Tag Archives: Environment

German Recycling Destroying Umwelt

June 23, 2011 By in Habitudes, Heconomy, Hi-tech, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Bad consumer! Environmental groups are alarmed and warning that the entire German reusable bottle system as we know it may soon be on the verge of collapse. And it’s all because of you, ihr Flaschen (“you bottles,” a German idiom for losers). You’re recyling the wrong bottles (the plastic ones, these are “bad”).

Horror of horrors or something. Just when Big Green Brother finally got you to robotically return your bottles to the reusable bottle robots located at your local supermarket, like you should, for your own good, you start buying more plastic returnables (thinking that these are as “good” as good old glass ones), causing the share of environmentally friendly bottles in circulation to sink from 70 to 50 percent. If this continues, the whole system will become “unprofitable,” whatever that means.

It seems that Fearless Leader’s five-year plan actually called for a percentage of 80 percent of environmentally friendly bottles to be in circulation so you have all failed miserably and will now have to be reprogrammed at your own cost again so that you know better and start buying the good glass recyclable bottles instead. And returning them to the robots (the machine ones). After you have emptied them, I mean (the bottles). Ah, the hell with it. They’ll explain it all to you better later.

Eine bessere Kennzeichnung und ökologisch differenzierte Steuer werden verlangt.

No good NIMBY-pamby protesters!

April 19, 2011 By in Helplessness, Hi-tech, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Are we having an energy revolution yet?

Although there is a long way to go before construction can begin on the high-voltage transmission lines, the “regional resistance” that the experts colored on their map has already begun to materialize.

There are obstacles everywhere. Either the landscape is so densely populated that it is poorly suited for big infrastructure projects, or it is so devoid of people that it should be preserved precisely for this reason.

The tactics of the power-line opponents are simple and perfectly understandable. The more arguments that can be presented against the project, the more likely it is that the future route will run further away from one’s own community and closer to the neighboring village instead.

Fortunately for the opponents, German law offers plenty of ways to keep the power masts at a good distance.

Saving birds and bats from the power lines, protecting gliders, a festival of bureaucracy. It’s all here, people.

Germans Won’t Buy The Right Gasoline

March 1, 2011 By in Hi-tech, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Actually, it’s the left gasoline, but still.

Strange, isn’t it? On the one hand, you probably won’t be able to find a nation more vocal when it comes to saving the environment and/or planet than Germany. On the other hand, it would be hard to imagine a nation of car freaks more freakish about their big German cars than Germans are (the dirtiest in Europe – the cars not the drivers).

Anyways, car freaks everywhere in Germany have united and are absolutely positively refusing to buy the latest thing that is good for them, an “organic” fuel called E10 that contains 10 percent ethanol. The reason? Rumor has it that this stuff can cause motor damage on some car models. Everybody’s buying super instead and now there’s a super shortage, which is anything but super.

I guess you have to ask yourself one question, punks: Your planet or your car? You know, kind of like that old Jack Benny gag where the armed thief asks “Your money or your life?” and Jack Benny won’t answer at first and finally replies “I’m thinking.”

Bisher sind die Autofahrer überwiegend nicht bereit, den neuen Bio-Kraftstoff E10 mit zehn Prozent Ethanol zu tanken.

Green Voters Damaging Environment Again

December 16, 2010 By in Hard Facts, Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , 4 Comments

And the latest survey (Umweltbewusstsein in Deutschland 2010) says:

62 percent of Germans asked want more goverment involvement with regards to environmental protection.
80 percent want more legislation promoting energy efficient homes and electrical appliances.
90 percent believe that industry needs to become more environmentally friendly.


 
Strangely, however, the study also found out that the demographic group most concerned about environmental protection (Green voters) was also the demographic group leaving the biggest so-called carbon footprint.

It appears that environmentally engaged Greenists often enjoy a relatively high income and consume accordingly, often taking “climate-damaging” vacation flights, for instance.

Poorer regular folk types, on the other hand (these are the folks who start working with fourteen or sixteen to help finance the Green voters’ often quite lengthly college educations in German egalitarian society), can’t afford to go on such vacations quite as often, drive less, stay at home more and even purchase more regional products, thus making their ecological footprints smaller.

A spokesman for the survey regrets this discrepancy between „Bewusstsein und Sein” (consciousness and action or practice) but appears to be a realist (or Realo, as they sometimes say here) and is placing his hopes and bets on the next generation of digital natives to do more for the environment by implementing more of something he calls technologische Innovationen (technical innovation).

“Dabei seien es jedoch gerade die Bevölkerungsschichten mit dem größten Umweltbewusstsein, die den größten ökologischen Fußabdruck hinterließen.”

Is this green enough for you?

October 17, 2010 By in Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

“The development of renewable energy in Germany was important and correct, but everything has a price. Every consumer should know that.”

And very soon they will. Electricity users in Germany will face up to a 70 percent increase in 2011 in the eco-surcharge they pay for the extra costs of renewable energy.

It could be worse, though–and probably soon will be. The German Energy Agency (Dena) fears that a too rapid expansion of solar energy will lead to an energy grid collapse. Hey, no risk no fun.

„Die Netze stehen vor der Überlastung durch Sonnenstrom.“

I dunno, German vacationers must have left it here or something

August 18, 2010 By in Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

As you know, Germany is greener than green. I mean, they ought to rename this place to New Greenland already.

And one of the reasons Germany is so green is that they take very, very good care of their garbage. They seperate it into different piles and clean it and recycle some of it and then incinerate the rest with green energy generated by coal-burning power plants (their coal here is green too).

And the stuff they don’t get around to they ship off to Brazil. Illegally, I mean. Well, they did this time. Brazilian authorities, green with anger, have now asked Germany to take it back please.

“Der Verstoß gegen internationale Abkommen ist ein Affront gegen die Unterzeichnerstaaten und in diesem Fall eine Missachtung Brasiliens und der brasilianischen Gesellschaft.”

The only good genetically modified potato…

July 29, 2010 By in Habeas Corpus, Hi-tech, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Is a dead genetically modified potato!

“After two decades of research efforts, BASF’s biotechnologists using genetic engineering succeeded in creating a potato, named Amflora, where the gene responsible for the synthesis of amylose has been turned off and thus the potato is unable to synthesize the undesirable substance, amylose.”

This means that, uh, hell if I know. But neither do the pissed off environmentalist anti-Amflora types in northern Germany who just raided that potato field up there. That didn’t stop them from getting in a rage and ripping those perilous plants out by their rapacious roots. Not until they got busted by the Plant Police, I mean.

“Gendreck weg!”