Germany's generous subsidy and build out of solar, while solar was still really expensive, was key in driving the cost down which now the whole world benefits from. Huge credit there.
But bio fuels are an unmitigated disaster. Electric ground transportation is the future.
You can already use trains in a large scale: most larger European cities are well connected and have extensive local transport systems. Next the public sector will invest a lot of money into electrical busses and their infrastructure. E-Bikes are already very popular. Cars will take a few more years...
Merkel's government had ambitious goals, but industry and public was not ready - without substantial financial incentives, which would have been another problem.
Many people commute by train from the "suburbs" or the smaller cities sprinkled around the larger cities, partly because it's convenient, partly because traffic is really bad in major cities.
Well Germany had the unfortunate advantage of having many of their cities complete destroyed. I live in Hamburg, which was flattened by bombs. After the war the cities were rebuild - for cars..
Sure, no one's suggesting they _should_ be altered, but evidence from the entire world suggests that most people (partly in a political context) are too dumb to understand the concept of the damage done by a car-friendly/human-unfriendly city design. So external barriers like the one described here tend to be the only defense.
Yes the current prices are thanks to mass production in china, but he is saying that germany started to invest into the solar boom when prices where still high and without the boom might not have happened (that fast). E.g. in 2009 germany had 10GW [0] installed versus chinas 300MW [1]. But new solar installs peaked in germany at about 7.5GW over the next 3 years, among other reasons because germany does get significantly less sunlight.
No, for a long time Germany was the only significant solar market in the world. German tax payers and individuals spent billions when it was still far from economical, jump starting the whole industry:
>The timeline of China’s rise began in the late 1990s when Germany, overwhelmed by the domestic response to a government incentive program to promote rooftop solar panels, provided the capital, technology and experts to lure China into making solar panels to meet the German demand.
>China, according to Chung, had “dabbled” in solar energy only as a source of electricity to help impoverished rural areas remote from its power grid. But then some of its pioneering companies became intrigued by the income that manufacturing solar panels for export to Germany might bring in.
>China then decided to follow Germany’s lead again, developing its own “feed-in tariff” that paid handsome prices for electricity generated by rooftop solar. The result was a surge in domestic demand for solar.
By PV Watt per capita Germany is still number one by a large margin at 511 (Japan is second with 336, China is at 56).
If scientists finally succeed in mimicking the oxygen evolving complex from photosynthesis, you get decentralized free hydrogen. Suddenly real hydrogen combustion (instead of fuel cells) makes sense and should be advantageous, even compared to electric transportation.
But, of course, it's a bit like fusion power: should be achievable in principle, but the details are infuriatingly difficult.
I‘m not talking about photosynthesis (oxygen evolving complex, photosystem II and photosystem I), only the very first step. I don‘t see why it should be inefficient.
Hydrogen fuel cells use about 3x the electric energy vs. battery powered cars, if you create hydrogen via hydrolysis. It is not only the energy used for creating the hydrogen, but also the compression and transport of the hydrogen is using a lot of energy.
Basically Germany will miss the goal of a 40% reduction by 2020 with only reducing CO2 by 30%.
Beside coal/gas power, mostly from closing nuclear power plants. For example a quarter of CO2 emission in Berlin is coming from two Vattenfall coal power plants. Other effects are larger increase in people and economic growth.
I have been buying renewable energy for 15 years, but not many/not enough people in Germany care.
On a positive note renewable energy is 35% in Germany.
This largely coincides with the Green Party's rise in popularity. Sadly it seems they have no real plan, only ideology. IMO this is why they've prioritised shutting down nuclear power over coal power, because demonstrating against nuclear power is almost required to be a member, but sensible policies are not.
I don't think you can blame Merkel, she doesn't really have a hard stance on most topics - if anything, the opposite is true, and her position on many things is vague or pragmatic. It seems to me that the popularity of Martin Schulz and the AfD are a direct response to that.
> This largely coincides with the Green Party's rise in popularity.
The green party could probably profit much more from those topics if one had the feeling they'd be more trustworthy in those issues.
