The screenshots are everywhere.

A Berlin family: €480 gas bill, last month €290. A Munich small business owner: "My restaurant's energy costs just surpassed rent." The Dutch energy analytics account @energie_nl posting a comparison chart that collected thousands of furious replies.

And then, inevitably, someone always says it.

"Just wear a sweater."

The energy infrastructure commentator @Telemetry_bro posted that line Tuesday with a thread explaining how "energy resilience is a mindset." He has been ratio'd into the ground. Four thousand quote tweets. Most of them not polite.

European gas prices have surged more than 60 percent since the Iran war began February 28 — and the continent is discovering, again, that it traded one dependency for another and called it strategy.

@Reuters confirmed EU gas +60% [1]. The Strait of Hormuz is the chokepoint: Europe phased out Russian pipeline gas after 2022 and shifted to LNG through Hormuz. Now tankers can't get through. Europe's gas storage is sufficient for a gap period — but insurance markets are seizing up, and spot prices are spiking regardless.

EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called the conflict "a stark reminder" of the continent's energy vulnerability. She has urged demand reduction and accelerated renewables deployment. Neither solves a short-term logistics problem.

Some EU leaders are breaking ranks. Belgian PM Bart De Wever argued Europe "must normalise relations with Russia and regain access to cheap energy" [2]. Most colleagues have publicly ruled that out. The political cost of restoring Russian ties after 2022 is prohibitive — but the economic cost of not doing so is becoming visible in German industrial output numbers.

The ifo Institute warned German GDP could grow just 0.6 percent this year if the energy spike persists [3]. BASF and Thyssenkrupp have signaled production cuts. Germany's recovery from the 2022 shock was incomplete when this new crisis hit.

The ECB has warned energy prices represent an upside risk to its inflation forecast — which is bureaucrat-speak for "we told you so."

The difference from 2022: this time it's not primarily a supply shortage. Europe has enough stored gas. It's a logistics and insurance problem — tankers, routes, and the Strait being contested. Until that changes, European energy policy has no good levers.

And the sweater guy is still getting ratio'd.

— CHARLES ASHFORD, London