> We could just wear heated clothes and take the bus. That's not apocalyptic.
Energy is everything. We effectively convert hydrocarbons to calories. We ship everything with hydrocarbons. Real costs for every good and service will blow up alongside preexisting inflation. Food shortages aren’t just an inconvenience.
Societies don’t do well when these kinds of shocks happen. It’s not enough to contextualization it against the third world. When you’ve had it good and you don’t have it good anymore, that means chaos.
Close to 4% of natural gas is used for cooking and heating water - which the EU could easily replace with electric using a subsidy (well worth it regardless).
The EU consumed ~379B cubic feet of natural gas in 2021. Shutting down just the German nuclear reactors is the equivalent of ~14B cubic feet = ~4% of natural gas consumption for the entire EU.