Particularly in the diesel emissions scandal the greens are a big failure - the reason being that the greens form the government in southwest Germany (Baden Württemberg), which has a strong car industry.
I'm from Baden Württemberg, and I'm not sure how strong the car industry is any more. For example, every year a bit more autobahn has a speed restriction applied to it.
I think you're spot on though. The diesel emissions scandal is made worse by the fact that diesel was promoted in the EU because the CO2 emissions tend to be lower than petrol. This is reflected by diesel vs petrol prices in France or Germany (diesel was/is? cheaper per 100km), compared to the UK where diesel wasn't as popular.
Not sure about the situation in France, but in Germany the diesel/petrol difference is much older than any CO2 concerns.
Here, Diesel is taxed less than petrol, originally as a measure to support agriculture (who traditionally use Diesel engines on the field). There's a slightly higher tax on the car itself with a Diesel engine.
Together this makes Diesel cheaper if you're using your car _a lot_, and so vehicle fleets (corporate, car rental, ...) are all Diesel based.
That's hard to roll back politically (since it's cutting into expensive investments of huge organisations).
Living in Baden-Württemberg is probably the reason. Green is the strongest party there (2016 30%). They are ahead of CDU (Merkels party) for two periods now.
Fair enough, the point I was trying to make is that it's more than just Merkel + some lobbying, and that this article is badly written and mostly rubbish.
Closing all of the Nuclear power plants after Fukushima was a bit of a dumb reactionary move. It's shifted power generation from emission free Nuclear to dirty emission heavy coal, which emits more radioactive Uranium into the atmosphere than a Nuclear plant (or so I am led to believe).
It's basically paying lip-service to being environmentally friendly so that you can feel good about yourself while doing nothing productive. Kind of like having separate bins for recycling, green waste, and general rubbish in the home/office but in the end just emptying all of them into the same place.
> Closing all of the Nuclear power plants after Fukushima was a bit of a dumb reactionary move. It's shifted power generation from emission free Nuclear to dirty emission heavy coal
There was a plan in place since 2002 to shut down all nuclear plants by about 2020 (plus/minus some, since the criteria was amount of power emitted per plant).
That plan was cancelled in 2010 by Merkel, replaced by a more generous plan (deadline: 2022) a year later after Fukushima.
In 1998, we got an SPD/Greens coalition government (with SPD being left-ish). The Green party formed in the late 1980s from various ecological initiatives, among them groups that protested against the use of nuclear power as an energy source.
Therefore quitting nuclear power was part of that government's DNA.
2002:
In 2000 they managed to create an accord on ending the use of nuclear power plants, signed by the various affected parties in 2001 and turned into law in 2002.
The law forbade the creation of new nuclear power plants (not that it mattered much: the last one went online in 1989), set a limit of "an average of 32 years of operation" for existing sites, and that there may be a total energy production of 2.62 million GWh through nuclear power in Germany, counting from January 1, 2000.
By December 31, 2008 a good half of that amount was generated.
There were some other new requirements as part of the 2002 law: regular safety controls, no nuclear reprocessing, a requirement to setup sites for temporary storage of nuclear waste, tenfold increase to 2.5bn EUR for the mandatory insurance operators had to take against incidents (with no limit in personal liability if they were at fault).
2010:
In 2009, Germany got a new management (CDU/FDP: Merkel's CDU, that we consider conservative, with the FDP as a highly fiscal conservative / corporation friendly side-kick).
They quickly drafted a new deal which went into effect in 2010:
The 7 oldest plants were granted 8 more years of operation each. The other 10 plants got 14 more years. But still no permits for new plants. (so enthusiasm was... low)
Everybody else was checking various legal venues to stop the law from going into force.
2011:
Fukushima happens. In Germany, the highly contentious decision from yesteryear (still hotly debated) meets the fears of a nuclear wasteland.
Within days the 7 oldest plants that were just granted 8 more years (plus a newer one that was notoriously problematic) were ordered to shut down for a few months until things are sorted out.
Within 5 months, there was another revision of the law on nuclear power, which required those 8 plants to remain shut down.
It also defined various lifetimes for the other plants, none staying in operation into 2023.
