The Economist: Deutsche Träumer weigern sich, Realitäten anzuerkennen
Bekanntlich halte ich die Wirtschaftspolitik Deutschlands für eine große Märchenerzählung. Auch The Economist greift auf die Märchen der Gebrüder Grimm zurück, um dann zu dem Schluss zu kommen, dass wir Deutschen aus dem Märchen erwacht sind, in dem wir uns durch unsere eigenen Entscheidungen in eine Sackgasse manövriert haben:
- “Put simply, years of complacency have landed Germany in a pickle. Yet even as the establishment comes to terms with the scale of its dilemma, and with the immense challenge of changing course, Germany’s conversation with itself remains strangely parochial and lacking in urgency. Even more odd, in a country that prides itself on the openness of its democracy, is the failure to account for what went awry.” – bto: Natürlich suchen wir nicht nach Verantwortlichen, denn dann wäre klar, dass es grüne Ideologie war, die eine Merkel-Regierung nach der anderen vor sich hergetrieben hat.
- “Consider Germany’s woeful dependence on Russian fuels. This came about not only because Mr Putin seduced businesses and politicians with low prices, so boosting Russia’s share of Germany’s natural-gas consumption from 30% two decades ago to a 55% chokehold.” – bto: Stimmt, man muss russische Energie auch kaufen wollen.
- “Decisions were also taken to shrink the supply of energy from other sources. Among numerous examples of such foolishness, the best-known concerns nuclear power. When a tsunami hit the Japanese nuclear reactors at Fukushima in 2011, the government of then-chancellor Angela Merkel flippte aus, shutting down half of Germany’s nuclear generation capacity virtually overnight. It set a closing date for the last three plants of December 2022, a target that is only now being questioned, as crippling power shortages loom.” – bto: Ja, da steht Dummheit!
- “Yet perhaps Germany’s biggest own goal was scored against its own natural-gas industry. (…) At the turn of the millennium Germany was pumping out some 20bn cubic metres (bcm) of natural gas a year, enough to meet close to a quarter of national demand. But although geologists think that Germany holds at least 800bcm of exploitable gas, production has not grown but rather collapsed, to a mere 5-6bcm, equivalent to just 10% of imports from Russia.” – bto: Wir haben gigantische Gasreserven und nutzen diese nicht.
- “Geology dictates that nearly all Germany’s gas can only be extracted using hydraulic fracturing, but the German public holds an irrational fear of fracking. Not just a fear: in 2017 Ms Merkel’s government passed a law that essentially bans commercial fracking, even though German firms have been using the technique in the country since the 1950s, with not a single reported incident of serious environmental damage.” – bto: Was soll man dazu sagen? Wir werden schon komisch regiert.
- “The causes of the public’s fear are not hard to find. In 2008 Exxon, a big American oil firm, proposed expanding the use of fracking at a site in northern Germany. As environmentalists piled in to protest, the increasingly influential Green party joined the fray. So did Russia Today, a pro-Kremlin channel, blaring warnings that fracking causes radiation, birth defects, hormone imbalances, the release of immense volumes of methane and toxic waste, and the poisoning of fish stocks. No less an expert than Mr Putin himself declared, before an international conference, that fracking makes black goop spew out of kitchen taps.” – bto: Die Grünen und Putin. Ja, auch das muss man sich vor Augen führen. Hatten wir auch bei der Friedensbewegung.
- “German gas producers say that given a chance, with today’s even cleaner and safer new fracking methods they could double their output in as little as 18-24 months. At that level Germany could be pumping gas well into the next century. That would trim imports by some $15bn a year.” – bto: Ich finde, das kann man sich nicht ausdenken!
→ economist.com: „Germans have been living in a dream“, 21. Juli 2022
