Germany megathread

[Estrella]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-02-10/why-germany-s-days-as-an-industrial-superpower-are-coming-to-an-end?embedded-checkout=true

"Germany’s Days as an Industrial Superpower Are Coming to an End"

Five decades of suicidal energy policy coming home to roost. I’d be feeling worried for Germany if this wasn’t 100% self-inflicted.

Related: after forcing a shutdown of clean, safe and reliable power plants and enthusiastically supporting a massive expansion of coal mining, Die Grünen continue their environmental destruction speedrun.

After scrapping nuclear reactors, Germany to spend billions on new gas power plants

Berlin has agreed to spend €16 billion to build four major natural gas plants to meet electricity demand in a major overhaul of the country's energy grid. The ruling coalition reached the decision following talks between Chancellor Olaf Scholz of the Social Democratic Party and the economy minister, Green Party politician Robert Habeck.

The government has described the fossil gas power plants as "modern, highly flexible and climate-friendly" because they will be capable of conversion to use clean-burning hydrogen gas produced from renewable sources. The plants are projected to produce up to 10 gigawatts of electricity. Tenders for the projects will begin soon.

Germany shut down its final three nuclear reactors last April, despite warnings that it would cause more fossil fuel to be burned. Last year, a report from Berlin's own climate agency said the country was likely to miss its target of cutting greenhouse emissions by 65 percent by 2030.

In September, Scholz dismissed calls from his own coalition to restart the reactors in light of the energy crisis, declaring: "Nuclear energy is over."

10 GW is incidentally also the amount of energy generated by Germany’s remaining nuclear power plants before Scholz and Habeck oh-so-wisely shut them down last year.

[Estrella]

I believe that it was Macron himself who needlessly started this debate which only distracts from the real issues regarding Ukraine.

Worse IMHO is SPD's main appeaser Rolf Mützenich applauding Scholz for not sending the Taurus missiles, arguing that it prevents Germany from becoming a "warring party"... the same argument the dovesh wing of the SPD had used against Leopard shipments and before that against Marder shipments. According to the version of Mütznenich from summer of 2022 we already have been a "warring party" for the past 18 months now.

Remember Tucker’s unhinged conspiracy theory about how the Ukrainian government declared him a terrorist and are out to assassinate him because some NGO put him up on Myrotvorets? Mützenich was actually the first one to do this back in 2022. Just an absolutely disgusting character.

[Estrella]

Some interesting thoughts from an n-tv journalist about Scholz, his willfull obstructionism of Taurus and the justification he came up with at a Q&A with citizens in Dresden. tl;dr it’s not cowardice, or not just cowardice — he might be trying to reposition SPD’s foreign policy to be closer to AfD/Linke/Wagenknecht.

https://twitter.com/hwieduwilt/status/1763469526300057674

I see it completely differently: Scholz is starting the election campaign. His target is clearly the peace movement and the fearful. Putin will not be able to understand it any other way than as:  To Moscow with love.

It's almost divine that seasoned professional observers here are acting as if Scholz is a little fool who constantly has the wrong things falling out of his face. Yes, he can't communicate - but he can certainly strategize. And he always says things carefully.

Incidentally, it is a common disinformation technique to link an accusation with a supposed decontextualization. I treated myself to the full-length Citizens' Assembly and fell off my chair at the scene without any help from Twitter.

Scholz performs Schrödinger's solidarity: it's there and it's not. The cat was dead during the Citizens' Dialogue. And the little animal has very bad prospects - because soon the East will be voting.

[Estrella]

Norbert Röttgen (CDU) and Anton Hofreiter (Greens) wrote an op-ed in today's FAZ, titled The Catastrophic Defeatism of the Chancellor. Besides the obvious fact that Hofreiter is an important member of a governing party, until now his approach to Scholz's hesitation was a basically conciliatory 'it's bad, but we'll sort it out together'. Now the gloves are off. As you can imagine from the title, they tear Scholz to shreds.

https://twitter.com/michael_leh/status/1766915906880282805

Nuclear war. Escalation. War party. Those are the buzzwords that the Chancellor has coined since 24 February 2022 and that signal only one thing to Putin: he can continue breaking international law and norms and invade countries without any serious consequences.

When in April 2022 it came to sending of heavy weapons to Ukraine that had been blocked by the federal government for two agonizing months, the Chancellor started unnecessarily talking about the danger of a nuclear war. Putin could celebrate. He basically didn't need to do anything, Germany scared itself.

Why then does the Chancellor keeping using the nuclear war card? There is an obvious fear that next year, the war will become the topic of electoral campaign. The message to the people in 2025 will be: our Chancellor kept you out of war. Prudence is his middle name. Translated, it means: he is ready to weaken Europe and the West and do less than he can for Ukraine for domestic political reasons.

Scholz's explanation for why he won't send Taurus was "I am the chancellor, that's why" (yes, he literally said that). If you tell people that something will happen only over your dead body, they might take it the wrong way.

[Estrella]

Liar, liar, eco-friendly coal on fire.

https://twitter.com/weplanetint/status/1783722796834869569

The bombshell investigation from Cicero: Habeck's secret files: How the Greens cheated on the nuclear phase-out. The nuclear power files of the Ministry of Economic Affairs released by Cicero show how Green Party puppetmasters manipulated the decision to extend the operating life of German nuclear power plants in 2022.

Here is an English summary.

Die Grünen have a long tradition of engaging in the sort of demonization of science you'd expect from American conservatives: in the 2000s they wanted to ban research on nuclear fusion and were one of the driving forces behind making health insurance companies fund homeopathic snake oil salesmen. It's not surprising then that government's scientific experts were shut out of the consultations about shutdown of the nuclear power plants and decisions were made by an inner circle of loyal ideologues. Habeck's people then colluded to cover up a report saying that the reactors could run safely for years. They released and entirely rewritten report with factual inaccuracies and outright misinformation, with the conclusion that lifespan extension is "not supported from a safety standpoint", which they literally just made up. They then blocked freedom of information requests to get the original, to the point that Cicero only got the documents after suing the ministry.

[Estrella]

Reuters: G7 offers leeway to Germany, Japan in deal to quit coal by 2035

Bloomberg: Germany Set to Pay More Coal Plants to Prevent Blackouts

Really makes you wonder if other European countries should even bother reducing emissions. Romania, a much poorer country than Germany, is going ahead with phasing out coal in eight years. Hungary will phase out coal in three years. Slovakia just shut down all of its coal mines and coal-fired power plants and it got nothing. Poland is trying to replace coal with green energy and all it got in return was a storm of protests from German state governments. Germany replaced clean nuclear power with the dirtiest coal in Europe and it got a specially carved out exemption that says they can pollute for as long and as much as they want. In return, the German government vetoed a G7 proposal to endorse nuclear energy as a tool to fight climate change. What's the point?

[Estrella]

Looks like the remains of Die Linke think their only way back to relevance is to be bigger vatniks than Wagenknecht. What's strange is that this charge is led by a man who was until now one of the party's very few pro-Ukraine figures and even supported weapon deliveries.

https://twitter.com/die_linke_th/status/1791377429979648496

"My dream is that it is enshrined in our constitution that no weapons are delivered anywhere from our country, from Germany," says our Minister President Bodo Ramelow

[Estrella]

And another FDP moment:

https://twitter.com/derjamesjackson/status/1795840110724092319