End result:
The latest plants went online in 1989, so for them the "average 32 years life time" would have been in 2021. Since various older plants were running longer than their 32 years, 2021 would be a good guess, if a bit on the high end.
However assuming that power generation in nuclear power plants is somewhat constant over the years, with some reduction over time due to plants shutting down, these 2.62 million GWh might have lasted until 2018 or so.
Merkel is now held responsible for "shutting down nuclear power in Germany" by the end of 2022. Which, to me, looks like an extensions, not a restriction of nuclear power in Germany.
It wasn't dumb for her. Merkel's job is to act in the interest of the people who elected her. And that's exactly what she did. It's unfortunate that this set back efforts to reduce emissions. But her move was smart and without it she probably wouldn't be in power anymore.
But I might add, for some perspective and concerning the "Who’s the world’s leading eco-vandal? It’s Angela Merkel " the US has 67% higher CO2 emissions per capita than Germany, Australia 94% and Qatar 314%.
The article voices a bunch of valid criticism, but I really wish it could have done so without turning environmental damage into a contest and using unsubstantiated superlatives. Is it not enough to criticize someone without claiming that they are the worst? The jab at Trump felt misplaced as well.
>> but I really wish it could have done so without turning environmental damage into a contest and using unsubstantiated superlatives.
Are you familiar with "The Guardian"?
Everything is the worst, or (rarely) the best there. It's not exactly a tabloid, but it is becoming more and more of a sensationalist leftie/left-liberal opinion vehicle.
They've spent a lot of time on the "Merkel is a saint" angle lately, because of her actions on refugee flows a couple of years ago, and because they have considered her most righteous when held up against the hubris and failings of the UK (most particularly concerning "Brexit").
The article was very clear that she not simply open to criticism but has done more, by her industry-driven policy decisions, to damage the environment than any other person. Literally, the worst.
It's not a secondary claim; it's the entire premise of the article.
Very much George Monbiot's style, I find it grating sometimes how hyper-critical he is of a lot of climate change endeavours. But I suppose it's better to have that voice there than not.
I agree. And if they do make it a contest, providing numbers for comparison would be really helpful. Like, her impact compared to that of Bill Clinton or George W. Bush.
However the jab at Trump shows what is wrong with the political level of environmental activity.
there is so much more implied by the Paris Accords that it actually will do and heaps of FUD to convince you it must be done or we are all doomed with a good dose of of thanks thrown to the politicians who so boldly stood up for it.
So the sycophants in press, special interest groups, and science, were all dutifully marched out to hark the message loud enough to distract from everything that actually was still going on.
Politics is the art of distraction and division as practiced by modern politicians who are adept at manipulating public opinion usually with the full cooperation of a sympathetic press.
This sort of personal+ideological attack will get your account banned on HN, regardless of how wrong someone else is, so would you please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and not post like this again?
I feel like jabs at conservative politics are the norm now with a lot of journalism. A few weeks back an article [1] I read, from reddit, started with:
…the dastardly Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor seem to be a great gift to the Alt-Right’s xenophobic nationalists.
Interesting article, but unnecessary (and daresay incorrect?) jab at the start.
If you're going to quote an article, you shouldn't leave out context that changes the meaning of the sentence you're quoting -
"The 75th anniversary commemorations of the dastardly Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor
seem to be a great gift to the Alt-Right’s xenophobic nationalists."
It's the 75th anniversary commemorations that seem to be a gift - not the attack itself (obviously).
Ah yes you're quite right! Apologies to all. I'd misread that, although I think my point still stands: I'd like to read about the story and not hear about politics in a foreign (to me) country.
Indeed. It was exactly the other way around, as many nationalists (including the KKK) did not want to get into the war and held a lot of sway right up until Pearl Harbor.
After Pearl Harbor, there was no keeping USA out of the war.
Hitler was working hard on PR to keep the US out. Recent I saw a map the Nazis had made with the proportion of the population of German descent for each US state, created for propaganda purposes.
