Discussion
juliusceasar: USA and mainly Israel are the biggest threat for the way of living in Europe.Especially for the economy and safety.
guywithahat: It's incredible how social media addiction warps peoples minds. The US is not only the EU's largest trade partner but they're considerably freer and richer than the EU, showing a path forward for the continent. The US is not a "threat for their way of living" lol, especially when Europe is currently fighting a war in Ukraine and struggling to handle mass middle-east immigration
Insanity: Have you missed the events of the past year under Trump? With literal claims of taking over EU territory?I know that Trump is the equivalent of a hallucinating LLM, but you can’t just ignore his words whenever convenient.
longislandguido: Yeah Europeans are going to stick to their little diesel city cars.Many Europeans cannot afford iPhones as they are an overpriced costly luxury there, yet I'm supposed to believe they're all going out tomorrow to buy solar panels. Right.Heat pumps? They're famous for hating air conditioning and mostly heat their homes with hydronic but whatever.
WarmWash: Trump might ironically end up being the guy that pushes society over the tipping green energy tipping point.EVs were all the rage a few years ago, but they were expensive and gas prices collapsed. However if we get another $5-$6/gal gut punch, a lot of people will probably say "You know what? I'm done with this shit."
ragall: > considerably freer and richer than the EUCope harder. The US doesn't offer a single example of being better than the EU.
josefritzishere: If only the US was doing this too.
danans: At a federal level the US is moving backwards. But at a local and personal level, for the first time in generation, a huge number are waking up to the direct consequences of their dependency on the global oil markets and it's impacts their daily lives, and seeking alternatives. People in the US still don't like feeling like hostages, and this episode is a stark reminder of that.The last geopolitical oil shocks of the 1970s resulted in huge efficiency increases in transportation and energy - this will likely do the same, but with current technologies.
bpodgursky: If your energy policy was "hope the Ayatollah doesn't have a bad hair day", you didn't have an energy policy.Europe could have left their nuclear power plants turned on. Or drilled in the north sea. Or built LNG import terminals. These were all policy choices that had nothing to do with the US or Israel.
vrganj: The energy policy is "let's build out renewables". It's happening rn and it's better than any of the options you mention.
NitpickLawyer: > better than any of the options you mention.Yeah, no. Merkel's deal to shut off the nuclear plants to make a coalition was 100% a blunder. Not only in hindsight, with the dependence on russian gas, but in general it was a blunder. Nuclear gives you steady energy in ways that renewables can't. We should absolutely do more renewables, but to shut off working nuclear was not good.
vrganj: I don't disagree, though I see nuclear as an (overly expensive) bridge technology until storage becomes more built-out.
vrganj: Guess where the midlle-east mass migration comes from? Surely not from the US bombing the everliving shit out of folks living there and leaving us to deal with the fallout?The only thing the US shows Europe is a cautionary tale of social decay and the consequences of letting Capital run their society.
neutronicus: I mean, y'all gotta own the mess in the middle east too. That's far from a US solo production.
vrganj: The latest mess is all on the Americans. But yes, the French were also not without blame.
vrganj: A complete 900W solar setup you can put on your balcony, plug into an outlet and cover a good chunk of your energy needs costs 200 Euros: https://shop-sicatron.de/products/sicatron-910w-balkonkraftw...It's thoroughly practical, especially with energy prices being what they are now.Unclear what Apple's pricing policy has to do with this,.
longislandguido: That sounds extremely dangerous; you cannot add PV (or any secondary source) in the US and connect it to utility power without it being done by an electrician and inspected by the city.I'm shocked that safety-conscious Europe—especially Germany, known for its strict rules—would allow this.Or is this more AliExpress garbage with a German flag glued to it?
toomuchtodo: This is not true. Utah was the first to legalize plug in solar, and 17 other states have legislation pending to do so. It sounds like you are unaware of regulations around islanding in both Europe and the US.> The biggest regulatory concern – energizing lines during an outage and putting line workers at risk – is not really an issue, since inverters are covered by UL 1741, and have “anti-islanding” capability.https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2026/03/27/the-theory-and-practi...https://www.cesa.org/resource-library/resource/plug-in-solar...https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/solar/balcony-solar-tak...https://www.brightsaver.org/publicly-filed-stateshttps://www.digikey.com/en/articles/anti-islanding-and-smart...
