For example the new nuclear doctrine:
The doctrine now says an attack from a non-nuclear state, if backed by a nuclear power, will be treated as a joint assault on Russia.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj4v0rey0jzo
and a Russian lawmaker, when the EU parliament voted to allow all kinds of weapons to be send to Ukraine:
What the European Parliament is calling for leads to a world war using nuclear weapons
It is also that Russia is threatening to nuke the EU and expand into EU territory namely the Baltics. You do not need the US to tell the EU, that that is a problem, especially when that country started a massive war. Obviously the UK prefers the EU over Russia for a lot of reasons.
Btw a similar thing is happening with the US right now. Trump trying to force Denmark to give him Greenland is seen in a very similar light to Russian actions in the Baltics and Ukraine.
Oh and small countries have agency as well. There is a reason Georgia has EU membership as a goal in its constitution due a invasions and those were not by the US. A lot of eastern European countries have similar feelings about Russia for good reasons. Those countries also lobby the UK.
Most of Russias oil exports go through ports in the European part of Russia. Those are currently being attacked by Ukraine. For example Ukraine managed to hit an oil pumping station shutting down the oil port of Ust-Luga, which handles 20% of Russian oil exports.
Not if say Russia is taken out of the global oil market, which looks rather likely.
Great news and much needed. Chinas emissions falling could very well mean global emissions start to fall. It also obviously weakens the fossil fuel industry in the rest of the world.
LNG is expensive. If Russia is selling gas to the EU again, it would have a decent time pushing out US LNG sales. A lot of gas is used outside of power generation, so consumption is not going to drop overnight.
Von der Leyen Comission got a sales ban of fossil fuel cars, a carbon market without offsets for heating and transport, lowered emission permits on the existing carbon market(again no offsets), carbon tariffs on some products, the nature restoration law and a bunch of other positive laws. So in terms of empty promises von der Leyen is actually doing pretty well.
The term World Systems theory would use is periphery. Thailand would probably end up in semi-periphery though. Also it is a model best kept in the 90s. Currently it is really having a hard time. Russia for example should be periphery, but acts like a core country.
It is based on the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which allows presidents to protect waters, but it does not allow for that permission to be revoked. So if Trump wants to revoke it, he has to change the law. The Democrats will try to slow it down and the legal system in the US works well enough to allow such projects to be put on hold for some time. It probably is not going to stop Trump, but it will slow things down, which is good.
When it comes to comes to climate change, energy and electricity are largely synonymous as outside of semantics like primary energy vs useful work
The article clearly understands that. Otherwise a lot of the numbers would be wrong.
While poorer nations still have far lower per capita energy demand, they do have a lot of people who want the energy to protect themselves from the effects of climate change.
The best way to do that is to reduce the impact of climate change, by staying well below 2C.
Fossil fuel energy is growing because globally energy demand has been growing even faster, and this has been driven first and foremost by more equitable access to energy.
No we need to provide everybody with a good quality of life. That is not the same as current Western levels of consumption. Just as an example. The green growth way would mean replacing fossil fueled cars with EVs. The degrowth way would be to rethink city planning to allow people to walk, cycle or use public transport in that order. That actually would lower electricity consumption as well, as refining oil also requires electricity. Also it reduces the number of cars, which need to be produce requiring energy. However it still should meet everybodies need of transport. Obviously it requires changes in road layout, some large houses need to be turned into multi family to increase density. Garages turned into tiny houses, attics being converted. That ends up reducing energy consumption for temperature control as well and less space means less junk being bought.
There are more ways to do that. Mainly around sharing things(liberaries, public transport), quality gurantees so products last longer and cutting material consumption at the top(private jets, mansions and so forth).
That also comes with advantages. With less consumption, less production is needed and that means less work. So things like a four day workweek or earlier retirment would come with that as well. We still have some awesome technology allowing us to work less after all. Also bullshit jobs are just waste destroying the planet, while making peolple suffer to keep up the facade of keeping everybody in a job.
And yes it means building up infrastructure in poor countries. Clearly there is a minimal level of consumption needed for a good life. However current consumption in the rich countries is well above it.
Which also means we’re down 17 percent since the peak in 2005, most of which has come from electrical generation despite the article’s insistence that renewables did not and fundamentally could not replace any fossil fueled generation.
So 1% per year. We need it to fall much faster. A somewhat decent goal would be halving emissions by 2030. Also having a 2005 peak is just a disgrace for the US.
As this article in particular is saying over and over again that we cannot generate enough clean electricity to power even our current grid
So far fossil fuel electricity generation is still growing. Also it is one person and the article is quoting. The rest tend to talk about energy and that is much more then electricity.
I am saying that not only is this far harder to achieve than rolling out green technologies, but directly at odds with a world full of lethal heat waves and extreme weather destroying crops and supply chains.
So far the we had the highest ghg emissions in 2024. Hopefully they peak this year, but that has been forecasted before. The reality is that low carbon sources make up less then a fithed of global energy consumption. So far the growth is extremely slow. Mainly due to massive growth of fossil fuels. With current pledges we are going to a 2.6C world and that is if pledges are meet. Trump is moving out of the Paris Climate Agreement, which means the rest of the world has to cut even harder and later the US as well. There is just no way to make those kinds of cuts, without either letting people starve or go for a decent degrowth strategy.
US greenhouse gas emissions fell by a bit over 5% between 1990 - 2023. At this rate it has to be obvious that just deploying renewables is just not going to be enough, to prevent a collpase due to a climat crisis. Nearly all degrowthers are argueing for a massive rollout of green technolgies but since it is not enough, cutting energy consumption has to be on the table to reduce fossil fuel consumption quickly. Obviously degrowth and pushing for green technologies is much harder, but it is the only somewhat realistic way to prevent a massive collapse.
They are meant for the Ardrossan-Brodick service. However that would still make them among the largest battery powered ships in the world and the longest route. Ships like the Yara Birkeland have 13NM routes for daily service. However hybrid would be a great option.
The first big thing to go will be refineries. They can only lower production by 20% of capacity. The number of refineries is rather low.
The EU has emissions regulation in place forcing 37.5% EVs starting next year(so in a couple days). If that survives the current onslaught of manufacturers and the oil industry, then the EU is probably going to be fine.
However looking at what the US did to Venezuela, Iran and Russia in terms of oil exports, I am not sure that OPEC production is save.
and long term the higher oil and gas consumption is going to damage the climate even worse…
The EU is capable of resisting Trump pretty well. However many countries are not. That is honesty the real problem here.
EU coal consumption is currently on its lowest level and falling. For a bit coal power plants were used to replace gas power plants, but that has mostly ended as gas has fallen in price and renewable built out has accelerated. Today the EU is at 3% of global coal consumption. It is not the main reason for coal not going down at all.
He already is doing shit for years. Proping up Nazis all over the place in Europe.
The solution for that problem are carbon tariffs. As in every product imported has to pay X money for every ton of carbon they emitted producing the product.
Also obviously China has to go to zero. Everybody has to and that is why pretty much everybody has signed the Paris Climate Agreement promising to go to zero.