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Polish right-wing government is blocking any development that could hurt coal industry.

They passed the law that significantly constrains where windmills can be located. They also hindered development of solar by reverting the law that allowed individual owners of solar panels to be paid for the overproduced electricity.




Weasel words like "right-wing" are unproductive. Besides, no post-communist gov't in Poland had don't anything serious in this arena. Also, I encourage you to keep in mind the broader context, please.


Polish government is not right-wing. There may be right wing of it, but it is not right wing per se. Right wing of what? See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanation for a better clue about what current polish government may aspire to be like. It may have some right wing parts of what is above all big centrist coalition.

Another issue is. How is this government blocking development that could hurt coal industry any different from what all former polish governments were doing ? But i agree that all those governments are mostly known for their "block everything" attitude.

The website makes my Firefox browser slurp 3GB of memory, renders it unresponsive and it crashes. And please do not color Poland black, if as Wikipedia says (Yes I know. I know). Carbon dioxide (chemical formula CO2) is a colorless and odorless gas that is vital to life on Earth. Paint Poland and Estonia green. Green as in Greenhouse. Painting it black may suggest some form of blame for some imaginary "pollution" which i hope was not the point of the authors of the site. Or was it ? Come on. Don't make us look like Mordor.


The gradient goes from green to black. Black represents a carbon intensity of 700 gCO2/kWH. If you want Poland to be green, Poland has to consume less carbon.

As Polish government being right-wing: Since it's a coalition of two parties, it would be wrong to call the entire government right-wing. But the Law and Justice party certainly is.


> Poland has to consume less carbon.

I thought it was about emitting CO2. If it is about consuming carbon (coal), then we would take black badge for being leader in coal consumption in Europe. Black is ok then. But we are not even a leader in coal consumption.

Colors are just colors, but it seems as if black here suggests pollution (opposite to green on the scale). CO2 does not qualify as a pollutant that easily as NO2, S02 or NH3 for that matter. If anything it should be more on the green end of the scale. But it would make the scale seem nonsensical in that context. Wouldn't it ?

Anyway. I don't buy it.


The colours do represent CO2 emissions. But Poland wouldn't emit so much if it weren't also consuming that much.

(To be fair, it looks like it's exporting a little bit. That doesn't help, since it's nearly all fossil.)


Sanation: a populist political movement for "moral sanation (healing) of the Polish body politic". It's nationalistic, anti-democratic, authoritarian and was gagging/killing/imprisoning the opposition.


Didn't your government effectively take away all powers from the top constitutional court, allowing the government to pass any law without judicial backlash? Meanwhile you are all hung up on what the color green represents.


Btw, that's not at all accurate where Poland's constitutional court is concerned (mind you, the court was created by a communist dictator to guard the regime against the rising tide of the Solidarity movement; couple that with Poland's mediocre constitution today and the previous ruling party's machinations and involvement in manufacturing the crisis). The issue is more complicated than what the media has presented us with. It's also rather banal in itself and is being used by powerful interest groups to keep the post-communist boat steady. In general, I recommend deeper familiarity with the topic before commenting. Many journalists possess superficial comprehension of the topics they report about and basing one's opinions on a few articles is not good practice. (Furthermore, Anne Applebaum, who I claim has been quite influential in influencing American opinion on the subject, has written about this and related topics in the WaPo a number of times in what amounts to a conflict of interest: her husband Radek Sikorski was a high ranking minister in the previous gov't and member of the previous ruling party, the same party embroiled in numerous corruption scandals and stands to lose under this gov't, never mind that they have a long history of demonizing ands scapegoating the current ruling party when it was in the opposition as a way of deflecting from its own failures and as a way of trying to secure its elite status. Mind you, Sikorski was himself a central figure in some of these corruption scandals, one of which involved making illegal backroom deals with the central bank to influence the elections in his party's favor.)


> the court was created by a communist dictator to guard the regime against the rising tide of the Solidarity movement

Funny for you to say that since the creation of constitutional court was one of the Solidarity's demands to the goverment.

Besides, now, once the "law and order" forcefully injected into the court their own mediocre but loyal laweyrs it appeals to the people (with the voice of the president) to respect thet constitutional court.


>Carbon dioxide (chemical formula CO2) is a colorless and odorless gas that is vital to life on Earth. Paint Poland and Estonia green. Green as in Greenhouse. Painting it black may suggest some form of blame for some imaginary "pollution" which i hope was not the point of the authors of the site.

Ever heard of global warming ?


Ever heard of benefits greenhouse effect or photosynthesis. Come on get rid of CO2. Because of course it is the root of all evil. And by reference Poland is the root of all evil too. We even dare to still produce coal. Not as much as Germany though.

But of course we are painted black on this site.

Even if..

http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/tgm/table.do?tab=table&plugin=1...

At least it will not crash your browser.

Edit: And of course thanks for all the downvotes. It really just emphasize the level of discussion and tasty bias here. And thanks for bringing up the constitutional court topic here and upvoting it. Which of course has nothing to do with the discussion. Good job.


I didn't expect to find a climate change denier in HN comments.


Surprise Surprise, Open Society. But wait,who denies climate change ? This wikipedia quote is not even about climate change. Is it ?




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