Sorry for implying intent above, we all make mistakes. I have spend some time in journalism, and it sometimes gets to me how much that profession is vilified these days, when my experience was that these are the most fair-minded, diligent, and altruistic people I've ever met.
IMO being anti-nuclear and pro-environment are mutually exclusive positions. Easy way to discern who really wants to reduce carbon emissions and who is just a populist.
According to environmentalists in Germany, nuclear and pro-environment are indeed mutually exclusive. But I prefer not to copy all of my opinions from the group I most agree with.
FWIW I think nuclear is good in principle, but neither states nor companies have proven responsible enough to handle it. So I'm kind of against nuclear but not in this dogmatic way.
The practical difference is that I think there should be further research to design inherently safe approaches and processes to reduce the risk until it's orders of magnitude safer - maybe something with Thorium, maybe fusion, maybe a new fission reactor design. Then I'd be in favor of using it.
The nuclear waste "killer argument" is mostly bullshit. Highly radioactive substances are spent quickly, long lived substances radiate weakly. 100000 years are quite predictable in geology.
> The nuclear waste "killer argument" is mostly bullshit. Highly radioactive substances are spent quickly, long lived substances radiate weakly. 100000 years are quite predictable in geology.
Also the amount of nuclear waste produced is minuscule compared to much more toxic and more difficult to handle substances produced by various industrial processes. And people somehow have no issue with the latter.
> The practical difference is that I think there should be further research to design inherently safe approaches and processes to reduce the risk until it's orders of magnitude safer
In practice this attitude makes you pro-coal (but not in a dogmatic way).
In the real world, waiting for things to improve before pulling the trigger means using what's currently used until then. That has costs.
What's the energy source that's most dangerous? The common sense answer is nuclear (probably because of nuclear bombs first, Chernobyl second). Some clever people might argue about coal given its high emission output.
But at least by death count, the winner is clearly hydro power. Mostly due to the Banqiao Dam incident [1] which directly killed 26,000 people and indirectly killed 145,000.
Of course, that incident is a mess of stupid decision after stupid decision and some might want to claim that it's an outlier. To that I will reply that the same can be said of Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima (as well as every other hydro incident[2]).
The fact is that the world is full of stupid. I predict that in the future there will be some solar power company that figures out how to kill a bunch of people with a battery fire. And yet, that won't change anything to my support of hydropower or solar power. Nuclear safety is a minor issue compared to its advantages over coal and other fossil fuels.
> currently operating nuclear plants that have gone without incident
Gone without incident, or just gone without incident documentation?
There seems to be an awfully good success rate in finding unreported incidents when people start looking a bit more closely.
I don't make policy. Policy, however, involves risk management. If deficient plants have been operated successfully for this long, the implication to me is that their operators have proven responsible enough to handle it.
If deficient plants have been operated successfully for this long, the implication to me is that their operators have proven responsible enough to handle it.
A lack of air bags is not noticable until your car crashes.
No, they are missing because the car had been built before the invention of airbags. It's uncontestable that currently operating reactors generally lack certain safety measures we'd have added if we built them today.
The question is if we nevertheless deem them 'safe enough'.
It is incredibly telling to me that the article doesn't even mention the nuclear issue because, i assume, the author is afraid of that reality. Coal is going to have to be a backbone because nuclear got killed. Pick your poison please, but be honest that that was the choice made.
"Nuclear power, whatever its detractors might claim, is a low-carbon energy source, roughly comparable to renewables in terms of total emissions. To shut down viable nuclear capacity in the midst of a climate change emergency (now, in other words), as Germany and Japan have done, is a refined form of madness, especially when at least some of that capacity is likely to be replaced by gas or coal, whose carbon emissions are much higher. Replacing fossil fuels with renewables, on the timescale in which we need to act, is hard enough, without setting yourself the additional, unnecessary challenge of also replacing nuclear power."
Very good article. The industry-government nexus in Germany is indeed super powerful and underrated: other countries call it corruption, in Germany is called corporatism.
In the last few years we saw it in action, with important repercussion on the global level: for example, the way the Greek crisis was managed it had to do much more with the safety of German banks, that with the welfare of Greece (https://www.esmt.org/pub/where-did-greek-bailout-money-go).
