German Recycling Destroying Umwelt

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.

A Country Named Sue

You sue, I sue, we all do (sue). And here I thought Germany was the land of Konsens (consensus – not common sense). At least when it comes to doing this nuclear phaseout thang, I mean. Fooled again.

OK, it is logical and predictable that Germany’s power companies now have hurt feelings and are preparing to take legal action against the government’s decision to shut down their nuclear power plants because, well, the government is shutting down their nuclear power plants.

But what about all the thousands of lawsuits being prepared by power-line, wind energy and other regional resistance group apponents the nation over set to flood the lawsuit market once these big honkin’ power-line thingies start going up? You know, the power-lines that will transport the good offshore wind farm energy from the north to the bad industrial south?

Why can’t we (as in you) learn to live together in simple peace and harmony? Now that the nuclear power dragon has finally been slain, I mean. Come on, folks. Join hands, form a circle, sit down and talk.

Specifically, they will invoke Article 14 of the German constitution, which addresses the question of whether the companies’ assets are being expropriated, and if they are therefore entitled to compensation. After that, the amount of compensation would be negotiated in civil courts. According to internal calculations, the industry envisions a potential sum of €20 billion ($29 billion). The burden would ultimately fall on taxpayers.

The Green Plague (Another Green Shirt Terror Post)

Now it’s tainted German sprouts that have caused the deadly E. coli (Ehec) outbreak (but remember, the source of the outbreak seems to change here every few hours–ask Spanish organic cucumber farmers). Sprouts? That’s another one of them there green organic foods, ain’t it?

Anyway, one German Spiegel reader who goes by the name of alex300 is mad as hell and isn’t going to take it anymore. I feel his pain and stuff. He writes:

“What have we learned from the organic crisis?

1. That green organic farmers can cause more damage than Chernobyl and Fukushima together. How many deaths have been attributed to Fukushima? Just one worker who died of a heart attack. How many deaths do we have to thank for the green organic madness? More than 2000 contaminated by health stores and organic sprouts, about 1000 of them with irreparable brain and kidney damage, and 21 dead.

2. That biogas plants are much more dangerous than nuclear reactors. An atomic reactor can contaminate a 30 km area around it, max. The multiresistant bacteria that breed in biogas plants can wipe out all of humanity.

No power to the green organic plague!”

I hope alex300 is feeling better now. I sure do. For now.

Was haben wir aus der Biokrise gelernt?

1. Die grünen Biobauer können viel mehr schaden anrichten als Tschernobyl und  Fukushima zusammen. Wie viele Tote hat Fukushima verschuldet? Nur einen Arbeiter, der an einem Herzinfarkt verstarb. Wie viele Tote haben wir dank dem grünen Biowahn? Mehr als 2000 verseuchten durch Reformhäuser und Biosprossen, ca. 1000 mit irreparablen Hirn- und Nierenschäden und 21 Toten.

2. Die Biogasanlagen sind wesentlich gefährlicher als die AKWs. Ein AKW kann maximal 30 km Umgebung gefährlich verseuchen. Die multiresistenten Bakterien, die in Biogasanlagen brüten, können die ganze Menschheit auslöschen.

Keine Macht der grünen Bioseuche!

German (Carbon) Footprints in The Sand

What are we cheering about again? (This is another one of those Green Shirt terror posts.)

In a democracy, you can say A, but you can also say B, just as you can rely on the assumption that nothing has to last forever. Everything can be changed, amended, courses reversed. In short, the very life and soul of democracy is that there are always other options.

Germany’s federal government is now abusing that basic rule in a scandalous way. There can be no doubt that the country needs to be looking at a smart mix of different energy sources for the future, and that developing viable alternatives to atomic power is an urgent necessity. Yet the manner in which the federal government has rushed to its decision to put a definitive stop to the use of nuclear energy by 2022 runs counter to all rules of democratic procedure. It began when, for politically motivated and tactical reasons alone, the government went back on the agreement made last fall — just seven months ago — to extend the life span of nuclear power plants. After the Japanese plant Fukushima began leaking radiation, it felt compelled to cede to public pressure by making a rapid move away from atomic power. Backtracking in the blink of an eye, the government moved so quickly partly out of fear of the Greens, and entirely without discussion or reflection.

