeons are the ones more effected by the consequences than we are.
JDPON fucking Don
Tfw you’re born in what could have been a major player of the SU, but you end up witnessing everything around you turn to shit under neoliberal order.
Eventually the price crisis in the US will become so acute that the US will have to put on export controls on their LNG and petroleum products and fertilizers. Once that happens, Europe is legitimately over. Backwater for the next century at least.
That’s exactly what I’m expecting. We’ll see the real blow back from all this in about a month or so, and the US will obviously prioritize its own needs at that point.
One narrow ocean passageway bringing an entire continent to its knees. Its a dramatic reminder of how quickly the world can change.
10,000 red mines in the Strait of Hormuz
I think this comment underestimates how close Europe is to the edge of complete electrification anyway. Many European countries didn’t even use fossil fuels for electricity generation like… at all. Its main uses nowadays are ICEs, manufacturing (steel, fertilizer) and heating.
So we might be cold a while, it’ll take time to finish replacing fossil fuel heating and non-EVs, but that’s already underway too. Unlike the US, Europe is importing Chinese EVs by the buttload. And massive government schemes across the continent to replace gas boilers with heat pumps. Most fertilizer worldwide is made without the Haber-bosh process anyway, oil isn’t overly necessary.
I think the main thing we’ll see is now that the European bourgeois class are being personally punished for buying into this shit, we’ll see increasing independence from, and isolation of, the USA. Export controls will be the nail in the coffin, while Europe will recover quickly.
European airlines are already grounding thousands of flights due to fuel prices, which will only continue to skyrocket further. No airplanes means no tourism. No gas or oil means no heavy industry. US has extracted all of their capital by making them fund the war against Russia and extorting them over LNG prices. Without capital they are unable to make money from finance and real estate. Social Services are being gutted to fund the warmongering and purchasing of American weapon systems.
How are Europeans going to be relevant and make any money? What will their jobs be? What can they produce without heavy industry or energy? No energy from America, no energy from Russia, no energy from the middle east, no energy from nuclear. They fucked themselves. Recover quickly? Solar is not sufficient to run a growing capitalist economy at scale, even China which has had a renewable revolution the scale never before seen is still burning shitloads of coal and oil and gas and nuclear and hydro.
I’m not saying there won’t be some, meaningful hit. But a century of backwater is an absolutely silly assertion. And yes, over-funding of the military will be a big, if not bigger contributor to that problem.
Yeah, there’ll be a small hit from tourism and to certain industries. But again, many countries have completely non-oil/gas based electricity generation, the rest aren’t far behind - most industries will be able to adapt without too much worry.
you can’t just “adapt without too much worry” to 20% of the world’s oil supply stopping suddenly and all the systems freezing up. You cannot “adapt” with doubled oil prices, quadrupled oil prices. Oil is probably going to get up to at least $200 a barrel for the forseeable future.
Europe was already on the process of industrial collapse, with deindustrialization and shutdowns happening at a massive scale. That was while oil and LNG was cheap and plentiful.
Then after this coup-de-grace depression that will sink Europe into jobless despair, there will be no rebuilding. No energy, no tourism, no industry. They are supremely fucked because of their geopolitical position. Their only hope is to be conquered by Russia and join the China-Russia bloc, or I guess become an impoverished and undeveloped American tourist and tax haven once things settle down. One might say a backwater. They also might lash out in fascist anger with their new armies they built in Africa and Eurasia like the scratched fascists we all know they are, those colonialists never forgot their ways.
Personally . . . I thought the Europeans should have committed to a trillion dollars’ worth of energy because it wasn’t just a promise that they would buy this energy, it was a commitment that we would sell them the energy,” Puzder added.
“If they’re [EU member states] going to survive economically, they need energy, and we can supply it,” Puzder said. “We’d like to have the kind of relationship where we’re encouraged to do that.”
Thank you USA, you are my best friend, you are the peace maker, you are the legend
Fun fact update, this dude was former but is also the current Foreign Minister of Poland.
Der Heizkeller ist wieder Privatsache!
