Energy scarcity seems to be descending over Europe slowly but surely and while the focus continues to be, for now, on teaching people to consume less energy, reports are emerging with the word “blackout” in the headline.
Thank YOU! Yes, we must remember it. Yet those who haven't experienced anything like it would find it hard to believe it could happen to them. But it could...
Love your descriptive and to the point writing style. Thank you for sharing your real life experiences. We in USA are largely spoiled beyond reason. Forbid our internet has an interruption nevertheless no electricity or no heat. As much as it would be very impactful especially to elderly and disabled persons, part of me wishes that we sample some of these hardships. Perhaps it can unite us in ways no politician or party ever can. And perhaps it will revitalize a spoiled generation that largely, not all, has never experienced adversity. Thank you as always ! Mauricio
Thank you, Mauricio. Honestly, part of me wishes that the collective West go through some hardships so their brains settle properly, as we say down here but as you say, it won't be just the have-it-alls that will suffer. It will be the poor, the sick, and the disabled that will have it the worst, as usual. I agree with the silver lining you see, though. Hardships build character, after all.
As I usually say what kind of Hard do you prefer? Liberty and Freedom Hard will require sacrifice and may require your life or that blood is spilled vs Control and Suppression Hard that will take your very existence and also of future generations . Again, what kind of Hard do you prefer is my usual question to people, because life is Hard.
I’m at the stage where I’m thinking we sadly need some blackouts and cold buckets of water for showers to have some hope of “our” politicians actually starting to live in the real world. And to take some real world decisions (that won’t win them votes). But some may say I’m too optimistic. Great article Irina!
Problem is most of the politicians nowadays are just actors who put on a show for the public while all the important decisions are being made by the Davos Gang. NWO conspiracy theory? Not. It's here already. Looks like even the FBI take their orders directly from Davos and puppies Wray and Garland are left trying to spin the FBI Stasi tactics as though they were their own idea. Amazing all the major national leaders in lockstep with Davos' nutty schemes which only serve to INCREASE the already absurd wealth gap between the ultra-rich and everyone else. No sign of any sanctions on those guys. Private jet sales are booming. While commercial airlines are going down the sewer.
Great article, and I have lived through some of those discomforts, and I fear that the soft younger generation is not prepared for what is approaching. -
Here in Germany at least *some* people in the news business haven't lost their guts or have also a memory which goes beyond of what a millenial can remember (or thinks that it's worth to be remembered).
The weekly "Der Spiegel" (woke and left-leaning and green like all the German mainstream press) ran lastly a story about economy and transition minister Herr Habeck, and compared the planned measures to Ceaucescu!
I found a short review on this english-speaking page:
This is excellent news -- that, as you say, there are still people in the media with a functioning memory that goes further than a year back. I'm sure there are many Germans with longer memories, too. There is hope.
We'll see! Currently, the government and the media are already beginning to frame the situation. They explain that protests in autumn or winter against exploding energy costs will be considered as EXTREME RIGHT and not be tolerated.
I now currently people who are really afraid not to be able to pay the heating this winter. People with jobs, hard working, the salary already eaten up by the inflation.
Great perspective from personal history. I spent one winter in Kiev when the district heating for my apartment went out for a week. Let’s just say it sucked! I recall my wife who is Ukrainian, boiling water and doing the bathtub mixing magic so we could at least bathe. I recall the delight of the warm bath but the terror of knowing that I would have to get out into that freezing apartment. That was one week and I was hating life. Can’t imagine an entire season. The west is not ready. If we see this kind of deprivation expect more governments in Europe to potentially fall.
Now try to imagine years of that... True misery is when you're denied your basic needs and you're right, the West isn't ready. No one is ever ready for it, unless you've been through it.
Now I feel a bit guilty. My home in the Pacific Northwest of the USA is heated by gas under long term contract from Canada and the Rocky Mountain States. Electricity comes mostly from a massive hydro system along with nuclear and a bit of everything else.
These power systems were built by my parent's generation mostly in the 1940's and 1950's. My mother was born on a farm in the State of Alabama and grew up during the world wide Great Depression. She was in school when electricity arrived. Baths involved heating water with coal you bought in sacks in a rural store. When her mom, born in the 19th century died in the 1960's she still had an outhouse. Summer visits to the farm in my childhood were trips into history.
Today people in my generation down to my grandchildren's generation live in inherited luxury and think you can manage the world with "policy". No need for engineers and physicists.
