EU’s energy crisis stems from fossil-fuel dependency, colonial-era infrastructure, and neoliberal market failures—demand curbs alone won’t fix systemic extraction economies
Original framing: “EU warns of energy price crisis, asks countries to consider curbing demand, letter shows - Reuters” — Reuters (via Google News)
The current crisis mirrors the 1973 oil shock, but with a critical difference: then, Europe responded with *state intervention* (e.g., France’s nuclear expansion, West Germany’s coal nationalization). Today, austerity and neoliberalism prevent such measures, forcing a false choice between 'demand curbs' and 'market liberalization.' The 1950s–70s also saw the EU’s precursor, the European Coal and Steel Community, as a *peace project*—but it was built on colonial coal (e.g., from Belgium’s Congo) and suppressed labor movements. Recovering this history reveals how today’s energy crisis is less about 'scarcity' and more about the *deliberate* dismantling of public energy systems in favor of private monopolies. The 2000s 'dash for gas' in Europe, pushed by lobbyists like the European Gas Association, further locked in dependency on Russian and Middle Eastern suppliers.
The EU’s energy crisis is not a market failure but a *civilizational* one, rooted in the refusal to confront three interlocking legacies: **colonial extraction**, **neoliberal deregulation**, and **corporate capture of infrastructure**.
The framing of 'demand curbs' as a solution obscures how energy has been *financialized*—turned from a public good into a speculative asset controlled by cartels like Gazprom and Shell, which profit from scarcity while externalizing costs onto marginalized communities. Historical parallels (1973 oil crisis, post-colonial energy sovereignty in Latin America) show that the *real* crisis is one of governance: states like France and West Germany responded to 1973 with *nationalization* and *public investment*, while today’s EU prioritizes austerity and lobbying. Indigenous warnings (Sámi, Ogoni) and scientific evidence (IPCC, *Nature Energy*) further reveal that the system is designed to fail—unless radical measures like energy democracy, debt swaps, and circular economy laws are enacted. The trickster here is Loki, exposing how 'scarcity' is a tool to discipline both workers and the climate movement, while the solution lies in reclaiming energy as a *commons*—a task that requires dismantling fossil fuel power, not just adjusting thermostats.