I hate to be the one to have to ask this, but was Greta Thunberg consulted on this decision? If not – and I seriously doubt she was – then Germany is in for some very serious antipathy from the most important person on earth.
In a demonstration of the failure of Germany’s pursuit of so-called “green energy” and its policy of relying on Russian gas in the meantime, a coal-fired power plant will be reconnected to the nation’s electricity grid.
While the economic powerhouse of Europe — so called — scrambles to secure energy sources before the winter months, the previously shuttered Mehrum coal power plant in Lower Saxony will become the first to once again be connected to Germany’s grid.
On Monday, the manager of the Czech-owned EGH operating company, Kathrin Voelkner said: “We have declared the return to the electricity market. We assume that we will return to the grid in the short term,” according to the Frankfurter Neue Presse newspaper.
The move was preceded by the federal government implementing an emergency ordinance to allow mothballed oil and coal-powered plants to open back up until April of next year, as the country faces a shortfall in its energy amid the conflict in Ukraine.
Economy Minister Robert Habeck, a leading member of the German Greens, has described the decision to turn back on coal plants as “bitter” but a necessary evil.
While the government has allowed for the return to coal power, the socialist SPD-led traffic light coalition government has so far refused to abandon its decision to shut its remaining nuclear power plants by the end of the year, a move that followed years of anti-nuclear policies from former Chancellor Angela Merkel following the Fukushima meltdown in Japan.
The co-leader of The Greens, Ricarda Lang has said that a return to nuclear power “will not happen, on our watch at least.”
This is Ricarda Lang, the German parliament’s first bisexual member:
Gotta give her some credit – looking like that at 28 isn’t something most people can do.
Lang said that there was a “lack of seriousness” in the debate surrounding nuclear, which she described as a “highly risky technology,” despite nuclear power being one of the safest major energy sources in the world.
“But we need answers that actually suit the problem,” the Green politician continued. “We have a warmth problem, not an electricity problem,” she claimed, despite gas still being used for energy production.
Such a deep thinker.
It’s about warmth. No one really needs electricity. The only thing they need is to not die from freezing to death.
This is pretty out there at this point though, isn’t it?
These people have already said that it would be better to die than to change the weather with carbon dioxide. I don’t know why they said that, but they said that. It’s definitely better for Russia to win in the Ukraine, by their standards, than it is for the weather to change.
According to their own goofy horseshit, coal is doubly worse than natural gas. Germany is willing to double the warming crisis in order to try vainly to hurt Russian people.