Shame
You do realise that this would mean literally nearly lights out? Not just mildly increasing gas like in the US?
(And yes, getting into this position was a grave grave mistake.)
It’ll come anyway, but by Putin’s choice and then measures are much easier to sell to the population.
For context:
At the end of the year millions of Germans got their gas prices raised dramatically, quite a few companies went under and the surviving companies are not taking new ones.Only for exorbitant rates, which will become even more exorbitant, down to the point where many, many families will have to decide between eating, transport, not freezing – pick two.
At the same time, the German ministries assume that a good 230,000 refugees will make it to Germany – which hasn’t absorbed/found work for 500,000 Syrian refugees and 150,000 Afghan refugees. That’s absolutely okay, we will make do.
But it’s not magic – it requires cooperation from the population, the economy has to keep functioning, and so on.
You know what would really help - no joke? The US banning Russian oil. Because it’s really hard to sell people, who already play close to 10 $ for a gallon of gas the idea of freezing their asses off once they drove back from work, that a far richer county can’t do this but they should.
Does this get into the ream of irrational pettiness? Yes, absolutely. Just because it’s irrational doesn’t mean that it’s not real.
Addendum: I’m actually for cutting of gas, but personally, I’m well off enough to pay higher prices, I can burn wood if necessary, and in the long run it will benefit us. But there are 4 million social security beneficiaries right now how, whose fictional basket has 36 € electricity per month in it. With the average consumption costing €50, and that’s before the price hike.
And if I seem a bit annoyed: That’s because I just read a German tweet from a smarty-pants person that every cent not being paid to Russia should be put into financing alternative energy development. As in “don’t pay for food, invest in gardening tools”.
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Or quit banning Venezuelan. That would ease the world market.
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But but, they won’t let us install our puppet so that our oligarchs can have easy accesss to that oil that’s rightfully ours!!
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Oligarch, entrepreneur?
Can we call the whole thing off?
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Oh I’m all for updating that whole “billionaire” thing to straight up “oligarch” for the lot of them.
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Also a passable idea. But also not in Germany’s hands.
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Venezuelan crude is very heavy, requiring special refinery equipment. And their production capacity is crap, due to Chavistas running the economy and infrastructure of Venezuela right into the ground. Certainly they aren’t a quick solution to anything, and Maduro and his cronies are both pretty darn bad people, and massively incompetent.
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They all straight up mean “Hoarder of Obscene Wealth” so yeah, totally.
Ever wonder why that billionaire called his little spaceship Dragon…?
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Well, at least the pro-boycott group gets support from Leopoldina. However, any cold turkey will come with a big pricetag, no question about it. Also increased CO₂, since we’ll have to substitute some of the gas with lignite, our remaining natural resource. If the next winter is harder than this one, industry will also have to shut down.
Well, here’s hoping that Putin drops dead. We missed our March 5th chance, so next one is April 30th. If we want to say historically significant. I certainly hope for earlier.
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Queue Fox News hissy fit in 5… 4… 3… 2…
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The Oil Wars saga continues.
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Well there are other reasons for most of that too, but yes, it’s not a quick solution. Neither is switching to renewables which we should also do, but making sure sanctions can be indefinite is certainly something to plan. Now.
It’s not like we didn’t have years of warning that using Russian gas came with a geopolitical risk.
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“It’ll be fine.”
Narrator: It wasn’t fine.
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Biden is in talks with Venezuela, guessing this is on the menu there, although the Repubs will hate, try to block it, then blame the gas prices on Biden.
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but… but… COMMIES!!! /s
We could easily refine it for others, as we have the set up for it…
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Here in the US, Russia “only” supplies about 5% of our oil, but I look for the gasoline suppliers to use this as an excuse to jack prices to the stratosphere, then blame it all on the Dems. I hate this timeline.
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Yep. Here in suburban ATL, we’re just about to $4 a gallon, so over $4 inside the city… I’m guessing we’re gonna get to $5 gallons like post-Katrina soon enough. Fucking price gouging assholes.
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Beware the nodes of March!
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In Los Angeles county the average for regular is $5.52 today, with plenty of places charging more then that.
I can only hope it increases the demand for fuel-efficient vehicles so that we see fewer gas-guzzling behemoths on the road in coming years. Ford has proven they can build a $20k hybrid truck that gets 42 mpg in the city, so if enough people demand that kind of performance maybe we’ll get more carmakers doing that kind of thing.
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