Pakistan, except at the coast, experiences a range of temperatures from over 50C to below 0C, and colder in the north. No a/c for them, or refrigeration of food. Heating in winter--Hah!
The essence of your piece is not the struggles of ordinary people, but the ease of the elite.
The utterly stupid actions they take affect you, not them. The shortage is ONLY for THEE and ME!
History shows that the governments fall and the elite are, then, executed.
Sri Lanka is the most recent example. The elite never learn.
Finally, one can wonder what will happen to all those nuclear weapons in Pakistan?
It seems like our Electricity problems are just the tip of the iceberg. As a boy growing up in the UK in the early seventies in a house without central heating, I do not wish the coming cold on anybody, nor the blackouts due to the 3 Day Week. Some misty eyed folk would look back on it as character building.....bloody freezing is what I’d call it. It is beyond me how we got to this point, unless it is planned that way.
😢 depressingly wonderful again Irina. I'm convinced more than ever that when Govts touch anything they distort the market and make things worse. ALWAYS. I simply can not think of anything they have improved.
ZERO. ZILCH. (Hула?) Our (UK) energy policy pursued over the last 20yrs is finally coming home to roost and physics is going to hurt us. I have no confidence that those responsible from politicians, to media, to celebrities, to fund managers will be held to account. They will lay the blame on us. Your tales of what it's like living with rolling blackouts is a stark warning. That dark room I'm off the lie down in for a while is also going to be very cold. I'm beginning to think I have masochistic tendencies falling you👍
When these governments are blindly following an ideology, they are certainly destructive. And yes, it will all be our fault and nobody will be held accountable when it all breaks down, just like no banking executive went to prison for the 2008 crash.
Thank you Irina! It is worth remembering and the advice to all interested is to avoid such disasters.
Thank YOU! Yes, we must remember it. Yet those who haven't experienced anything like it would find it hard to believe it could happen to them. But it could...
Yes, unfortunatelly it could. Thank you!
Love your descriptive and to the point writing style. Thank you for sharing your real life experiences. We in USA are largely spoiled beyond reason. Forbid our internet has an interruption nevertheless no electricity or no heat. As much as it would be very impactful especially to elderly and disabled persons, part of me wishes that we sample some of these hardships. Perhaps it can unite us in ways no politician or party ever can. And perhaps it will revitalize a spoiled generation that largely, not all, has never experienced adversity. Thank you as always ! Mauricio
Thank you, Mauricio. Honestly, part of me wishes that the collective West go through some hardships so their brains settle properly, as we say down here but as you say, it won't be just the have-it-alls that will suffer. It will be the poor, the sick, and the disabled that will have it the worst, as usual. I agree with the silver lining you see, though. Hardships build character, after all.
As I usually say what kind of Hard do you prefer? Liberty and Freedom Hard will require sacrifice and may require your life or that blood is spilled vs Control and Suppression Hard that will take your very existence and also of future generations . Again, what kind of Hard do you prefer is my usual question to people, because life is Hard.
Excellent question.
I’m at the stage where I’m thinking we sadly need some blackouts and cold buckets of water for showers to have some hope of “our” politicians actually starting to live in the real world. And to take some real world decisions (that won’t win them votes). But some may say I’m too optimistic. Great article Irina!
If it doesn't won votes, they won't do it. Until they absolutely have to.
Problem is most of the politicians nowadays are just actors who put on a show for the public while all the important decisions are being made by the Davos Gang. NWO conspiracy theory? Not. It's here already. Looks like even the FBI take their orders directly from Davos and puppies Wray and Garland are left trying to spin the FBI Stasi tactics as though they were their own idea. Amazing all the major national leaders in lockstep with Davos' nutty schemes which only serve to INCREASE the already absurd wealth gap between the ultra-rich and everyone else. No sign of any sanctions on those guys. Private jet sales are booming. While commercial airlines are going down the sewer.
Well, Texas managed to kill a few hundred people in Feb. 2021 with their foolish energy policies.
It had zero meaningful affect on the politicians.
The media lied about the causes (blamed gas generators, instead of grid reliance on wind) and the politicians are in denial about the causes.
It's going to take more than a few years of problems to make folks take a real-world look at what's really causing grid issues.
Agree!
Informative as usual.
Thank you Irina.
Great article, and I have lived through some of those discomforts, and I fear that the soft younger generation is not prepared for what is approaching. -
Well, it will be a valuable lesson for them.
Here in Germany at least *some* people in the news business haven't lost their guts or have also a memory which goes beyond of what a millenial can remember (or thinks that it's worth to be remembered).
