[Skybird]

FOCUS writes:
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What no one in the Green Party dares to say: What Germany will look like after the energy transition

With no political project is the number of errors as great as with the energy transition. A thought leader of the Green Party now speaks the truth: Those who rely entirely on wind and sun want the irreversible deindustrialization of the country.


What will Germany look like after the final energy turnaround? A paradise, if you can believe the brochures of the Greens. Cows graze peacefully on lush meadows, while the wind turbine turns gently on the horizon. The German family sits happily united at the dining table - black and white, old and young, grandma in the middle - listening spellbound as Annalena Baerbock reports on the latest victories of feminist foreign policy on "Tagesthemen." The union of modernity and Biedermeier: Transformation can be this beautiful.

There is also another, less promotional view. It is represented by Ulrike Herrmann, economics editor at the "taz" and thus the paper that feels more committed to the eco-movement than any other in Germany. With regard to the energy transition, Herrmann speaks of green shrinkage. If you think that this is another polemical dig at the Greens, you are far from it. Ms. Herrmann means it in a positive way. When she talks about shrinking, she thinks it is something worth striving for.

Utopia of an ecological planned economy

She has written an entire book on the subject. It's called "The End of Capitalism." In it, she develops the utopia of an ecological planned economy, in which a committee of climate wise men works to dismantle the system that generated growth and prosperity for many years. Better get ready in time for bananas from Costa Rica or grapes from the Cape to be a thing of the past!

This is what the green future looks like: People use only regional and seasonal products because air travel has largely ceased. The next vacation trip is not to Sardinia, but at best to Rügen. Of course, you can still meet friends, but they all speak German again now. São Paulo, Bali or Mumbai are as far away as they were in Marco Polo's day.

Necessary repairs? You have to do them yourself. A new jacket or dress? Only if you know how to operate a sewing machine. Most commodities are shared with neighbors anyway: lawn mowers, drills, toys, books.

The good news is: washing machines, computers and the Internet are here to stay. "Nobody has to fear that we'll end up back in the Stone Age and living in caves when capitalism ends," Ms. Herrmann reassures her readers. There is just less of everything, respectively: If you're lucky enough to have a computer, it's a device from the time when people still believed in growth.

Only green shrinkage remains

Why the turn to less? Quite simply, no industrialized country can be kept running on sun and wind alone. Energy is available in abundance, and that's not the problem. The sun sends 5000 times more energy to the earth than the eight billion people would need, even if they all lived like Europeans. "However, solar panels and wind turbines only provide electricity when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing," Ms. Herrmann writes. "To provide for lulls and darkness, energy must be stored - either in batteries or as green hydrogen. This intermediate step is so costly that green power will remain scarce and expensive."

Ergo: If green energy is to be enough for everyone, green shrinking is the only option. I rarely agree with people who work at the "taz." But I think Ulrike Herrmann is right. Capitalist growth philosophy and green revolution do not go together. I'm glad someone is saying it so clearly. Most people who are on the road for the Greens act as if everything can be reconciled: the Volvo at the door - and climate rescue on the go.

I'm not sure everyone realizes what it means to say goodbye to fossil fuels, as the climate movement demands. You can be happy with less. The happiest people supposedly live in Bangladesh, according to an older happiness comparison study I took. Others see the Finns in the lead when it comes to well-being.

We will not be able to maintain living standards

Be that as it may, things will change once the coalition agreement of the German government has finally been worked through. It's hard to imagine, for example, that we'll be able to maintain the medical standards to which we've become accustomed. One reassuring piece of information during the pandemic was that no country would have as many intensive care beds per inhabitant as the Federal Republic. Does anyone seriously believe that it will stay that way once we have phased out nuclear power and coal?

As I said, you can get by with less. Ulrike Herrmann recommends the 1970s as a reference decade. People didn't live badly back then either, she says: "It was the year Argentina became soccer world champion and the first part of 'Star Wars' was shown in theaters."

Agreed. You just shouldn't have the misfortune of getting liver cancer or a degenerative muscle condition. There is a reason why life expectancy today is 81 years on average. On the other hand, 72 is also a nice age to retire. From the point of view of climate protection, every year of life is one too many anyway.

We are now hearing that we are in trouble because the energy turnaround has not been pushed forward decisively enough. But you can also see things the other way around. No other country in Europe has spent as much money on the expansion of renewable energies as Germany. Even before the invasion of Ukraine, we had the highest electricity prices in the EU. According to green logic, we should be in a much better position today than our neighbors, but the opposite is the case.

The road to energy transition is paved with false assumptions

The truth is: the backbone of Germany's energy transition has always been Russian gas and French nuclear power. Robert Habeck involuntarily admitted it when he prepared his supporters that the nuclear phase-out would have to be postponed for a few months. Because we can no longer rely on Russia and France, nuclear power from Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg will now have to fill the gap - at least until April.

After that, heat pumps are to do the trick, according to the coalition agreement. 500,000 heat pumps are to be installed in German households every year. I'm curious to see how that will work out. The road to the energy transition is paved with false assumptions. Do you remember Jürgen Trittin, the father of the can deposit, promising Germans that the energy transition would cost them no more than a scoop of ice cream [and former environment minister, years ago, and a green Maoist, Skybird]? That has become a very expensive scoop of ice cream.

Civil engineer Lamia Messari-Becker, long a member of the German Council of Environmental Experts, assessed the plans in an interview in Der Spiegel. Habeck should end this aberration, she said. Most houses in Germany are not suitable for the use of heat pumps, she said. Those who try it anyway will incur horrendous electricity bills, she added. There are not even enough appliances or craftsmen who could install the pumps.

Trittin's ice cream scoop bet was a highly serious matter

The responsible state secretary in the Ministry of Economics, Patrick Graichen, was recently asked where the 60,000 fitters would come from who would be needed to put the ambitious plans into practice. Well, he said lightly, then a few less tilers will have to lay tiles. I'm afraid that against Robert Habeck's heat pump plan, Trittin's ice cream scoop bet was a highly serious matter.

Ulrike Herrmann's book about the end of capitalism made it to number one on the bestseller list. The audience that can appreciate the return to the seventies is larger than I thought.

After all, the music was definitely better back then. I'm getting the old discs out again now. If rewinding progress, then at least to the sound of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. As Janis Joplin sang: Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose.
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