Not Even a Recession: The Great German Gas Debate in Retrospect [pdf]

https://www.econtribute.de/RePEc/ajk/ajkpbs/ECONtribute_PB_048_2023_EN.pdf

by cribbles • 3 years ago

49 60 3 years ago

H8crilA2• 3 years ago

The winter was exceptionally warm, and no one could really predict that.

But putting that aside, this whole episode was making me uneasy. To this day so many people in Europe cannot engage in strategic thinking. I think they simply do not believe that bombs can ever land on their own roofs. The understanding of foreign governments and their real intentions is often at a comical level, even when applied to actors that pretty much lay out their own plans in public then execute on them, decade after decade.

Effective international policy requires tools, but before that it requires an even basic understanding of the situation and courage/resolve. That means sacrificing something small (like a gas shortage) for something valuable (no major war in Europe).

mperham• 3 years ago

From the article:

    Moreover, the country did not simply get lucky with particularly mild winter temperatures, as often alleged. The average winter temperature in the 2022/23 winter of 2.9°C was actually slightly colder than the average temperature over the four previous winters.

sounds• 3 years ago

It's possible to have a lower mean temperature and still use less total heat. Stats, right? E.g. if the temperature is warmer at night.

grt_thr2• 3 years ago

https://www.euronews.com/green/2023/03/09/climate-change-eur...

Not sure how the second warmest winters ever recorded can be cooler than the average of the next 4 warmest winters.

sho_hn• 3 years ago

To this day so many people in Europe cannot engage in strategic thinking.

Much more troubling: Few people worldwide have the attention span and stamina to read a text of the length of an academic paper and engage its contents.

That this thread is for the moment mostly hurried comments desperate to control the message shows as much. And it's tightly related to inability to do strategic thinking.

ChuckNorris892• 3 years ago

Much more troubling: Few people worldwide have the attention span and stamina to read a text of the length off an academic paper and engage its contents.

You don't need to read academic papers to know that Russia = evil. Eastern Europe has been parroting this for decades but Germany stuck its fingers in its ears and went "la-la-la-la, I can't hear you over the sound of my cheap gas brokered by our lord and savior, Gerhard Schröder, who's on the Kremlin's payroll".

Even after Russia's invasion of Chechnya in 1994 and 1999, and Russia's invasion of Georgia in 2008, and Russia's invasion of Crimea in 2014, nobody could have seen Russia invading another neighboring country again in 2022, it was a total shock for European politicians. /s

PostOnce• 3 years ago

The problem with academic papers and stamina is that most of them are bullshit produced only to further the author's career and not to produce new knowledge or inform anyone at all.

Publish or perish has side effects, consequences, and pitfalls.

Sorting out which papers are bullshit, lean on scant evidence, were funded by organizations who want an outcome, or exist solely to meet a requirement for the author to advance towards a PhD is time consuming and almost never worth the effort.

That is ultimately why we pay people (civil servants, etc) to figure this shit out on our behalf when implementing regulations.

nr2x4• 3 years ago

Eh, Germans and points west are delusional, Hungary is corrupt, but Poland and the Baltics know the score.

The fact that Poland had to shame Germany into defending their *own interests* should be a national embarrassment.

gerdesj• 3 years ago

I lived in West Germany off and on in the '70s-'90s. I am a Brit. If you recall, that period is referred to as the Cold War - Mum and Dad were both soldiers and we got posted abroad a lot. Nowadays I have a Pole as an employee, who lives in Poland. That would have been unthinkable back in the day. I pay Thomasz the same rate as my local employees. He deals with IT snags in Britain the same way I do - over the blower and with remote access tools, such as Mesh Central.

redeeman3• 3 years ago

That means sacrificing something small (like a gas shortage)

okay.. tell that to the ones that simply cannot afford it

for something valuable (no major war in Europe).

/me looks at Ukraine: there seems to be a war... /me looks at globe.. in... Europe.

is the war lasting longer because the EU and US sends arms to Ukraine?

_kbh_2• 3 years ago

is the war lasting longer because the EU and US sends arms to Ukraine?

The war is lasting longer because the Russians have decided that the number of dead Russians and recaptured positions that need to happen for the war to end is higher than what Ukraine has currently achieved.

This war could be over tomorrow if Russia decided to leave, if anything western weapons and aid are making the war end faster by speeding up Russias defeat.

cyberlurker• 3 years ago

I have not read the entire article, but one factor that helped was the moderate winter.

marcod2• 3 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36051936

Barrin92• 3 years ago

The entire debate here in Germany is also just heavily driven by industry interest to a comical extent. Not only has the gas price already fallen to pre-war levels after decades of everyone arguing that these kinds of changes aren't possible, and there is no economic crisis, energy prices are also really only very critical for a rather small amount of products in particular niches of industry.

While that's not unimportant because industry is a substantial factor, the economy is also very diversified and just like with the car industry I'm kind of tired of the cronyism and giving in to every small industry bluff and demand for subsidies on the back of a crisis.

As a side note it would help though if our American friends across the pond would not fall for similar demands and push through enormous subsidy packages. Just let companies compete. There's a lot of bad industrial policy being revived opportunistically.

tuukkah6• 3 years ago

The German goverment went as far as nationalising Uniper, the big gas and energy company. Now, Russia has made an even more destructive move and seized Uniper's and Fortum's Russian subsidiaries. (Fortum lost billions in both cases.)

lxm2• 3 years ago

Was there an alternative to Uniper’s nationalization?

It was insolvent and forced into fixed price deliveries that it had to procure through suddenly expensive spot market.

tuukkah6• 3 years ago

The government could have relaxed the fixed prices, and perhaps they did that anyway?

Guthur• 3 years ago

Germany is buying Russian gas just at extortion rates via middle men.

rossdavidh• 3 years ago

While I agree that the worst envisioned outcomes did not come to pass, and certainly I do not think they would have been a moral (or even practical) justification for appeasement of military expansionism in any case, I am reminded somewhat of the Y2K debate. Was it never the threat it was imagined to be? Or was the great alarm in advance the reason why sufficient measures were taken to avoid catastrophe? Probably somewhere in between.

Not Even a Recession: The Great German Gas Debate in Retrospect [pdf]

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