[eastbound]

Aren’t they? I see swathes of young voters in UE, everywhere I go, who claim that we should consume less, and who align their actions with their beliefs with:

- Not having travelled more than 200km from home for the last 10 years,

- A friend who is CEO of renewable startup in Paris and is worth 60m€ today (the company is ~300m€), spent his wedding trip in France instead of Maldives,

- Not eating meat,

- Using blankets instead of heating at home,

- Suffer through 40°C rather than use A/C,

- Buy organic at the local market.

It’s enough voters that the entirety of Europe cheers Macron & Merkel’s decision to cut off our gas supplies from Russia in 6 months. Sure it’s about the war, but people’s mindset is that we’d have to do it anyway for ecology, so why not now. And when you do speak with partisans, they acknowledge that we’ll half-replace with other sources, but they also tell you that the goal is to consume less in absolute numbers.

At least this (majority) of people in Europe is mentally prepared to use much less energy than their parent’s generation, and the little remainder should be renewable. They accept the deflation that it represents. They’d be happy to be poor for those political ideals of leaving a healed earth to the next generation.

Whether or not you believe in their vision, their vision is certainly not to replace-and-increase energy consumption.

[vasco]

> At least this (majority) of people in Europe is mentally prepared to use much less energy than their parent’s generation

Do you have a source for this because I've lived here all my life and in 3 different European countries and this is not really something I've seen, other than some young people caring about green energy, it's definitely not the majority and definitely varies a lot country to country. Your average Pole has a very different stance to your average Dutch.

[discordance]

The community around you seems to be more progressive than most other populations

[Melting_Harps]

> The community around you seems to be more progressive than most other populations

Or more than likely they are better at hiding their consumption habits: I agree that all of those things help, many of which I do myself, but chances are they are buying new devices every new product release cycle (because why not?) and likely spend lots of times on social media showing off that quinoa salad they had for lunch, all if which require immense amounts of energy in servers alone that make all of things they do on the individual level moot.

I think the sooner we realize we are all culpable because the system is designed that way the sooner we can analyze this situation is untenable if all we focus on such low hanging fruit that not able to address the crux of the issue: self-serving politics holds back the major amount of progress.

Germany is perhaps the biggest example of how Green-window dressing is ultimately setting you up for catastrophic failure when you align your energy dependence to an authoritarian despot in an attempt to outsourcing the dirty parts that keep your economy working.

> At least this (majority) of people in Europe is mentally prepared to use much less energy than their parent’s generation, and the little remainder should be renewable. They accept the deflation that it represents. They’d be happy to be poor for those political ideals of leaving a healed earth to the next generation.

I've lived and farmed in Eco-communes and Agro tourism in EU, and I can guarantee you this is not a widely held value system; most of the business models rely on people's conspicuous consumption habits, and while it's true most are Boomers age wise, the younger cohorts (like myself) also enjoy traveling and experiencing other things that are quite energy intensive. I accept this fact, and have reduced my consumption in order to justify these things in addition to have spent a lot of time focused farming and building my startup to support and advancing carbon sequestration as well as worked in making my activism profitable by working for farm to table kitchens etc...

It's easy for me to justify any overt consumption habits for most of my Life as I'm likely carbon negative on an individual level, but the truth is that I derive no pleasure from consumption but I ultimately I accept that denying these externalaties is how we remain stagnant and rationalize things into indifference.

[jacquesm]

> It’s enough voters that the entirety of Europe cheers Macron & Merkel’s decision to cut off our gas supplies from Russia in 6 months.

Merkel?

[_dain_]

>At least this (majority) of people in Europe is mentally prepared to use much less energy than their parent’s generation, and the little remainder should be renewable.

I'm mentally prepared in the sense that the reality is being forced upon me, it is not something I want and it is not virtuous. You wonder why Europe is stagnating? This is it.

We would not be in this situation if you green maniacs hadn't turned off the nuclear plants and prevented more from being built. You've created an artificial energy famine. And buying organic will not work for a global population of 8 billion, as we are finding out in Sri Lanka.

Suffering through 40 degree temperatures does not make you virtuous. AC is good, it saves lives, it is not a luxury. It's the nearest thing we have to terraforming technology, a top 10 invention of the 20th century.

I don't want to be in your self-flagellation climate cult. I don't want to be poor. Fuck you.

[cyberlurker]

This observation is detached from reality in so many ways it should be a copypasta.

Merkel is not even in office anymore and you can be sure Macron wouldn’t be either if it wasn’t for French nuclear power and that he just won an election before these decisions.

Germany doesn't even know if they will make it through the winter properly.

The claim that deflation is largely accepted is wrong and in conflict with EU leadership statement and goals.

A segment of the EU is cheering on the decision due to the war first and foremost. The environmental benefits are laughable because they have already turned to restarting coal plants that were previously shut down.

No, the youth are great but this is a deluded view.