… Germany has shown no respect for the energy policies of other E.U. countries, and particularly no trace of consideration for the East-West split that exists in Europe over nuclear power. Instead, Germany has chosen to go it alone on this issue, assuming a kind of avant-garde, “moral high ground” role that is not always going to play well elsewhere.

Die Bundesnetzagentur schlägt Alarm: Wegen des Atomausstiegs befürchtet die Behörde bereits in der kommenden Woche zu Pfingsten Schwierigkeiten beim Stromtransport.

PS: And lest we forget…

Germans To End Opposition To New Overhead Power Lines Overnight

As reported earlier, in order to avoid stunting the growth in Europe’s largest economy after its decision to shut down nuclear power forever, Germany must now carry out a massive expansion of it’s electricity-delivery network.

The overhead power lines which will be necessary to connect new offshore wind farms in the north to the factory-rich south and to allow the high-volume energy transfer from French nuclear reactors to cover the shortfall as Germany phases out its own reactors (they only provide a mere 23 percent of the country’s current energy demand) are, however, “unsightly and yucky,” as all Germans know. And they will also probably cause cancer, too (the next DANGER, but that will be another story later, guaranteed).

Fortunately for the German nation, it’s altruistic, selfless citizens have spontaneously decided to sacrifice their own petty personal concerns and grievences in regard to these power lines and win one for the collective common good by immediately ending all opposition to the construction of said yucky power lines and promising to never ever bitch or moan about them ever again, honest.

And if you believe that you can build your overhead power line on some prime Florida swamp land I’ve got for sale for you right here.

A grid upgrade is essential, and Germans must end their opposition to new power lines overhead, energy economics professor Christoph Weber said.

More Green Shirt Activity

See? I told ya.

Greenpeace activists climbed on top of Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate yesterday to demand a speedy end to the use of atomic energy (by 2015).

I guess 2022 just ain’t speedy enough.

Every day of Green terror is one day too many (my translation).”

PS: The best part about the article was the Google ad I saw next to it: “Price check for 900 electicity providers: Compare prices and save money today!”

Tyrannischer Tugendstaat Deutschland

I’m tellin’ y’all, the Green Shirts are taking over here. Don’t say later that you hadn’t been warned. It’s just what the Germans ordered, or wanted all along: A new Tyrannical German State of Goodness and Niceness.* And don’t think it isn’t coming because we all know it is.

Now that the only German party that even pretended to want to give its citizen’s the freedom to choose has shot itself in the foot and will most likely bleed to death (the FDP, the anti-Greens), now that the tsunami in Japan has carried the Greens in Germany to major Volkspartei status, good green intentions will soon begin paving the way to hell in a big way and there is not a thing any of you out there can do about it.

Germans were never able to stomach Liberalismus in the first place (I don’t mean liberalism as in being “left,” I mean liberalism as in advocating the freedom of the individual) and now that the latest advocates of politically correct collectivism have ridden into town to guide their constituents down the proper party path (“I’m from the government and I’m here to help”),  everything is going to be alright because, well, we say it is and all are thrilled about the thrilling changes about to appear on the Green horizon.

Some examples of things to come: Now a “traffic light” sticker will be introduced at German restaurants, for instance. This will let potential visitors know (by using the pretty colors green, yellow and red) just how good the hygienic condition of the restaurant they were about to visit might have been. More anti-smoking, women’s quotas, anti-discrimination laws, better waste separation and stricter speed limit laws are soon to follow, along with the solar energy, eco-power and electro cars that will need to be more heavily subsidised because, well, they are the only solution (the final solution?) and that’s why they have to be heavily subsidised, not to mention the host of other environmental protection measures that haven’t even been thought up yet (did I mention the part about shutting down all nuclear power plants?). Laws, laws, laws. It’s not that these are just any old laws however, every state makes laws, these are laws designed to make Germans better Germans, just like the Greens meant them to be. Kontrolle ist besser. Father knows best. I mean Mother does.