vrganj: Sounds like the US might have a problem with overregulation holding them back, then?
xyzelement: Lol every single comment in your posting history is one sentence that includes the world Israel.
tharmas: The Greenest President Ever!The World works in mysterious ways.
pjc50: > It's incredible how social media addiction warps peoples mindsThe most prominent victim of this appears to be the US president himself.
mothballed: Solar power is 10000x as hard to permit where I live. I was able to connect to the grid without anyone looking at it. Laterally just hooked up a 200amp secondary connection straight to the grid without anyone from the government batting an eye and on the power in the house went. If I wanted even a 200W solar panel it requires a code inspection, a marked roof plan (my house doesn't even have building plans, so how to even do this?), license, special solar bond, and a special warranty and then clearance from the power company.Fuck that.Many counties have made it so that solar only makes sense if you are wildcatting it out in some remote place where the planning and zoning fascists won't find you out. In such case you can install it for an order of magnitude cheaper and then it actually makes sense.Meanwhile I can build a 200 foot tall oil derrick on my land with NO PERMIT WHATSOEVER because of course the oil companies had the political influence to exempt oil related infrastructure from requirements.
storus: EVs are still a bit underwhelming wrt range - ideally either 450miles/700km or 5 minute 20->80% recharge at an acceptable price (35k EUR) should be the norm. For cities it doesn't matter but for longer vacation trips it's a must, nobody wants to waste 3 hours on a 1100km trip recharging. Chinese EVs might be able to deliver it at this price point (BYD) but EU adds additional (up to) 45% in extra fees to penalize Chinese EV makers and to prevent collapse of EU car makers.
GJim: It's always better to back up ones arguments with facts.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_IndexThe USA really hasn't been doing well lately.
ragall: That's just a small part of it. EU has a better quality of life, better food, better housing, better public infrastructure.
toomuchtodo: 1 in 4 vehicles sold globally last year were EVs, and they are >50% of the monthly sales in China, the largest market in the world. EVs are mostly solved, even though they will continue to rapidly improve, both range and charging infrastructure. Norway is at ~100% EV sales, other countries will get there eventually.Importantly, we should expect to go faster as EV sales reach a point where combustion sales have declined to a level where they can no longer support combustion vehicle manufacturers as a going concern. Peak global combustion auto sales occurred in 2017.https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47459145 (citations)
pjc50: Solution: oil derrick covered in solar panels.(joking, but wow that really does highlight how absolutely dysfunctional US regulation is, no wonder everyone over there hates their government)
mothballed: I've thought about it. My thought was a giant oil derrick with a bunch of utilities on it. I also thought about just making the entire house part of an oil derrick.
storus: The trend is clear but right now they aren't able to replace ICE cars due to what I mentioned above. Either they lack range/recharging convenience or they don't but are too expensive. They need a few more years of scaling or EU to stop penalizing Chinese EVs.
ginko: Who do you think caused that mass immigration?
energy123: Most recently Russia and Iran's Hezbollah in Syria. The US was also involved in that civil war but not responsible for most of the civilian destruction.
guywithahat: And to further your point mass immigration into Europe isn't just recent; it's been happening for decades. For a while the Islamic state was encouraging attacks in Europe, and hundreds of people were killed by jihadists running cars through Christmas parades and similar events which peaked ~2016 and 2017. I think the largest was an attack in Nice, France on Bastille day killing 86 and injuring hundreds (https://grokipedia.com/page/2016_Nice_truck_attack) and another famous one I can think of was the christmas market attack in Berlin, killing 12 and injuring 56 (https://grokipedia.com/page/2016_Berlin_truck_attack). These were the result of economic immigration, unrelated to anything specific the US had done.
nomel: That 25% is including ICE. From the reference:> “Electric cars” include battery-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles
toomuchtodo: ICE =! NEVs (which includes BEVs and PHEVs, with BEVs still the majority). If folks want to buy PHEVs until BEVs steamroll them, whatevs, the BEV cost decline and uptake curves speak for themselves.https://cleantechnica.com/2026/02/03/global-ev-sales-leaders...https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev-outlook-2025
