Yeah, and I’m talking about solar farms, which do not use any water at all. Maybe some to clean the panels, but that is exactly my issue here: The article is throwing stuff together that really doesn’t belong together. Buying gas from Egypt is different than building a solar farm or building industrial hydrogen plants or importing agricultural products.

I know what they are saying. I just don’t think that building a solar farm in Morocco is really colonialist and would push them to still use fossil fuels as claimed. Go to google maps, search for those projects mentioned in the Guardian article and they are being build in the literal desert with enough space around:

https://www.google.com/maps/search/Noor+3+solar+power+station,+Ouarzazate/@31.0343835,-6.8871281,12839m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDIxOS4xIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

However the article is claiming:

European countries are extracting renewable energy from Morocco and Egypt to “greenwash” their own economies, while leaving north Africans reliant on dirty imported fuels and paying the environmental costs, a Greenpeace report says.

But why?

I’ve actually read the Greenpeace report the article is based on and that doesn’t mention your point.

https://www.greenpeace.org/static/planet4-mena-stateless/2025/02/ce97182f-beyond-extractivism_-towards-a-feminist-and-just-economic-transition-in-morocco-and-egypt-report-eng.pdf

It is actually really a strange report:

In the context of the greentransition,green colonialism- the continuationof colonialrelationsof plunderand dispossessionin the era of renewableenergies. Europeaninvestmentsin renewableenergy,greenhydrogenandagriculturemeet Europe’sresourcedemandsandmaintainthe growth-basedWesternlifestyle,while imposingecologicaland socialsacrificeson GlobalSouthcountries.Thisdynamic creates"sacrificezones",where local populationsbear the impactsof Europe’s energyandconsumptionneedswith little benefi

I’m not sure why Greenpeace came to this while talking about projects that are building solar farms in the desert.

Try searching for the correct charts. You are talking about global prime energy consumption and it makes sense that this is growing in a world with a growing population, enormous economic growth in China and India and so on.

But if you take a look at Europe: Primary energy consumption has been sinking since 2006 from 18,997 TWh to 15,662TWh in 2023:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/primary-energy-cons?tab=chart&country=OWID_EU27~OWID_AFR

The share of fossil fuels is also decreasing:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fossil-fuels-share-energy?tab=chart&country=~OWID_EU27

So this does work.

If they gave more time than just a few months, in example at least an entire year, then people could at least download those files before hand. Not sure how long this would take and how stressful this would be for their servers.

They could also give the option to pay for this. They should know what storing a video costs and therefore could give creators the chance to cover that cost.

TBH: It does sound bad, but it is one of the best ways to lower the effort needed for moderating. Currently every idiot from every instance can show up in your community and start spamming. You have to clean up after you’re back from work and have other things to do. Set a reasonable limit on account age and karma and that will keep the biggest idiots, because they will be banned or downvoted to oblivion before they can start posting in your turf.