This is a great leap forward for Nanny State-kind, in other words. And just when you thought it couldn’t get any more nanny-like, too. Liberalism was yesterday, dude. Actually, no. Come to think of it, it has never been tried here yet. But still.

And the reason why it’s never been tried here? “Liberalism knows that what is good in society does not come about through good intention and central planning but through the competition of ideas and their agents.”

“Der Begriff Wachstum ist überholt. Wir brauchen eine neue Größe, die Auskunft darüber gibt, ob das Wachstum auch die Wohlfahrt erhöht.” Eine Bestimmung der Lebensqualität, des zufriedenen Bürgerbefindens, als Maßstab für die ökonomische und gesellschaftliche Entwicklung?

* Read the Zeit article Verschont uns! by Jan Ross (page 10, Die Zeit number 22) on which this post is based. And take a look at Hexenverbrennung on the same page while you’re at it (it’s about retro-feminist terror). Sorry, couldn’t find the links.

PS: Thanks for the Hexenverbrennung link, Indeterminacy.

Green Eco Dictatorship

Green Types everywhere out there know that this Stuttgart 21 train station thingy cannot be allowed to be built, no matter what (the rest of us out there still don’t know just why that is but maybe we’ll figure it out yet).

And now that Stuttgart (Baden-Wuerttemberg) is Green politically, Green Terror Types are starting to come out of the woodwork and beginning to take matters into their own green hands (just like Oma und Opa used to take matters into their brown ones).

Or as Henryk Broder reports it in that provocative way he does:

The Federal Republic made a great step forward toward becoming a Green eco dictatorship yesterday. The project manager for Stuttgart 21, Hany Azer (migration background, by the way) has resigned from his post.

The reasons he named were “hostility and threats” from Stuttgart 21 opponents. Most recently he has only been able to work while under protection of the company’s personal security personnel. This news item should have caused great alarm (but it didn’t).

Oh I dunno. As long as they don’t start wearing green shirts and stuff like that everything will turn out OK… Won’t it?

Jeder Fall von sexueller Belästigung in einem Großraumbüro löst überregionale Schlagzeilen aus. Aber wenn einer der besten Ingenieure der Republik, der unter anderem Projektleiter für den Bau des Berliner Hauptbahnhofs gewesen ist, aus dem Job gemobbt wird, regt sich nicht einmal Frank Bsirske darüber auf.

U-Turn, I-Turn, We All Turn

Turn, as in spinnen (to spin or, in this case, to be mental). This is another one of those only-in-Germany ones.

How long has it been since the latest greatest German Wende (turnaround)? Read some of these:

The U-turn on nuclear policy Chancellor Angela Merkel announced last month following the Fukushima accident will involve a massive expansion of renewable energies — as rapidly as possible. She is giving the public what it wants. But the shift will nevertheless provoke a major backlash. Germans may love their green energy, but they also have a growing proclivity towards not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) lawsuits and referenda.

Many are now asking themselves if the transition to renewable energies will ruin the nation’s countryside.

Germany’s Federal Agency for Nature Conservation is already warning that in the rush to expand renewable energies, nature and wildlife conservation is being put on the back burner.

Germany’s opposition to wind power is well organized. The website windkraftgegner.de (wind power opponents), lists more than 70 protest campaigns.

Opposition is also mounting against the massive power masts that will be needed to transport clean energy across Germany and Europe.

And on and on and on. I don’t make this stuff up, people. Now they’re takin’ it to the streets to protest against renewable energy.

And the Green party’s grand energy strategy after their magnificent triumph down there in Baden-Wuerttemberg last month? Save power.

“We as Greens need to demonstrate our credibility,” national party co-chair Claudia Roth has said. At the same time, though, the Greens are very often active in the local NIMBY protests against the very kind of projects the party backs.

If Germans got much greener…

They would start blending in with the leaves and the flowers here.

Green? They call their bicycles recycles here.

Table legs sprout roots here, it’s that green.

We’re talking green. One guy I know named his kid Kyoto.

Some folks are so green that they carry a tree around with them at all times for optimum air quality.

And German businesses aren’t much better these days. Some have turned so green that employees hug their corporate offices.

Green? They are so green that the very thought of unsorted garbage landing in a landfill makes them turn red.