They may have to start using shale to remain competitive with the U.S.
They worry that the country’s ambitious environmental goals are far less meaningful if the economy withers in achieving them.
You don’t say.
It would be a shame if they decided to start being economically sane.
[Update a while later]
More bad news for the warm-mongering econuts — scientists say that fracking is safe. And of course, they’ll believe it, because as they always tell us, we must follow the science.
This illustrates the stark choice between furthering current environmentalism and providing for the future. Germany severely hamstrung its electricity generating infrastructure and now is starting to pay the consequences of that.
I figure Germany’s days as an industrial power are numbered anyway. As I see it, the main thing supporting German industry now is standards-based protectionism (the ISO standards in particular) and transfers of wealth from other EU countries. Neither will last. Chinese industries are becoming ISO-certified, and the PIGS are growing steadily weaker. I don’t consider their relatively high educational level to be an advantage since China (and the rest of the developing world) has a lot of educated people as well. I think in twenty years, we’ll see that Germany is yet another squandered opportunity even if they do support fracking in the near future time.
The Germans seem to be out of their minds lately. By draining the PIIGS they are eliminating one of their last captive markets, thanks in part to protectionism in the auto industry and elsewhere. Selling machine tools to China is not going to be a viable business in the long run since the Chinese have a state policy of self-sufficiency in the long run. In my opinion the Chinese already have a superior consumer and military electronics industry than Germany. Much of the remaining transportation technology is getting absorbed. If we look at the aerospace sector the Chinese are developing rocket, jet, and turbofan engines superior to those built anywhere in Europe. These should enter production in this decade. Their main weakness is probably the automotive sector. However these technologies are also dual use and with the Chinese interested in buying GM’s Hummer division for e.g. they have already shown they are ready to pay for dual-use automotive technologies too. As the middle class in China gets more affluent the economies of scale are getting there for a large domestic automobile industry. The cars they produce may suck for now but they have shown they can reverse engineer technology quickly.
The only way for Europe to compete would be for it to turn into a federation and have its own policy of self-reliance. It does have an internal market of 500 million people. But the way things are going collapse in the long run is more likely. Too many bad decisions.
I laughed at the last attempt the Germans are making of entering into the African and Latin American markets. They are attempting to compete on the Chinese’s own turf and they can never compete on price with the Chinese. Those clients have developing economies and little money to pay so they will keep buying the Chinese products. The Chinese also keep making grand gestures to keep these clients. For example they recently donated some new headquarters to the African Union.
The worst part is that even if the environmental situation was what they thought, and the IPCC model was correct, their master plan for Going Green in Germany would … have no appreciable effect on global warming anyway.
Trillions of dollars for a serious change might be one thing; trillions of dollars for nothing is a tragedy.
California continues down the road of such insanity, unfortunately.
It isn’t about the environment. It never was. It’s about income re-distribution.
It’s about redistribution of power, and I don’t mean electricity.
With enough unchallenged power, seizing wealth is easy.
If the hill is shallow and the ball is big enough it can roll uphill for quite a while. Politicians and their followers can then ridicule anyone that says balls will not roll up hill forever. Followed with…
carbon free energy future
Ironic since we are carbon based life. Which makes those wishing us to be carbon free to be anti-life. This is why they imagine the red button without horror… while calling us fascists.
When I was young, I was taught history as a narrative of mistakes, errors of judgment, and closed minded attitudes which were subsequently found to be irrational. The motivations of those benighted souls who believed these things were effectively random ignorance and bias, with no logical basis or external impetus.
The implication to a naive, young mind was that, that was all in the past, and we had now monotonically converged upon of era of unprecedented enlightenment, and humans now were effectively immune from the foibles of the past. Adults knew everything that was needed to know, and only a small minority of troglodytes, who were invariably the butt of derision on evening sit-coms, had failed to keep up.
The “science” of the past was full of leeches, geocentricism, and arbitrary religious conviction. Today’s scientists were immune to bias, their conclusions based on objective, reproducible evidence, and infused with 20/20 foresight. Knowledge was the key. The more knowledge you had, the less vulnerable you were to irrationalism. But, knowledge and wisdom are not, in fact, synonymous.
Eventually, as I grew and gained knowledge, I realized that the people of the past were no different than those of today. That, they made erroneous inferences based on pat answers which seemed “obvious” based on the knowledge base of the day, and that we were no more immune to mistakes of that sort than they were. But, today, a large portion of the average population remains in the arrested stage of my youth, in which “scientists” are authorities whose word is inviolable holy writ, and anyone who questions “science” is a troglodyte worthy of being made the butt of derision on evening TV.
It is not just bizarre and surreal, but utterly teeth gnashing to see these fools strut their faith and ignorance in smug certitude that they stand on unshifting, bedrock solid ground. They have no inkling that they are the believers in leechcraft and other folderal of today. And, they will carry us all into the abyss with unblinking faith that they are the righteous heirs of the enlightenment, whose ends justify whatever means necessary to rescue us troglodytes from ourselves.
Not very surprising. If the Germans cared about actual pollution (i.e. particulates which cause lung problems) they would not be burning brown coal and shutting down their nuclear power plants. Shale is clean in comparison.