Robert Bryce: The Deindustrialization Of Europe In Five Charts
Germany is once again, the “sick man of Europe.” But it’s not just Germany. All across Europe, industrial capacity is shrinking. Last month, Tata Steel announced it would close its last two blast furnaces in Britain by the end of this year, a move that will result “in the loss of up to 2,800 jobs at its Port Talbot steelworks in Wales.”
In January 2023, Slovalco announced it was permanently closing its aluminum smelters in Slovakia after 70 years of operation. The company, Slovakia’s biggest electricity consumer, said it was shuttering its smelters due to high power costs.
Europe drove itself into the ditch. Bad policy decisions, including net-zero delusions, the headlong rush to alt-energy, aggressive decarbonization mandates, and the strategic blunder of relying on Russian natural gas that’s no longer available, are driving the deindustrialization. How bad is it? Mario Loyola, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, wrote a sharp January 28 article in The Hill about Europe’s meltdown. According to European Commission data, industrial output in Europe “plummeted 5.8% in the 12 months ending November 2023,” he wrote. “Capital goods production was down nearly 8.7%. Investment in plants and equipment has plummeted.”
The result of all that lousy policy: staggering increases in electricity prices. Loyola notes that European electricity prices “have settled at triple their pre-pandemic levels.” Energy analyst Rupert Darwall recently reported that large businesses in Britain now pay up to five times more for juice than in 2004.
In Europe, just a little more advanced in decline than North America, green theocracy has replaced Christianity. It is the new Opium of the masses, the cultural, academic, and political institutions. No greater anesthetic for reason and critical thinking exists as fear and emotions based on repeated lies, exaggerations, and pure hysteria given credence from all corrupted institutions captured by the left are in co ordinated action. The new Jacobins and Bolsheviks of the sociopathic elite intent on the destruction of liberty are purposely destroying prosperity, and reason to eliminate the middle class to bring in the next iteration of collectivism (serfdom). The green lunatics are now in charge across the west while the developing world including China and India will pursue prosperity with hydrocarbons negating all the idiocy mandated by our elected Jacobins and Bolsheviks.
Ever just find yourself wanting to scream at a news article or picture of a politician or something?
Every day, so I no longer watch the news. Add to that relatives and friends that faithfully watch said news and vote for said politicians.
“Every day, so I no longer watch the news. Add to that relatives and friends that faithfully watch said news and vote for said politicians.”
Same here. I actually stopped watching TV news when I was reading two or three newspapers a day, and realized just how much information was ‘missing’ from the newscast (and deliberately so).
re: Not watching the news.
I haven’t for at least 20 years.
It is often said by medical people that it is one of the best health measures one can adopt.
I also view NO BLOGS after dinner and read a non-controversial novel up to bedtime: Currently Jane Austin’s Emma.
I also watch a lot of animal videos, my current favourite category being Golden Retrievers with little kittens.
That’s why Kate started this blog.
“relying on Russian gas that’s no longer available”. Heritage foundation speak. It wasn’t a strategic blunder when cheap Russian gas was the driver for their industrial success. Nor was it a policy decision that made it become unavailable.
Too much content, too little sober editing coming out these days.
They also had the advantage of having their defense costs subsidized.
Deindustrialization of the West is the whole point. It isn’t bad policy decisions because they know exactly what they’re doing. They aren’t stupid. And I think it’s what people want to believe and they’re quite happy with you believing that. We’re playing into their hands.
Fritz is out of a job? No worries, UBI is the solution. Then they’ll have us by the short hairs.
When they tell you who they are and what they want…please believe them, because they’re not effing around.
Bill S233 is there for a reason.
…and the lessons from Europe, that renewable energy = deindustrialization and poverty, should strengthen Alberta’s and Saskatchewan’s moves to ignore the federal government’s energy policies. Reject net zero. Build more natural gas power plants, produce even more oil and gas. Defend the agricultural sector.
By the time these energy projects are designed, the Trudeau Liberal-NDP government will be voted out, then build build build. Become Canada’s even bigger energy and economic leaders. An abundance of reliable, affordable energy in our two provinces will help attract energy intensive industries that are fleeing high energy states, provinces and countries. Once we have the economic power, use it to leverage more political power. Negotiate a better deal with the rest of Canada and/or pursue independence.
LC
As one who works in the Oil n Gas Industry.
I wholeheartedly endorse your comment..!!
The hardest thing for a politician to admit to is that they were wrong. Those who legalized hard drugs are struggling, as are those defund the police dip-shitsters. Now we have Europe “accidentally” de-industrializing in the name of climate change and trying to wipe out their own food suply. Imagine living in a cold climate and eliminating your most reliable heating source AND shutting down your food supply. Reads like a bad novel. Too bad that cheap Russian gas is gone.
So following the example of Ontario under the last liberal government, where power prices were driven up to the benefit of insiders at the expense of everyone else, by using unreliable intermittent energy sources, driving heavy industry away?
The price will go even higher once electricity is effectively made illegal by banning all reliable means of generation.
Based on what evidence? The Ontario government is doing exactly the opposite by committing to more nuclear electricity generation. It’s reversing the shutdown of Pickering. It’s instructed OPG and Bruce Power to build seven more power reactors at Darlington and Bruce. Darlington and Bruce are being refurbished for operation to the end of the 2060s.
So with all the actual developments contradicting completely what you stated, where is your evidence to the contrary? State one statute on the books making reliable electricity illegal.
Why would China and Russia spend billions on weapons when a few million in donations to environmental groups and lefty politicians will do the same thing?
GA
Well if you’v been reading in here for a while, Chinese and Ruskies are stupid don’t cha know. Too many people are like a lot of posters in here , BRAIN DEAD.
