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Originally Posted by Itse
I'm going to just trust Perun as a source here.
Additionally, the way EU is acting is also just a huge clue as to should we be worried or not, and I would say they're just not.
Russia just used their trump card, suspending gas deliveries indefinitely, and the reaction from Europe at this point is mostly a big ho-hum. That's it, that's the big threat Russia had economically, and they just spent it. They already did "it".
Will it hurt? Sure, but in the sense that it will be expensive as feck to deal with and create all sorts of inconveniences, like turning the room temperature to 18 instead of 20 and stuff, and yes it will create economic pain, and some companies and countries are going to get hit pretty bad economically.
But in the sense that we need to worry about freezing to death? Nah. (Not unless climate change throws some really big unexpected curveballs.)
There's a reason "first world problems" was a meme. As nations and especially EU as a whole is rich. We can take it, especially when the population is for once pretty united about something.
EDIT: I don't want to downplay it too much either, the amount of work needed to deal with the situation is enormous, obviously. It's a very big deal.
Just not "life or death".
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No, no one's going to freeze to death. But there will likely be energy rationing and significant economic effects (though Russia will also feel those effects, since they basically have no way of exporting that gas anywhere else).
The reason the EU isn't panicking is likely because they've mostly expected this. And they were really only getting a pittance from Nordstream 1 lately anyway. That pipeline was only delivering about 0.3 TWh per day in recent months, so even if they maintained that until the end of winter, that's only about 60 TWh, or about 1.5% of the EU's annual usage. The bigger effect was from the reduction in flows that happened earlier this year.