Germany just shut down the Nord pipeline. Probably not their idea... They have to source fuel from somewhere else.
Europe gets a lot of natural gas from Russia, particularly in winter for heating, so we can expect that demand to shift due to sanctions and raise prices for alternative sources. US will probably try to increase production to blunt the impact (last thing Biden wants is for energy prices to be a political issue, especially when the faux-anti-war Republicans are already saying some downright weird shit about Ukraine), but that won't be able to alleviate it entirely I would expect.
Maybe they should have thought about that before fighting tooth-and-nail against their own nuclear energy production for the last two decades? Their clean energy policies have been so idiotic that they had to start building new coal plants just meet by the demand because their renewable energy sources have been abysmal.
Now is one of those moments where I would like to point out that if the US had seriously invested in alternative energy technology, those companies would be in stupidly high demand right now, but instead we're living in the stupidest possible timeline where Russia can plunge us into the threat of war, and we don't do shit because high gas prices make pee-pee's shrink in the EU. Like, that would have been a credible threat: "we will sanction your dicks off, and we'll heavily subsidize the alternative energy stuff to EU allies so they depend less on Russian energy, keeping this economic downturn as a permanent condition." Small dick energy leads to stupid dick moves. Dicks.
Those boys in the Sahara need to get their shit together and be like "we can wire you enough solar energy to turn all of Europe into a glowing sauna, just sign on the dotted line."
Just saying of all the weird nationalist movements going around, why energy independence isn't a bigger one is fucking beyond me.
Because these "nationalist" movements, are basically proto-fascist movements. They are driven not by a genuine and sober analysis of the interests of the nation, but by a variety of collective emotions (well described by Umberto Eco). Alternative energy is coded as feminine and weak, and they oppose it for the same reason they oppose saving money by driving a Prius: it's "for fags."
But....fags suck a lot of dick, and who's a bigger dick than fascists? Jeez, these people just can't seem to get out of their own way sometimes.
We were heading toward energy independence in the second half of 2019. Politicians needing cheap political wins combined with people being uncomfortable with the extraction methods made it only fleeting.
The whole insanity of a fossil fuel economy aside, oil and gas remain fungible commodities, which means we are not isolated from price fluctuations in the broader market. Even if we produce as much as we consume, those producers can choose to sell it abroad if they can get a better price there. On a strategic level, my dad once said "why burn your own reserves when you can burn someone else's for cheap?" It's not like this stuff is infinite.
In theory, sure. In practice, there was so much natural gas produced as a byproduct of fracking that it drove the domestic prices into the floor anyway.
So this tweet was posted a half hour after you and I had this brief exchange: https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1496241709285576715 It really sums it up.
This fucking guy. "With blatantly illegal window tint, which I’m sure he has never been pulled over for, only because he is white." "How does a US Congressman drive around with obviously illegal window tint in FL and get away with it? If he was black he would’ve already gotten 75 tickets for it and had it searched 45 times." One: Window tint in Florida isn't illegal. Two: How would they know he's white if they can't see him through the window tint?
His commentary is whatever, but the tweets he's highlighting are the exact juxtaposition I'm talking about. "Gas prices are crippling us, how dare Biden do this! But also if I drive anything less than a Ford Penetrator 950, people will think I'm a fag who is ok with pedestrians and children surviving the average crosswalk."
How do you know he’s not using that truck to haul 20,000 lbs of food to homeless shelters?? HMMMM???!!1!
Non-Fungible Tetraethyllead. Sure it may have given Boomers permanent brain damage, but it solved the knocking issue in our engines.