[Skybird]

From FOCUS. I rest my case.


The Deutsche Umwelthilfe

[Deutsche Umwelthilfe e.V. (DUH, using the English name Environmental Action Germany) is a non-profit environmental and consumer protection association, supported by public and private project grants and donations. It is a member of the European Environmental Bureau, in Brussels. It has the legal right to represent group claims in court against projects that it considers a threat to the environment.]
has lodged an objection to the first planned liquefied natural gas terminal. The war in Ukraine is bad. But not so bad that German approval procedures can be shortened because of it.
[That brainfree group is extremely infuential and powerful and has caused plenty of legal troubles in Germany, Skybird]
Olaf Scholz was in Brandenburg two months ago to inaugurate the Tesla factory in Grünheide with Elon Musk. It took 730 days from the groundbreaking ceremony to the moment when the first cars rolled off the production line. A German record. Scholz was thrilled.

He would like to transfer that to the energy supply. We now need four liquefied gas terminals very quickly. Unfortunately, it takes eight years to build such a terminal if you go through all the approval procedures properly. That could be eight very cold years, since climate change is not coming fast enough to compensate for the loss of Russian gas. So: Tesla speed! Says the Chancellor.

The next thing I heard on the subject was Robert Habeck imploring environmental associations to refrain from filing lawsuits against the terminal in Wilhelmshaven, for which planning is furthest along. Immediate outrage from the "taz" [superleft newspaper, Skybird] to the "Süddeutsche" [left newspaper, Sky]: This was sending the completely wrong signal. The war is bad. But just because Putin had invaded Ukraine, there was no reason to abandon the tried and tested approval procedures.

At the beginning of the month, Deutsche Umwelthilfe filed an objection. Especially in times of crisis, the principles of the rule of law must be upheld, and this applies in particular to climate protection and environmental law, the executive director explained.

The association fears that the construction would irreversibly destroy the underwater biotope near Wilhelmshaven. In addition, harbor porpoises are sighted off the coast. Who knows what effects the terminal construction would have on the whales? There is always some animal that speaks against an intervention in nature. It is the nature of nature, if you will, that it stands in the way of any construction project.

Incidentally, Deutsche Umwelthilfe is the association that had rows and rows of German city centers paralyzed before Corona because the nitrogen oxide concentration in the air was allegedly too high. Did you know when the highest nitrogen oxide values ever recorded were then measured at measuring stations? In the spring of 2020 during the first lockdown, when road traffic in Germany came to a virtual standstill. If you now think that would make Deutsche Umwelthilfe appear a bit more modest: of course not!

The word of the hour is "turn of the times." Everything would have to be rethought and reassessed. Let's call it a déformation professionelle, but whenever I hear that everything is really going to be very, very different now, I think: Let's have a look.

Do you remember the first Corona months? The pandemic would open the door to a new world in which the "we" and no longer the "I" would be in the foreground. It was written almost word for word in the progressive-minded papers.

Or take the refugee crisis: We had to fundamentally question ourselves, the Chancellor declared in one of her first press conferences, when thousands were crossing the border every day. German thoroughness was super, she said, but in a crisis everything had to be put to the test, including German thoroughness.

There was even a law against too much thoroughness, the "Standard Deviation Law. If we are going to take action against thoroughness, then let's do it thoroughly. Without the appropriate regulation, nothing works in Germany.

I would be the last person to object if we were to part with a few regulations. I would be happy if we could find our way back to more freedom and less paternalism. Unfortunately, things usually go in the other direction.

Experts at the Federal Ministry of Justice have recounted and come up with 246,944 federal regulations that citizens have to comply with. And that doesn't even include the regulations of the states, municipalities and public corporations.

German bureaucracy is an inexhaustible subject. During research, our colleague Alexander Neubacher came across the regulation for maintenance work on offshore wind turbines. This regulation not only stipulates that the fitters find sleeping bags and cookies if they once have to endure longer on the wind turbine than planned due to bad weather.

No, it also stipulates that a deck of cards must be kept on hand at every wind turbine so that the maintenance workers don't get too bored while they are holding out at lofty heights. Is the regulation still in effect? Despite Corona? Despite the war? Despite the standard deviation law? Of course it is.

As long as everything moves along familiar lines, you can get along with 246,944 federal regulations. It's just that nothing unforeseen can get in the way. Like a pandemic. Or a war in Europe.

Last week I met a lawyer who runs wind farms in Schleswig-Holstein. What he reported from practice did not sound as if we would soon be beating the Russians at their game with our own energy. First, he had to wait twelve years before he was allowed to repower his wind turbines. That's what it's called when old wind turbines are replaced with new ones. It's actually a good thing, because the wind turbine then has twice as much power as before. Unfortunately, the distance rules had changed in the meantime. Now it's bat season. Everything is running at half power because it cannot be ruled out that a bat will get lost in the rotor blades.

The lawyer is pinning his hopes on the Greens. If any party can get it right, it's the Greens, he says. It's like Hartz IV. The only ones who were able to modernize the labor market were the Social Democrats.

I'm not so sure about that. It would also be obvious to think again about the use of nuclear power. We have three remaining nuclear power plants that could still provide us with useful services if the gas fails. But in December, we are supposed to finally call it a day. The veto of the Green Minister for the Environment, Steffi Lemke, is ironclad. The German nuclear phase-out is being adhered to, even if the lights are beginning to flicker because electricity is running out.

The green German would rather sit at home by candlelight than draw nuclear power one day longer. Let them continue to rely on nuclear power in Finland and France and Great Britain and Sweden and Belgium. We know better than anyone what a devilish thing it is!

Societies are amazingly tough and inert entities. One can certainly see something comforting in this. Revolutions only work at gunpoint. But a little movement would be desirable, don't you think?

Perhaps we could start by withdrawing the non-profit status of the German Environmental Aid Association. That would be a measure whose beneficial effect would unfold immediately.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)