as someone who lives in germany, shits going south very very soon it feels like. I cant use heating rn cause my landlord shut it off, even if i could I wouldnt because you would lose your money fast, theres a fear of a blackout in some areas, rent and house prizes are continuesly rising, well everything really thanks to inflation (not wages tho who wouldve guessed). And the best part? SOCIAL DEMOCRATS AND THE GREEN PARTY ARE IN POWER RN. This country is fucked beyond repair, was always a matter of sooner or later after the ddr fell, but i really cant tell which direction its heading.
It’s illegal to turn off the heat between 1 October and 30 April - the apartment has to be able to be heated to 20° at minimum. Outside of this period the heating has to be turned on if an external temperature of 17°C isn’t reached for three consecutive days. In my area of the country at least that means that landlords had to turn on the heat last weekend.
Of course being in a position to afford using the heat is another thing, although a lot of people are still on older price contracts for gas and electric so it’s not as bad as it’ll get just yet. The Gasumlage isn’t helping either (tldr it’s an extra fee on top of the gas price to help all the poor gas companies make ends meet).
The Ampel Koalition has been absolutely disastrous for this country, but what did we expect?
Didn’t know it was illegal, but it’s not October yet and the weather here (nrw) is still warmish, so we will see if they follow the law. Thankfully they are not scumbags and we never had any problems with them, so I think they will turn it on when it gets colder. But like I said, I’m preparing for a cold winter :/
I’m sorry to hear that comrade, I hope things get better for you. Scary times for…well really all life on earth.
I’ve felt that way about the USA for a while, but somehow the USA still hasn’t quite plunged into total chaos. Probably mainly due to the fact that they have plundered so much from the rest of the world.
Thank you, wish you all well too. I think USA is keeping themselves relatively stable by throwing their puppets under the bus. Everyone knew sanctions would be too much for the EU to handle, but they did it anyway, all for big daddy USA. Things will change the moment they overstep the boundaries with China tho, when that happens i hope all the US comrades can stay safe.
USA has really never suffered consequences for their actions. It’s gonna be brutal when the chickens come home to roost.
Problem is, they just might make us all pay for their actions.
My father in law said that we should all not use gas this winter to own Putin. When I said that 1) we can use other sources of gas without financially destroying ourselves by implementing leftist measures like seizing profits for example and 2) why should we suffer for a war we have nothing to do with, he replied: ‘go tell that to the Ukrainians! No gas would be a heaven for them compared to their situation!’. To which I replied that with this rhetoric, only one person in the world can complain because there is always someone worse off than you.
This is coming from a self proclaimed elitist leftist. Europe is fucked lmao.
I swear it’s the greatest marketing ploy that capitalists have people convinced them paying more for gas than gold and being cold over the winter is somehow helping Ukrainians. It is helping the energy sector make a literal killing in profits while the most vulnerable part of our population is sacrificed again after all they’ve just been put through. It is also helping US finance capital in picking the bones of Ukraines wealth clean. It is not in any way shape or form helping any average Ukrainians.
It’s also crazy how alienated people are from the real economy and how divorced politics has become from economics that people still do not realize gas is needed for more than heating. The industry needs it. This industry is now not viable anymore and will consequently shut down sooner rather than later.
The media has really broken peoples brains. My mom watches MSNBC ALL the time. One time I was visiting with her and I was shocked at how terrible the content on there was!
My mom thinks that Putin is the richest man on earth and that he can hide all his wealth for some reason? They think Putin is like super-Trump or something.
It makes me sad sometimes. I know we laugh at lib buffoonery, but my mom is such a sweet person…I’m sad she believes such nonsense.
Yes it’s sad but infuriating. We have to keep on explaining things as its the only thing we can do.
But then there are some well read people that simply refuse to listen or read our theory. I’m more mad at them than the average proletarian.
Wait. They shut down nuclear? Im confused. Doesnt the green parties understand that a war is not the smart way to transition to a new energy? You gotta do a controlled transition; not shut everything off. The fuck?
That’s not even green! If you shut down nuclear and go back to fossil fuels, that’s worse!
Like, there’s some pretty spicy debates in environmental science on whether nuclear is better or worse than renewables (there are many arguments that it’s better, for example, solar panels and batteries require a ton of harmful reagents to manufacture, way more than the volume of nuclear waste being produced) and whether we should be building new reactors or investing in all renewables, or whether existing ones should be shut down once renewables have replaced everything else, but everyone agrees that it’s way better than fossil fuels and between nuclear and gas, nuclear is better.
Don’t worry about the science, Germans just know intuitively that nuclear is very dangerous! A lot of Germans still need to go to therapy to deal with their trauma over Chernobyl. They’re convinced that there’s other ways and that nuclear energy is a deal with the devil.
