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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   35659 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022

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The conspiracy theory I'm seeing is that it's Putin's way of not giving anyone who seeks to replace him a way out. If the pipelines are destroyed and Europe becomes energy-independentish then there's no way for a successor to make a rapprochement take things back to normal. Ship goes down with the captain.

If the pipelines are destroyed and Europe becomes energy-independentish

Not happening. Barring the discovery of some brand new too-cheap-to-meter form of energy generation. there's no way for Europe to become energy independent without a dramatic decrease in quality of life, energy usage and/or population.

They could power up the decommissioned nuclear plants, stop cutting production, and start fracking like there's no tomorrow. But they won't.

Very unconvincing to me, not least because Putin has been incredibly risk-adverse and reticent to do anything that could be construed as escalatory as far as Nato is concerned.

I'm not averse to blaming Russia, but that's way too complicated.

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