> The countries where bursts of methane happened most frequently included the former Soviet republic of Turkmenistan, Russia, the United States, Iran, Kazakhstan and Algeria. Lauvaux says they found relatively few such releases in some other countries with big gas industries, such as Saudi Arabia.
Russia and Turkmenistan might not care, but what about the companies in Algeria and the United States? Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Drop Algeria as well. The only viable place remains the US and the lobby there is such that I'd be buying popcorn to watch how Texas will try to regulate the local industry.
Russia will be on the first line of climate change, they have quite few incentives to make the right call.
Algeria for what I know is corrupt like hell and this undermines everything.
Public policies if decided, won't have any impact.
In the US the federal gvt can have quite a huge impact if the chambers follow.
But you need indeed to convince a lot of people with conflicting interests.
> Russia will be on the first line of climate change, they have quite few incentives to make the right call.
Russia has incentives, but the Russian government does not. Its fortunes are entirely tied to the petro-ruble.
And when it comes to choosing between what's good for Russia, and what's good for whomever is governing Russia, Russians will choose the latter eight times out of ten.
There are quite a few Russian analysts which believe Russia will gain from climate change (unblocked Northern route, more workable soil, lower heating expenditures). Don't expect any help from Russia on this.
The thresholds kick in over the long term, plenty of time for humanity to counteract, meanwhile Russia gains. Also, the current Russian government will happily sacrifice X million Russians so long as it gains the ruling regime internally and externally - which this process will by default.
>They can’t maintain a regime that sacrifices the majority of the population. If they do so, they’ll be kings of… nothing.
Judging by excess deaths, Russia lost 1 million people to Corona[0]. The government's response is either nothing, or saber-rattling in Ukraine (depending whether you buy the view of their recent actions as a domestic distraction).
It's always been very difficult to overestimate the indifference of the Russian government to its own populace's well being, especially when they gain monetaraily and internationally from being indifferent.
You should start the analysis from the population and its reality. Even Staline and Krutchev didn’t manage to get rid of high vodka consumption and alcoholism, where Putin managed while being less brutal. And he’s still popular among the population.
I mean there that usually we judge them by our own values, but you need to take into account their reality.
They built a great scientific elite over the last century but on the other hand, the rest of the population is not worth more than a third country’s one in terms of education, work and “lumières ethics”. And that gap is huge.
We are currently in a situation where people are discussing if a military invasion is enough of a reason to stop buying gas. Germany in particular does not want to turn off the gas, and has invested a lot of money, infrastructure and political capital in order to use Russian gas in the next few decades.
Ah cynical German could argue that Russia invading to Ukraine is none of their problems, but emitting methane sure is.
To clarify however, I didn't mean to say that Europe is clearly going to stop buying from these sources, just that _there are other means_. Too often with the climate crisis, options are there, but the nature of how we humans organized ourselves seem to stand in the way of taking them. Thinking of this as "well there's nothing we can do because it's in Turkmenistan" might sometimes be just a way to clear our conscious while not doing anything.
Electric is an option, but we've already switched from coal to gas... which is the problem.
And nuclear energy, while having no carbon emissions, has the problem that nobody wants it in their backyard. Plus, huge upfront investments and costs.
Actually, I would seriously consider putting a small-scale nuclear reactor in my backyard if it were possible. My neighbours might object, but since you said my backyard: I'm perfectly ok with that.
You mean synthetic gas? There is absolutely no capacity to produce anywhere near enough to satisfy even a single percent of European needs.
>>or heat pumps
Heat pumps are not a universal solution, they don't work in all climates, or they require digging trenches or wells to actually be efficient - again, not possible everywhere and for everyone.
And even if it was - with what money? Where I'm from in Poland I know lots of people who still heat their houses with coal, purely because gas is too expensive as it is. And you want to switch their source of heat to an even more expensive one? I'm sure they will be super happy to do that, sure.
Plausibly better for the climate (it's not fossil carbon, it's much more recent carbon) but much much much worse for immediate human health, since it spews all sorts of nasty particulates out the chimney and also into the home.
The Netherlands wants to push towards electrification - probably to reduce dependency on Russian gas - but the power grid cannot handle it, and it'll take years and billions to increase its capacity.
I mean electric boilers, heating panels, ranges and car chargers will easily increase peak loads by 15-25 kilowatts per house, that's 2-4x as much as they currently pull. Do that times hundreds of thousands of houses and you see the issue.
What you are right about is that both consumer and production endpoints transitions must be synchronized. But they should still happen very fast.
The right conclusion is that now they need to buff up the power grid extremely quickly TOO (it needs not take such a long time, some choices like solar or wind are quite quick to install).
Both the consumer endpoints and production endpoints have to change, of course.
As for the billions required for the transition, since when absolute figures make for good decisions? What is required is a comparison with alternatives. And one sure thing is that the cost of a failed transition, of a climate catastrophe, or indirect consequences like wars, are tremendously more expensive.
I think that's the right time to ask people to make the change, on the contrary, as it's the middle of the gas crisis (through geopolitical reasons).
Governments are trying hard to artificially keep the prices low, but the reality is that the market really really wants people to give up on fossil fuels.
That's incredibly naive, if you excuse me saying so. 300 million people depend on Russian gas supplies, yes, most EU countries have emergency supplies for few weeks in case of a major disruption, but those are for emergencies - not for threats of "do X or else".
And those reserves (not even for emergencies, just to stabilize supply) have not been replenished since last year's severe winter, causing gas prices to spike in the past few months.
Since Europe is in a gas shortage they aren't going to not buy it. However, they are in talks to impose a carbon border tax on imports. This would make producers that didn't have leaks have a price advantage over those that do.
