Green Germans Can’t Enlighten The French

Thank goodness. They remain determined to not only keep using nuclear energy, but to ramp up their program.

The French, for their part, haven’t been able to make clear to the Germans a startling discovery they made a few years ago: Nuclear power is reliable because it produces day and night. The German renewables, well, aren’t, don’t and never will.

France ramps up nuclear power as Germany closes plants in the name of clean energy.

Chancellor Angela Merkel soon caved to public pressure and announced Germany would phase out all nuclear power within 10 years. Her government kept that promise. Germany’s new chancellor, Olaf Scholz, wants to speed up the phase-out of coal and eventually natural gas. He promises that by the end of this decade, 80% of Germany’s energy will be from renewables. And he doesn’t include nuclear in that category.

German Green Government In Action

It’s brilliant, really. Or diabolical, if you prefer.

First create the current energy crisis by forcing the country to go down the ideological path to unreliable and unaffordable renewable energy, come what may, heavily burdening the German taxpayer, consumer and businessman in the process. Then promise aid to those most negatively affected by this crisis by burdening the German taxpayer, consumer and businessman even further. And still come out of it smelling like a rose. Aid here is just another nice word for taxation.

Germany’s soaring energy prices force government to promise aid – Headline inflation dips slightly, but energy costs still rising at double-digit pace.

German Greens Red With Green Rage

Because the rest of Europe seems prepared to finally get rid of some out-dated Green ideological ballast. Time to bury an unshakeable, near-religious conviction that never had a place in the real world in the first place.

EU drafts plan to label gas and nuclear investments as green – The European Union has drawn up plans to label some natural gas and nuclear energy projects as “green” investments after a year-long battle between governments over which investments are truly climate-friendly.

The European Commission is expected to propose rules in January deciding whether gas and nuclear projects will be included in the EU “sustainable finance taxonomy”.

This is a list of economic activities and the environmental criteria they must meet to be labelled as green investments.

By restricting the “green” label to truly climate-friendly projects, the system aims to make those investments more attractive to private capital, and stop “greenwashing”, where companies or investors overstate their eco-friendly credentials.

Progress

Living the Green German Dream.

In their Green German Dream World. The Germans proudly demonstrate to the rest of the world how to turn off their nuclear power plants (and their “dirty” power plants too) while simultaneously importing nuclear energy from France and dirty natural gas from Russia to make up the difference.

Germany shuts down half of its 6 remaining nuclear plants – Germany on Friday shut down half of the six nuclear plants it still has in operation, a year before the country draws the final curtain on its decades-long use of atomic power.

New German Weapons Export Law That Won’t Actually Change Anything Now In The Works

It won’t change anything but it will make us feel good about ourselves.

Compare the weapons export numbers for Germany this year with the numbers this time next year if you don’t believe me. Just have patience. Seen it a dozen times. It’s a recurring, calming ritual Germans like to perform. They seem to believe it reinforces their moral superpower status.

Germany: Baerbock vows new law to curb weapons exports – German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said new weapons export control legislation is in the works. During its last few days in power, Angela Merkel’s administration approved almost €5 billion in arms sales…

Together with the United States, Russia, and France, Germany is one of the world’s biggest arms exporters, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Germans To Save The Environment By Destroying The Environment

Please don’t let Green Germans in on this climate crisis fun fact. It would only hurt their feelings.

Green utopians bravely ignore two fundamental problems with renewables: They are unreliable, thus requiring 100% backup, and energy-dilute, not energy-dense (like nuclear power), requiring huge tracts of land, transmission lines, mining, etc. (Apocalypse Never, Michael Shellenberger).

Wildlife concerns blunt Germany’s green power efforts – Germany is expanding its power grid to aid the transition to renewable energies, but local residents in some areas are holding up the process over concerns about wildlife.

“The problem is that wind energy is produced largely in the north, while many needs, especially industrial ones, are in the south. This electricity must therefore be transported using new networks,” Dierk Bauknecht, an expert at the Oeko-Institut research centre, told AFP.

To meet these needs, the German government has launched more than one hundred new power line projects over the past few years spanning 12,000 kilometres, according to official figures from the economy ministry.

Is It A Pangolin?

Is it a Piebald Squirrel? Maybe it’s a Kermode Bear?

Nope. But it is most definitely an extremely rare sighting in Germany. And in Berlin of all places. It is a so-called “pro-nuclear activist,” practically extinct, a highly endangered species indeed. They’re never seen in these parts. Not for very long. Poachers hunt them for their meat, hide, bones and hair.

German pro-nuclear activists make rare appearance in Berlin – With Germany set to shut down its last six reactors in 2022, a group of pro-nuclear activists made a rare appearance in Berlin over the weekend in the hope of reversing the decision. Operators, for their part, are wary of another abrupt policy change.

How Did This Land In Der Spiegel?

But I guess even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while.*

The Dirty Truth About Clean Technologies – The poor South is being exploited so that the rich North can transition to environmental sustainability. Entire swaths of land are being destroyed to secure the resources needed to produce wind turbines and solar cells. Are there alternatives?

Yes, there are. One of them is called “nuclear energy.”

*The Germans say “even a blind chicken finds a kernel of corn once in a while.”

The FDP Decides

It seems pretty clear to me who the next German Finance Minister will be.

Their boss, Christian Linder, will get the job. If he doesn’t, it won’t come to this odd coalition of SPD, Greens and FDP.

Lindner and the FDP stand for low taxes, debt limitation and a hard line towards Germany’s European partners. The climate crisis is to be addressed by private investment and carbon pricing. The Greens, by contrast, have put climate first – and for that reason advocate large-scale investment, lifting Germany’s “debt brake”, and a pro-European policy that continues the steps taken in 2020 towards common, debt-financed investment policy. It is precisely in these policy areas – where the differences between the Greens (and the SPD) and the FDP are greatest – that the finance ministry is critical.

German Of The Day: Zitrus-Koalition

That means “citrus coalition.” The Greens have green as their party color (what a surprise) and the FDP has yellow.

Germany’s Kingmakers – Difficult Talks Ahead for Greens and Free Democrats – The Green Party and the business-friendly Free Democrats plan to hold exploratory talks with each other before meeting with the main chancellor candidates in the coming days. They appear to be worlds apart but are already finding some common ground…

FDP leader Christian Lindner also continued Monday with the message he initiated on election night: measured praise for the potential coalition partner. The Union (CDU/CSU) and the Social Democrats (SPD) are not parties of change, he said. In talks between his party and the Greens, it would therefore be necessary to examine “whether, despite all the differences, this could become the progressive center of a new coalition government,” even if that seems like a bit of a stretch.