NME666
They do both just to be sure, and have done since 1945.
The flip side is that the West is dependent on long supply chains riddled with coerced labor and child labor. Very hard to compete with unless, of course, you have abundant and reasonably priced energy. Complex systems aren’t very robust either.
Another ugly reality is that many peoples retirement moneys, including the big public sector unions, like Calpers…are invested in those same long supply chains. As to pollution, TPTB pay themselves on the back, but it still exists, it’s just been pushed it off shore.
I guess CA is Europeanized now …
https://www.pge.com/content/dam/pge/docs/account/rate-plans/electric-rate-alert.pdf
https://www.pge.com/content/dam/pge/docs/account/rate-plans/residential-electric-rate-plan-pricing.pdf
Electric dryer is on the fritz. I am trying to decide if I should replace it with a natural gas dryer or an electric one. Bay area conundrum.
I have some friends who swear by their gas dryers. BUT … if PG&E can do what they did last year and just arbitrarily charge us 3x the market rate for Nat. Gas … then return to a more market place price this year … IDK … it’s capricious and arbitrary … and brutal … whenever someone in the State decides we all need to be PUNISHED for using fossil fuels
All planned.
How many smelters are closing in India? How about China?
There’s always an excuse to justify making formerly prosperous majority white nations poor and weak, while also inundating them with foreigners who do not assimilate, and who are encouraged not to.
The only races that are actually generally and actively discriminated against are white, and their enemies are also white but not from the same clans. They know that other whites are their greatest competition so are eliminating them bit by bit.
This doesn’t appear to be happening quickly day-by-day, but the effects are drastic when viewed decade-by-decade.
But to keep the victims distracted, the controlled media will blame this dumb policy, that foolish politician, or “the left” in general. Purposely distracting from the big picture, and making a planned, well-organized attack appear as happenstance.
Remember Germany’s hysterical reaction to the 2011 Japanese earthquake? Shutting down their nuclear reactors in case of a tsunami? I can recall standing in the Frankfurt railway station, marveling at the extensive electric railroad network and wondering how in *ell they were going to power all that with windmills & solar panels. The urbanites/laptop class elected the Greens, the likes of Harbeck & Baerbock, let them live with the consequences. Unfortunately, they’ve dragged the rest of the country along with their poor choices.
Their hysterical reaction was the result of a KGB operation that started in the late 1960s to wreck the German nuclear program and force them to buy Russian gas. They even got a German chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, to promote Russian gas against the interest of his own country. Buying traitors is a cheap way to subvert a country’s best interests.
Russia, India, China, Iran et al, did not distribute the mRNA vaccines to their populations.
Here’s another question that never gets asked.
Where was the outcry over Covid vaccination rates in Africa and South America being minuscule compared to the western world, and where was the screaming from the usual race hustlers about Pfizer and Moderna making tens of billions while people of color in developing countries go without their expensive “vaccines”?
It would almost make you start believing in Replacement Theory.
So like what Dalton McGuinty’s “Green Energy Act” did to Ontario a decade or so ago.
The elites are trying to turn the entire western hemisphere into one big Weimar.
I would say they’re aiming for 14th century Islam, but splitting hairs I guess.
RNrn
Remember the old Everly Brothers tune?
It’s 4 o’clock
The movie’s over
We’re in trouble deep
Wake up little Suzy
Well, as far as the western world is concerned, it’s noon, and they all fell asleep with the motor running and a leaky exhaust system. Nobody wakes up.
The only thing that can be done here in USA/CAN is to let officials know they will be held accountable.
And not to the courts.
Its an existential threat.
Let the warm civil war go hot.
Why do you think the banning of firearms is such a big deal to these traitors?
It’s not the public’s safety they are worried about, it’s theirs.
You can also check out and leave – while you can.
I did it 4 years ago.
Cheers
DeepSouth
They created the new Robespierre, they can be the bourgeosie parents he murders.
“Every day, so I no longer watch the news. Add to that relatives and friends that faithfully watch said news and vote for said politicians.”
Same here. I actually stopped watching TV news when I was reading two or three newspapers a day, and realized just how much information was ‘missing’ from the newscast (and deliberately so).
The government funds revolution at every turn and boy are they paranoid because of it.. They know what they are doing and it isn’t good..
Those Karton-Kopfs have had since WW2 to think about things and this is what they’ve come up with?!
Heh.
Well, at least Russia is no longer the sick man of Europe: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2024-02-15/putin-trolls-blinken-tucker-trolls-new-york
Sorry to hear that Slovalco is closing. Countries need those “nasty” jobs to keep going. Good to see that U S Steel is still operating in Kosice. Back in the day, had an offspring perusing a degree at a uni there, and was fortunate to take several trips to that city during the offspring’s years of studies (someone had to bring over the basic necessities of life unobtainable there which were – as I recall – tinned cranberry sauce, tinned pumpkin puree, soy sauce, basic cold meds, peanut butter, MacIntosh’s toffee bars, etc; all the good stuff. Do remember early on when visiting a really cool technical museum that – despite problems with my having no Slovak and the guide having limited English – I got the message loud and clear that they were really, really glad US Steel had bought what was a Soviet era and probably rather clapped-out and decrepit steelworks; the locals were hopeful that it would be brought up to US standards for both production and pollution.
Do you think not having access to inexpensive natural gas or oil to power a country’s industry has anything to do with the so-called “de-industrialization”? Which 35lb brain European MORON(s) thought that going to war with one’s source of energy was a good idea? As for Canada, only the morons in Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver who keep voting leftward allow the Liberal dictator-idiots to make stupid policies that kill our country’s industrial sector by trying to kill off our God-given energy sector.