The choice was made decades ago on the alter of faux environmentalism to export the environmental cost of energy production to another nation so the EU could claim moral superiority in the climate change battle. Completely decimating domestic energy sources.
The EU has backed the Ukraine, a war that was mostly created by the US pushing NATO boundaries outwards and backing Russia's dictator into a completely untenable corner.
The EU did this at its own detriment, with very questionable legitimacy (the EU was never given a mandate to deal in such geopolitical issues) plunging the entire continent into an energy crisis the like of which hasn't been seen since the oil crisis in the 70s.
Ask any small to medium company in Germany how they plan to pay their gas bills in the coming 2 years other that declaring bankruptcy.
> I think, temporarily[1] until we get this mess sorted.
> [1]: In the long run oil and gas prices should probably increase until solar and nuclear power become very profitable.
> But, from a non-European perspective, Europe doesn’t seem to be doing well? It seems the EU is slowly disintegrating, and the monetary union isn’t working. Also the political landscape seems to be in turmoil as well.
The purpose of the EU is to prevent war. The EU hasn't had a war in 75 years. That is the longest that Europe hasn't been at war in its recorded history.
> The European energy war of 2022 will almost certainly go down in history, along with the Treaty of Versailles, as one of the worst economic blunders in history.
No, it is absolutely necessary. What will go down as one of the worst blunders in history is allowing Europe to become so dependent on a single hostile country for energy.
> I’m sort of shocked that the EU is allowing export outside the EU during the initial rollout.
What can we say? Once upon a time there was a belief that the world could come together and solve it problems if there just was some good will among the countries of the world.
This spirit still survives in the EU leadership that have spent so much time working for that on the European scale, so they simply have too much faith in international collaboration.
And global warming means some places actually get colder. You can't cherry pick things out of context.
wrt political choices, it'd be nice to choose for ourselves, which is one reason for the Brexit. Brussels doesn't exactly lead the way wrt good immigration policy.
>For people in the EU/UK, how has this currency slide impacted your day to day?
Not at all?
I mean, I guess you could argue which caused which but the real problem here in central Europe are gas and energy prices. Those legitimately doubled and affect personal budgets.
> I’m stunned by the absolute absence of global dialogue for what is a global event. In Europe right now, you would never believe that there was a European Union.
This is my key takeaway. A lot of the damage is in the end self-inflicted. People seem not to be able to act cohesively at an inter-national scale, not even within a country group that is supposedly designed for that.
Whether it's pandemics, global warming or nuclear weapons this lack of cooperation shows up again and again.
Every country has problems caused by the pandemic, by war, and by climate change. The energy issues in Europe this winter are downstream of that.
Only the UK has chosen problems caused by Brexit.
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