Cooling towers of a coal fired power plant in Brandenburg, Germany, By Andreas Altenburger, Shutterstock.com
In Germany, reality is triumphing over political posturing on climate, explains Francis Menton in the Manhattan Contrarian.
Over the weekend, the talks among political parties in Germany to form a coalition government collapsed. As of now, nobody seems to know what is going to happen next. And — even though there is little overt dissent on the virtue of reducing carbon emissions — it seems like the ever-more-evident costs of this “climate” program are starting to drive events.
In Germany, a political party needs to get 5% of the vote in an election to get any seats in the Bundestag. As an indication of how correct Båtstrand was, in the previous (2013) election, the only party that could remotely be considered a climate dissenter, AfD, got only 4.7% and no seats. Another party, FDP — a free market classic liberal party and not really climate dissenters, but legitimately concerned about the costs of “climate” policies — got 4.8% and also no seats.
In the recent elections in September, those two parties suddenly got, between them, 23.3% of the vote and 24.6% of the seats. And suddenly Angela Merkel needs one or both of them to form a coalition government. Oh, and she also needs the Green Party. How is that playing out? An impasse!
So, if you were to go around the streets of the major cities of Germany and take an opinion survey, you will find very close to one hundred percent agreement on the need to “take action” on climate change immediately. But what? Does this mean that we will be putting thousands of coal miners out of a job, and more thousands of utility workers at coal plants out of a job, and driving the cost of electricity from three times the U.S. average to five times or maybe ten, and making our electric grid not work right any more, and by the way also “partially de-industrializing” Germany? Wait, you didn’t tell us about those things!
Read more here.
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