> other countries call it corruption, in Germany is called corporatism.
That's insulting, and factually inaccurate - unless you have evidence to substantiate this hyperbole?
> for example, the way the Greek crisis was managed
The Greek crisis had other origins, and the financial checks/obligations upon joining the Euro are supposed to mitigate against the risk of not being able to devalue a national currency to e.g. boost tourism or exports. Too bad the Greek financial records may have not been completely accurate.
While Germany has benefited from the Euro, so have other countries. And it wasn't/isn't without downsides for Germany, either. I distinctly remember when the Euro was introduced, everything became far more expensive than the Deutschmark prices had been.
I think we can agree on that the economy is very much globally connected, and that a recession is going to have wide-spread effects. And that austerity doesn't work, and shows that best case, economists and bankers don't know what they're doing, or worst case know exactly what they're doing.
However, equating the actions/stance of one nations banks to that nation's people is a leap too far.
It's actually a pet-peeve of mine that corporatism (Rheinland model) could be easily seen as enabling certain forms of corruption. It's very clean: hardly any bribery or extortion in this model. But networking, clientilism and favoritism are widespread. Those are aspects of corruption, but more on a systemic level than on an individual level. You won't find a police officer solliciting euros, but you will find that any business leader has extensive ties, political and/or union. And these ties influence the civil society in such a way that there are less limits on unethical conduct by those in power (:: a definition of corruption).
There's a very cozy relationship between politics, business leadership and most of the union leadership in countries like Germany and the Netherlands.
The relationship is that cozy, that pretty clearly unethical acts hardly warrant official responses of the juridicary, politics or unions. One step worse for the public is that even enacted legislation is not always upheld when the three parties agree on it not being in their (local) interest. The Rheinland model transfers legitimacy from the individual to the parties representing the different interests. At that point power is concentrated, and corrupts.
Best recent example is the Volkswagen-example. But most large Rhineland corporations have such examples (Shell in Nigeria, Siemens in Spain, ...) I recently re-read a well-cited article on corporate social responsibility. Guess which firm was one of the examples... Volkswagen.
OT, but for an excellent and gripping inside account of the Greek crisis drama I highly recommend Adults in the Room by Yanis Varoufakis (the academic-turned-finance-minister, until he was booted out half a year later).
The crisis was managed irrationally and vengefully, and certainly with an eye on bailing out German and French banks, and making an example of Greece.
> The Greek crisis had other origins, and the financial checks/obligations upon joining the Euro are supposed to mitigate against the risk of not being able to devalue a national currency to e.g. boost tourism or exports. Too bad the Greek financial records may have not been completely accurate.
Guess who pushed hard and voiched for greece joining the euro?
That would be Valerie Giscard-d'Estaing who twisted arms to get Greece into the EEC and Mitterrand who forced through the Euro.
If you are trying to insinuate that this was a German plot, you couldn't be farther from the truth. The Deutsche Mark was a sacred cow and getting rid of it in favour of a common currency with "irresponsible countries" with weak currencies was deeply unpopular even with internationalists like Kohl. Only France threatening to block German reunification unless they drop the Mark, in 1990, got German politicians to agree to giving up their currency.
Without European (and incl. German) money Greece would be bancrupt and no longer in the Eurozone. Bancrupt banks in Europe would have helped no one, particularly not Greece.
For the welfare of the people in Greece the greek government is responsible, not Angela Merkel.
Without being tied to the common currency, the Greek Drachma would have devalued relative to the Deutsche Mark, making Greek exports and tourism more lucrative. Had this been able to occur, the impact to the Greek economy would have been far less.
Instead, the common currency has greatly benefited Germany: had the Germans retained the Deutsche Mark, their currency would be valued higher than the Euro is now, making their exports more expensive and/or lowering the profits of export industries.
Probably true, but that doesn't help anyone.
Greece wanted to have the euro, they weren't forced to.
They also knew from the start that devalueing your currency isn't possible anymore.
Today their debts are in Euro not Drachme, now leaving the Euro doesn't change that fact.
