Comment by skocznymroczny
19 hours ago
Mostly self-inflicted wounds in form of climate pledges, climate taxes and such. Because of the goal to achieve zero emissions goal and climate neutrality, we abandoned cheap energy sources such as coal and pushed our heavy industries out of Europe to China. We still need those products, so we import them from China while wondering why European industrial segment isn't growing. Even in the clean energy sector, most solar panels come from China.
on the other hand, if those climate goals were stuck with, we could be just fine with $500 barrels of oil, and could just not-care about the middle east
solar and wind will always end up cheaper than coal because the fuel is free.
we certainly should be making our own solar panels and such, but we can get so much cheap electricity by building tons of renewables that that heavy industry can run in much-less-pollution fashions anyways
of course, having a liveable climate is up towards the most important things for having a good economy. france being 50C all summer isnt conducive to doing much of anything