Category: Environmental | Ideas
What could I possibly write about?
Posted by Rupert on January 8, 2009
By Alina Wolfe Murray in Bucharest. 6th January 2009
I look at the empty page, empty-minded. What could I possibly write about? I didn’t see anything spectacular today. It’s cold but the diesel didn’t freeze in my car, like it did three years ago. So it cannot be that cold. It didn’t snow, so there are no more traffic jams than in a normal day. We still have gas, in spite of Russia turning off the taps this morning, when we were snug in bed. Oh, and it’s a special day in the Orthodox calendar, when all waters are blessed to celebrate the baptism of Christ in the waters of Jordan.
As people jumped into the icy waters of the Danube to retrieve the crosses thrown traditionally on this day, the gas pipe at Isaccea, in the Danube Delta, was gasless. Turkey, Greece, Macedonia and Bulgaria felt the chill within hours and Romanian TV stations allocated a big chunk of their airtime to this issue. Correspondents in the Gaza Strip must have felt very frustrated today. Theirs is old news already in the face of the new threat: a Siberian winter in the middle of Europe. Europeans shivering in their homes, as they watch the Middle East news – that is something unbearable! That’s even though Europe receives only a quarter of its gas from Russia. So, couldn’t Europeans use a quarter less gas these days – I wonder? To put another jumper on? What shall we all do when there will be none left, as my husband keeps asking me?
Romania is better off in terms of gas supply than other states. It produces about 70 percent of its own needs and imports only 30 percent. But even under these circumstances, a very long cold winter with no Russian gas might become difficult. The electricity and heat producers have been told to switch to oil and coal. “Luckily” some big industrial consumers are closed these days (due to the economic crisis) so we can have nice baths and lovely home temperatures using their gas.
Enough about the gas, I must check other news. My day is a patch of disparate flashes. I am wrapped in a thin layer of news, with almost no patch for writing myself.