EU citizens are being asked to make great sacrifices to support a sanctions regime against Moscow over its military offensive in Ukraine. But how long will Western consumers be willing to live without creature comforts?
What a difference a month can make. Not long ago, Moscow and Berlin had the champagne on ice for an expected ribbon-cutting ceremony on Nord Stream 2, a planned 1,234-km (766 mile) pipeline extending from Russia to Germany that would have kept Europe warm and toasty for decades. Now, EU officials are advising their citizens to dial back their time in the shower and invest in wool sweaters as calls for decoupling from Russian energy supplies ratchet up.
“Everyone is asking, ‘what can I do,’” remarked Margrethe Vestager, European Commissioner for Competition. “You can do two things,” she recommended. “Control your own and your teenager’s showers, and when you turn off that water, you say, ‘take that, Putin.’”
Peter Hauck, head of the agricultural department of the German state of Baden-Württemberg, may have sent wool prices soaring with an equally astounding suggestion.
“We must turn off Putin’s money valve,” Hauk harangued. “This means that we also need to turn off the gas and oil taps so that freedom in Europe has a chance. You can withstand 15 degrees [Celsius] in winter in a sweater. No one dies from it!”
Unless Hauk winters in Crete, it’s an astounding leap of logic to believe that “turning off the gas and oil” has any connection whatsoever with sustaining “freedom in Europe.” And ‘No one dies from it!’ sounds like a good epitaph for the tombstone of a political career, which at this rate might have to be chiseled sooner rather than later. But I digress.
The howls that emanated from the Kremlin following those golden nuggets of EU wisdom were not howls of pain, I assure you. What the Western cancel cult fails to comprehend is that Russian gas and oil constitutes a mighty river that flows in many directions, not just westwards. And while Moscow is in no hurry to lose its European client, as evident by its track record of never leaving Europe without energy even during the darkest moments of the Cold War, it does have other options. The European Union, on the other hand, does not, at least not yet.
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