Greece with its Drachma would have been a welcome victim for currency speculation. This was tried with the Euro, too, but it failed.
People also think in economic terms, but the Euro is a political project. Countries like Greece wanted to be in the Eurozone. It was not Germany's wish. It was the wish of Greece and the population of Greece also wanted it - not just the politicians.
Germany actually did not want to have the Euro itself, it agreed to the Euro to get the Reunification. But it agreed on the Euro to be a stable currency, not one that politicians would devalue to gain short term effects.
> Greece with its Drachma would have been a welcome victim for currency speculation. This was tried with the Euro, too, but it failed.
All pegs are a potential victim of currency speculation. The solution is to end the peg and let the currency float, as it happened to the British Pound/Deutche Mark during the Soros stunt in the 90s or more recently with the Euro/Swiss Franc peg.
> Greece imports a lot -> gets more expensive.
I just want to add: This could also be a good thing, since people in Greece are more likely to spend money on goods produced in Greece. This could help their economy.
It could, but for example Greece lacks energy resources and imports a lot of oil and gas. That's not easy to replace and that still would involve imports. The top imports are fuels, machines/computers, pharmaceuticals, electrical equipment, ships, ...
It's not all great for working Germans either. German companies are doing great while inflation-adjusted salaries are flat or decreasing depending on industry - for its high productivity level, Germany has become sort of a low wage country. The current low unemployment rate has a high price.
There is a lot of propaganda involved. Sure Greek politicians did not blame themselves for taking huge amount of credit money and wasting it.
Without paying back the money (-> to the banks), Greece would have been bancrupt within days. Thus saving the banks saved Greece from being bancrupt. Without banks and without government money from the outside, nobody would have given Greece any credits...
I don't know if you've been to Greece recently, but, at this point, a one-off bankruptcy looks much preferable to this slow and constant descent into poverty.
The thing is, the Greek system mostly worked, corruption and waste and all, before it entered the Euro area. Cheap credit and no possibility of currency devaluation broke it.
The currency union was just very badly thought out. A currency union without a fiscal union is probably a bad idea. That was recognized somewhat by the stability criteria for new members that were then swiftly ignored for various reasons.
That's highly debatable and in a changing political landscape there was no future for that. A tiny country next to the EU and a large Eurozone? Greece needed reforms and some (not all) of them were long delayed. That's also the point of the EU and the Eurozone. It provides the framework for the reforms. The largest win for Greece is a stable democracy, after a long phase of political instability and military governments.
Not saying that it would have worked - but there is actually a tiny, tiny country surrounded by the Eurozone - Switzerland.
And while surely not everything is perfect there, I think they are doing quite well.
Saving some affected banks would've been cheaper than saving Greece. Even if "saving german banks" might have been one of the reason, it wasn't THE reason as you claim.
Greece had many problem to solve. It's why they collapse. Not only about the Euro but about the organization, culture of doing nothing. I'm a bit bad with them but when you don't have any register of the real estate and just need to pretend that you own the land for whatever reason, should not be surprised that the country is falling...and this is just the tip of the iceberg.
The bankruptcy scenario was always highly unlikely, the banks would have been bailed out with tax money. Just like they were bailed out with tax money in actual history, just with another name (loans to the Greek government, who gave the money back to the unwisely lending EU banks).
The better solution was to let Greece default. Then the banks who had bought Greek bonds without proper due diligence would have borne the cost of their mistakes, not innocent bystanders. These were mostly French and German banks, and it would have been up to their respective governments to bail them out (or not).
> other countries call it corruption, in Germany is called corporatism
I notice this world wide
I ask government officials for "expedited processing" with IRL emphasis and air quotes when I want something done faster, some times it could be construed as a kick back, other times the legislature had already voted for that where I must congratulate them for their keen recognition of revenue streams.
I don't consider due process as the qualifier of non-corruption. I don't actually care.
I just wish more people would accept the relative morality of the institutions they comply with.
As a person, she's extremely obstinate. For a leader, this trait can be advantageous - after all, who wants a leader who changes their minds all the time - but for the rest of Europe it's a curse. Somehow she is unable to admit she made some serious mistakes, and we're all suffering because of it.