Germany mostly, and that was going for years. And then german green party went like that. Even politico calls them uber-hawks lmao.
Turns out, “green” means like in go back to monke and maybe even “soylent green”.
Ther name now refers to the color of the field uniforms of german soldiers. Hence their nickname “Olivegrüne”
My father in law is extremely anti nuclear despite being ultra green policy. It’s mostly because of nuclear waste. I understand that but almost no transition can happen 100% perfectly. The man is well off enough to be able to isolate his house, not use gas, do alternative things, eat as eco friendly as possible etc. It’s just elitist nonsense and he and his so called intellect infuriate me to no end.
He even went as far as to say that ‘lower class working people’ just have another way of thinking and doing things than his ‘upper class’ leftist circles. Fucking wanker.
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Green Parties don’t understand shit except marketing and self enrichment.
Just like their spiritual successors in “the squad”.
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Well gas is considered “clean energy” as per EU regulations now. We can thank Germany and nuclear-is-anti-constitutional Austria for that.
They also classified wood burning as “renawable energy source”.
Polish not-so-grey eminence Jarosław Kaczyński, asked about the winter said we have to burn “everything except tires” which is even worse advice than it sounds because it is illegal, so technically he publicly incited to crime, which is a crime too.
Not only renewable, by legal decree burning wood in the EU is considered CO2 neutral. The best part is a lot of those wood pellets come from trees planted in the US specifically to process into pellets and sell in the European market, making the whole process equally as bad as (if not worse than) coal from a GHG standpoint. It originally started as a “what can we do with all this sawdust and unusable wood” problem, but subsidies and “green energy” policies quickly turned it into a cash cow.
I’m not sure about other countries energy mix, but somewhere around half of Germany’s very proudly ~50% “renewable electricity” is wood. The rest is primarily inconsistent solar and wind, meaning that the German grid is kept stable with Polish coal, Norwegian hydroelectric, and French nuclear.
Capitalism is so illogical.
Polish coal is also thing of the past. We import it all the time too.
Yes of course, I wasn’t super clear there. I meant electricity generated in Poland using coal.
Didn’t Polish government plan on becoming a coal exporter? I thought there were coal mines in Poland
There is few of them left, and PiS is rambling whatever they fried up neurons cook up in the moment, but in reality past 30 years was constant struggle from the miners side to prevent destruction of the industry by the government. It’s not coming back because no fucking way any polish government is gonna revive potential worker power of this size.
One of the comments said one had been shut down recently? Honestly I just thought it was funny, I don’t know all the details. Other than it’s not looking too good for Europe over the next 6 months ☠️
Reject modernity, return to Peter Brueghel
Relevant
A picture that pretty accurately depicts (1) what Europe/US are doing right now, and (2), most reddit conversations about it
This unfortunately reminds me too much of a family member of mine that actually thinks that even firewood is preferred over wind power.
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Dianectical materialism?! Is that scientology meets marxism?
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Maybe they’re a Marxist named Diane that’s into Dialectical Materialism lol
Still waiting for Dielectric Materialism
Marxism 2: Dielectric Boogaloo
St. Vitus discoteque: electric materialism.
I see that even in these dark times, we have not lost the r/genzedong shitposting touch
It’s been hard after the fall of chapos. We live in the post posthoggesian wilderness.
me transfixed by the disco elysium style art
Logic: surely a true Mazovian would know the green parties aren’t the cause of the knock on effects of the Russian operation.
Shivers: you hear the distant sound of a sausage grinder reving up
God I hope not. Hopefully it’s just a funny name and not serious.
To be fair there’s also those electric showerheads that have an electric heating element inside
Which will soon also become unaffordable when electric rates hit full euro sums per kWh and rolling blackouts come to town.
For real? That sounds nice.
Would that work? I am desperate enough to try it
Get a cauldron with water and heat up with idk electric oven or smth that makes heat, then throw it in the the bathtub with more water, if you don’t have a bathtub then shower using a big bucket thing and a small bucket, very hot water in huge bucket + cold water then use small bucket to throw water at yourself idk
For clarification: throw the water into a bathtub. Not the electric oven as you will alt + f4 yourself.
Those are a coward’s words
No. Also, candle prices are going up too.
Candle inflation is out of control.
You no take candle!
I was reading some comments and apparently it would not 😔. Someone in another comment said they gave electric shower heads with a heating element though. I’d look into those.
Water + electricity sounds dangerous tbh
I’m sure a for-profit business values the safety of its customers.
It is, but the third world is the third world. Good enough for rural Mexico, good enough for civilized Western Europe right?
