The Bridge – Natural Gas in a Redivided Europe

Abstract

Book review: Thane Gustafson (2020). The Bridge – Natural Gas in a Redivided Europe. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, USA. ISBN 9780674987951 Fifty-three years ago a historic meeting took place in the secluded Schloss Hernstein Bergdorf that sits at the feet of the Alps in Lower Austria. Austrian business executives joined by representatives of key West German industrial players hosted a group of Soviet leaders that would go on to establish the ‘gas bridge’. They were aware that their endeavour to establish natural gas trade between the East and the West, if successful, could contribute to dampening the animosity of the Cold War. Little did they know that their actions would establish a bridge so robust and elemental to the operation of modern fossil fuel-dependent economies that its dismantling and reconfiguration would pose one of the greatest challenges for their successors in their effort to tackle climate change. (...)