That's actually the opposite of the perception of Angela Merkel in Germany. In Germany she is seen as populist, because she changes her mind quite often or waits until the public opinion is clear. Only in the refugee crisis, she was seen as following moral principles having not made any concessions to right wing politics (which earned her a lot of respect and a lot of hate). Make no mistake, generally her team is very accurately tracking public opinion.
Some Bavarian politicians may have other moral principles. But Merkel defended the German constitution which has no limit for asylum seekers and she also followed her christian upbringing.
THE whole CDU is clearly not right anymore, but take Erika Steinbach as an example of the (former) right wing. Or the critics from the CSU. There is also a large group of voters right from CDU/CSU - a voter domain which other politicians from CDU/CSU also claim(ed) for themselves. Politicians from the CDU moved to the AFD ... a prominent example is Alexander Gauland, who was 40 years member of the CDU.
The CDU is extremely fiscally conservative (see Schaeuble's black zero project) and very socially conservative (anti-gay-marriage, anti-drug-legalisation, pro-surveillance compared to the average view of the population).
It is rather right wing in a global context. If you don't think they are right wing, you might want to recalibrate your views of what you think of "centrist".
Merkel perceived as populist in Germany? I've heard a lot about Merkel but this is new. Do you have a poll or anything to show this is really the case and not just your (or your friends/relatives) opinion? Who of Germany's politicians would you call then less of a populist?
It's a slightly different kind of populism. Some called it 'Regierungspopulism'. She orientates her policy towards the public opinion of the majority of the people and aims to maintain her power. She looks very carefully what the public opinion is, when it changes and then works in that direction. Opponents claim she is a populist of the middle. She is not so much driven by a program or an ideology, but she does what is popular at any one moment. As I already mentioned this view of her was then questioned during the refugee crisis where she not did support the willing to help part of the population, but also defended this when there was a more critical opposition rising, including in her own party and the sister party.
There might be a misunderstanding about the word "populist". Looking at Wikipedia:
Populism is a mode of political communication that is centred around contrasts between the "common man" or "the people" and a real or imagined group of "privileged elites", traditionally scapegoating or making a folk devil of the latter.
Well, political opinions differ. I personally don't think Merkel has made any mistakes whatsoever. If the elections were only about the main candidates, I'd definitely have voted for her in the next election (have already voted). She seems to be the only person left in charge who takes basic human rights and humanist values seriously; for everyone else they seem to be only important as a lip service and as long as they are convenient.
Well it rather seems she changes her mind all the time. You can find various compilations of instances where she doubled back on earlier statements (sometime from years ago, but still). I get the impression she is extremely opportunistic, at least on a larger scale.
Wasn't it at the WH Correspondants Dinner, where Colbert said to Bush: "He believes the same thing Wednesday, that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday. Events can change, this man’s beliefs never will."
I really have a hard time blaming someone for changing views over a legislative period of more than 12 years.
As I recall she didn't want to shut down Germany's nuclear industry, but was dragged there by the voting public. It's pretty difficult for stubborn people to be successful politicians in a parliamentary democracy.
But Merkel does indeed change her mind all the time. Not even trying to be judgmental but her politics are really populist. She has not a clearly defined platform, just whatever is agreeable with the electorate.
Like cancelling the 2002 nuclear shutdown deal in 2010 and then reenacting a new, poorly planned one in 2011 because a plant several thousand miles away ran into issues?
Agreed. While I have only respect for her, I'm afraid that through ignorance and rigidity her policy choices during the Eurozone crisis have set European integration back a generation.
I fail to understand why German automotive industry is lobbing pro diesels. All German car makers make both gasoline and diesel engines, if diesels were banned or taxed to be more expensive customers wouldn't resign from buying cars but would choose some other available option (gasoline, hybrid, electric).
There have been zillions invested in the Diesel, which would have been wasted. The Diesel is also seen as the more efficient engine: less fuel consumption and less CO2 emissions.
This is what I don't understand, it seems like a sunk cost fallacy. For each diesel sold, the auto makers sell one less gasoline car, the profits should stay the same.
