One giant leap for renewables;
“Business is up 100 percent,” said Mitsionis, 42, constantly interrupted by phone calls from clients. “Everybody is flocking to buy, poor and rich alike — this crisis has put the fear of God into everyone.”
In a desperate move to plug its fiscal holes and meet its budget targets under an EU/IMF bailout, the government has hiked energy taxes, driving heating oil costs up to 40 percent higher.
In addition, a flurry of taxes due this fall, including a property levy slapped on electricity bills and a one-off “solidarity” income tax, means many cash-strapped families are facing hundreds or even thousands of euros in extra bills in the first months of winter.
This is when Greeks, most of whom live in apartment buildings, must pay to fill the diesel-fired boilers for the building’s central heating. Many residents are declining to pay their share of the heating oil bill, forcing building managers to cancel or slash orders to a minimum.
“I have switched off the central heating and use nothing but the stove instead,” said Theodora Doukiri, 39, a cleaning lady in Athens.
Unequal sharing of wealth versus equal sharing of misery.
This must be giving the greenies apoplexy. Their aim to destroy the modern lifestyle and industrial culture is being achieved by people returning to subsistence living which unfortunately for their agenda involves the use of the cheapest energy source available, fossil fuels.
I thought Rand’s novels were fiction, not forecasts.
looks like they are going to have to pay for those freebees after all. no such thing as a free lunch.
Here in Ontario everyone who can afford it is switching to gas.
It’s worth remembering that for the past 800 years wood has been on the decline for use as basic heating across all of Europe. Starting in the 13th century, coal began displacing wood because of its higher energy density.
It is truly a fitting tribute to the inept economic and energy policies of the EU nations that they are forcing a regression to technology nearly a millenium old.
robw, no this is not giving the greenies apoplexy. Forcing the abandoning of modern industrial cvilization is precisely what they want.
Wait’ll they run out of wood.
Wow, cause and effect. Who’d have thought…..
Dang, them poor blimey’s, and heya it is 72 degrees in N. Louisi-Yana today.
It’s practical. One can burn wood, paper (newspapers by preference, books if necessary), furniture, coal if one can get it, and one can cook on the stove. What’s not to like?
Now that the goberment money ran out the socialists’ balk at paying their fair share, I guess they never read the communist manifesto chapter about equal sharing of misery?
Awww – wood burners – release that precious carbon – why heat just a single apartment? why not heat the whole world? – hey, if the world got warmer, then the Greeks wouldn’t have to have heaters, problem solved. – Q. Isn’t Greece on the Mediterranean???? I thought it was warm there. A. Maybe Canada should send the Greeks earmuffs, long underwear, gloves and felt boots. Another problem solved.
I loved the part about them not hanging their laundry outside because of soot. That’s a double giggle. One because the EU has managed to set back air pollution progress about 300 years. The other because they’re whining about hanging laundry -outside-. In winter.
Hang your laundry outside here last week, you’d have nice frozen stiffness in the sheets and pillow cases. Today we’re having some lovely sleet/rain/fog combination, to thoroughly frig up the heavy wet snow from last night. Could be worse I suppose, could be freezing rain.
Greece was faithful to the Agenda 21 doctrine and a leader in turning the country greener than green. At the cost of hundreds of billions. Now they are going back to wood stoves. Guess Agenda 21 didn’t work out as planned. Wonder if the UN gives refunds.
http://www.un.org/esa/earthsummit/grec-cp.htm
Socialist dreams turned into a nightmare. Coming to a city near you.
I love this part “Environmentalist Grigoris Gourdomichalis is worried about another scourge — deforestation. Twice a day, he and his colleagues climb into a jeep and patrol a protected forest on a hill west of Athens. Illegal logging is rampant here.”. So they can afford fuel for their jeep. For now.
Also “He says the patrols have stopped some of the deforestation. But then he and a colleague spot another threat to the forest: Someone has destroyed a giant water tank used to fight summer forest fires. Gourdomichalis says the tank’s steel frame was cut to be sold as scrap metal.
“People are destroying everything in a desperate effort to survive, or they’re using the crisis to make a profit,” he says, shaking his head in despair.”
I guess their “green” policies are biting them in the ass. The unintended consequences of their beloved socialism. As the population gets more and more desperate these greenies are going to be on the receiving end of some real ugly.
We are all becoming Zimbabwe because of these fools.
Who follow even blinder men, with a death wish of our technical culture if not for most of mankind. Mugabes to the Earth. Everywhere they go to triumph only ashes with lands laid to ruin is left. Windmill churning out mutilation to wildlife. A sore in the eyes of every beholder. Lost jobs, lost comfort. The greens will not be happy till we all are slaves, peasants to their exulted class. For you can bet they won’t like Suzuki, suffer a moment for their lies.
Even if global warming were anything but a fairy story the only reason anybody in a position to do much about it cares about Greece’s forests is as a source of hard cash from China and Saudi Arabia to cover the bad cheques written by Greece’s kleptocrats.
Under no circumstances must a Greek be allowed to heat his house when a single spoiled daughter of a CPC official is without a four-post bed, a Saudi “princess” is without a Welsh dresser for the nighties she buys at Harrods, or the strumpet of a French investment banker is without a mink stole for want of her man’s bonus. Two to three hours a day of heat? The Romanians put up with it for years, think the banksters. What excuse do the Greeks have?
Proof, if any were still needed after the Current TV business, that the “greens” of all nations are nothing but the useful idiots of Beijing, Riyadh and Wall Street, and willing collaborators in the Romanianization of Greece.
But please, keep on talking complete and utter bollocks about how the Golden Dawn are Greece’s biggest problem.