The weekly "Der Spiegel" (woke and left-leaning and green like all the German mainstream press) ran lastly a story about economy and transition minister Herr Habeck, and compared the planned measures to Ceaucescu!
I found a short review on this english-speaking page:
https://oopstop.com/cold-apartments-rationed-electricity-spiegel-compares-habeck-with-ceausescu/
Have fun!
This is excellent news -- that, as you say, there are still people in the media with a functioning memory that goes further than a year back. I'm sure there are many Germans with longer memories, too. There is hope.
P.S. I see they were forced to dial back the comparison. Oh, well, can't have it all...
We'll see! Currently, the government and the media are already beginning to frame the situation. They explain that protests in autumn or winter against exploding energy costs will be considered as EXTREME RIGHT and not be tolerated.
I now currently people who are really afraid not to be able to pay the heating this winter. People with jobs, hard working, the salary already eaten up by the inflation.
They're playing the far-right card already? That's desperate. And they're going to saddle all these people with a gas tax...
Thanks for this link...
I feel like we are in a very bad episode of The Twilight Zone tv show.
You mean a very good one, surely? It is quite chilling.
Chilling eh? Perfect idiomatic US English
Great perspective from personal history. I spent one winter in Kiev when the district heating for my apartment went out for a week. Let’s just say it sucked! I recall my wife who is Ukrainian, boiling water and doing the bathtub mixing magic so we could at least bathe. I recall the delight of the warm bath but the terror of knowing that I would have to get out into that freezing apartment. That was one week and I was hating life. Can’t imagine an entire season. The west is not ready. If we see this kind of deprivation expect more governments in Europe to potentially fall.
Now try to imagine years of that... True misery is when you're denied your basic needs and you're right, the West isn't ready. No one is ever ready for it, unless you've been through it.
Now I feel a bit guilty. My home in the Pacific Northwest of the USA is heated by gas under long term contract from Canada and the Rocky Mountain States. Electricity comes mostly from a massive hydro system along with nuclear and a bit of everything else.
These power systems were built by my parent's generation mostly in the 1940's and 1950's. My mother was born on a farm in the State of Alabama and grew up during the world wide Great Depression. She was in school when electricity arrived. Baths involved heating water with coal you bought in sacks in a rural store. When her mom, born in the 19th century died in the 1960's she still had an outhouse. Summer visits to the farm in my childhood were trips into history.
Today people in my generation down to my grandchildren's generation live in inherited luxury and think you can manage the world with "policy". No need for engineers and physicists.
Ira, Well written as always.
Pakistan, except at the coast, experiences a range of temperatures from over 50C to below 0C, and colder in the north. No a/c for them, or refrigeration of food. Heating in winter--Hah!
The essence of your piece is not the struggles of ordinary people, but the ease of the elite.
The utterly stupid actions they take affect you, not them. The shortage is ONLY for THEE and ME!
History shows that the governments fall and the elite are, then, executed.
Sri Lanka is the most recent example. The elite never learn.
Finally, one can wonder what will happen to all those nuclear weapons in Pakistan?
Keep up the good work hopefully the politicians are reading your reports.
I seriously doubt that and even if any of the did, they would dismiss it all as propaganda/oil shilling/biased, etc.
It seems like our Electricity problems are just the tip of the iceberg. As a boy growing up in the UK in the early seventies in a house without central heating, I do not wish the coming cold on anybody, nor the blackouts due to the 3 Day Week. Some misty eyed folk would look back on it as character building.....bloody freezing is what I’d call it. It is beyond me how we got to this point, unless it is planned that way.
Don't underestimate the power of pointed stupidity.
😢 depressingly wonderful again Irina. I'm convinced more than ever that when Govts touch anything they distort the market and make things worse. ALWAYS. I simply can not think of anything they have improved.
ZERO. ZILCH. (Hула?) Our (UK) energy policy pursued over the last 20yrs is finally coming home to roost and physics is going to hurt us. I have no confidence that those responsible from politicians, to media, to celebrities, to fund managers will be held to account. They will lay the blame on us. Your tales of what it's like living with rolling blackouts is a stark warning. That dark room I'm off the lie down in for a while is also going to be very cold. I'm beginning to think I have masochistic tendencies falling you👍
When these governments are blindly following an ideology, they are certainly destructive. And yes, it will all be our fault and nobody will be held accountable when it all breaks down, just like no banking executive went to prison for the 2008 crash.
Нула is right. :)