They have a competitive edge on diesel technology against other car makers. Look at the WEC championships to see how effective Audi's diesel development was there, racing technology almost always translates somehow to street technology for consumers.
On that playing field only Toyota came close to beat the German diesels so it's not only a sunken cost fallacy, they have an advantage on diesel technology that makes it understandable (from a business perspective) on them pushing for it.
I think it's because they have a technical edge (well...) in diesel engines for cars and / or because they sell so many of them, especially in Germany itself. Markets favoring diesel engines thus favor German car makers.
I wonder if the technical edge is there only because German diesels do not meet emission regulations. It is easy to have the best product on the market if all the competitors need to make weaker engines to meet the regulations and German companies make a cheating software instead.
That's because there are tax advantages for Diesel. Originally a subsidy for agriculture (because their machines all ran on Diesel), it made Diesel motors a favorite for those who need to drive a lot (incl huge corporate fleets).
Changing any of that is a highly contentious political issue. Merkel's political style doesn't deal well with these.
They lobbied against safety belts, catalytic filters and a lot of other stuff. They can safely be ignored and usually they are pretty good at adapting to new conditions.
1. The Diesel process is more efficient than the Otto process (the theoretical limit is much higher)
2. Taxes in Germany: Diesel fuel is taxed at a much lower rate than other gasoline. In turn, the cars themselves are taxed a bit higher. If you drive a lot, a Diesel car is more economical for that reason.
2. Have ever had a chance to drive a car with a Diesel engine? The power over RPM curve is so different that the experience feels very different and arguably much more convenient.
I think the point is high CO_2 exhaustion rate of the gasoline cars, so that entire industry (and customers) switched towards the diesel engines, actively promoting them to be superior and eco-friendly variant of gasoline engines. Turns out they were wrong (just the other type of the pollution - Feinstaub) and to make things worse, they kept silent until the entire thing broke viral.
Diesel emissions are exaggerated. European emission standards set limits for diesel emissions that are just minutely different from gasoline emissions.
American limits for diesels are notorious for being more restrictive than for gas engines.
All of that considered, diesels are plainly more economical and more efficient on pretty much all common engine size ranges
First off, the big problem with diesel is not CO2, but NOx gases, which are way more immediately dangerous to human health. That's why some cities are thinking of banning them ASAP right now.
Second, besides VW which was creating even 40x the emissions than the standard you mentioned required, pretty much all the other car makers were creating 10-15x as many emissions, too, thus making that "strict standard" way looser. Forget Euro 6 or Euro 5. These cars weren't even compliant with the 25 year old Euro 2. In other words, all of these car makers "passing" the emissions tests over the past two decades has been all a bad joke played on the EU population.
Finally, a new stricter (than Euro 6) standard was supposed to arrive by 2021 or so, but Merkel once again intervened to make the standard even looser (by +50% more emissions allowed) than the previous one, which would be a first in the history of the Euro emissions standards, which have become increasingly stricter not looser, so far. All thanks to Merkel.
The industry was promoting the Diesel also with the smaller CO2 emissions of this engine.
The other negative effects of the Diesel boom was very visible for a long time and politics and authorities were ignoring it.
Merkel (and her coalition partner the CSU) is especially responsible for having a very weak minister Dobrindt, who was not willing or able to guide the automotive industry.
Merkel and the government is a part of the problem, but the automotive industry and the consumer is even more so. The automotive industry promoted the Diesel engine and the consumer bought especially the high-powered ones. The government is responsible for low Diesel taxes, supporting large company cars and a lack of regulation.
"Vorne hui, hinten pfui" is the correct term (which means "nice from the front, but disgusting from the rear" or something like talking the talk, but not walking the walk).
Yes, she is a nice little sockpuppet for the car-industry and obviously getting what you want as a industry always damaged the industry itself. No innovation, no risk taking, no fast adaption of new tech..
This sort of behaviour opened up a whole industry for disruption, so in a way corrupt politicians are the grave-diggers of old industrys.
But bio fuels are an unmitigated disaster. Electric ground transportation is the future.