The English language online The Local, here, brings us an example of how overzealous and authoritarian greens masquerading as concerned environmentalists can be. Hat-tip DirkH.
Winfried Kretschmann, the newly elected green governor of the German state of Baden-Württemberg, has not only announced that he will decide the course of the southern German state, but also the course of the two luxury car makers Mercedes Benz and Porsche headquartered there.
Just forget the top managers at the world’s leading luxury car makers, whose expertise and managerial skill have made Mercedes and Porsche gold plated brand names over the last decades. Forget companies writing their own mission statements and producing their own visions for the future. And forget companies navigating through the uncertainties of the future and drawing up middle-term and long-term business plans. All this now has been taken over by the supremacist Greens, at least in Baden-Württemberg.
No longer will Porsche and Mercedes engineer and manufacture the world’s top luxury automobiles and sports cars on their own terms, but rather they will have to content themselves with ignoring the wishes of their markets and shift to building cars that suit the expectations of a few green masterminds. Kretschmann says:
I expect that premium producers create energy and resource-efficient product lines. That could be a little more expensive, as most of those who buy limousines can take it. Above all, Daimler and Porsche should see themselves as mobility companies in five years’ time – and no longer just as car factories.”
You got that? Your cars aren’t expensive enough. Personally, I drive a modest Mercedes C-Class, and if Mercedes bends to the will of these enviro-Stalinists, then it will definitely be the very last one I buy. I have no interest in buying a car from a company that hands the management reins over to a bunch of arrogant dogmatist zealots. The Local writes:
‘Petrol-greedy luxury limousines are not the future,’ he said. ‘We should no longer only export cars, but also a new idea of what a chic car is in the future. I believe that the companies think this way too’.”
Getting people off the streets and autobahns
The target of all this is to restrict people’s mobility. According to The Local, this green Burgermeister-Meisterburger has also announced an array of decrees, much to the delight of his green, spear-carrying, attack-hungry warriors. The Local writes:
The incoming Green-led state government of Baden-Württemberg has unveiled plans to introduce a speed limit on the autobahns and replace vehicle tax with road tolls. It also wants to build wind farms in the region.”
The Local adds:
The road tax should apply to all roads, he said, and should be, ‘as individualised as possible, thus related to time, place, length of road use and type of car.’ This should reduce traffic in total, he said.”
This is shorthand for: “We’re going to put the screws to poorer people and those living out in the countryside (in nature), and make mobility affordable only for the well-heeled.
Industrialising the Black Forest with windmills
The windfarms he mentions above of course will be built inland, and not offsore in the North or Baltic seas where the wind blows enough for them to reach just over 20% of their rated capacity. Inland, however, they’ll have to be content with reaching just over 15% of their rated capacity. This means they will have to put up about 7 times more wind generators to deliver 100% capacity – that is when the wind blows hard enough. And when the wind doesn’t blow, then it doesn’t matter how many you install – you’ll be forced to import nuclear power, from across the border, from France.
Where exactly will the windparks go? The Local writes:
‘Wind farms would also form a part of the state’s future,’ said Kretschmann. ‘There will be completely new windparks – large, modern facilities – above all in the Mittelgebirge, on the Schwäbisch Alb and in the Black Forest,’ he said.”
Citizens in these areas, organise, and fight this onslaught on your landscape and heritage. These pseudo-greens are going to industrialise your landscape with ugly moving white giants. They did it in my hometown in Vermont, and the beauty there is now gone. Like in Vermont, big, profiteering industrial bastards are behind it all, and they will profit handsomely from it. It has nothing to do with environmentalism.
What does Dear Leader Kretschmann say about windmills polluting the landscape?
‘A change of the industrial society changes the landscape; that is the price that we have to pay for progress. One cannot discard nuclear power, damn coal-generated electricity, want to maintain living standards and at the same time demand that the landscape should not change.’
Interesting times are ahead.
All of it, we will recall, is based on the loony proposition, floated by charlatan scientists, that man controls the climate. Germany pursues yet again another version of the 1000-year empire. Time to present this guy with a cuckoo-clock – because cuckoo is where he’s headed.
Will take a lot of money up front, especially the road pricing idea.
Yes. And if German taxpayers will pay extra to use their highways or autobahns, meaning lesser budget for the roads/public works department, then there should be corresponding tax cut somewhere.
Such plans have already been floated by the federal government; take road usage tolls and compensate by reducing car ownership tax. That would be a justifiable decision.
But Kretschmann is an ex-communist, anti-capitalist green teacher, bent on reducing personal travel, so he will surely want to introduce tolls to make driving more expensive. I think his idea is exactly to not compensate anyone for this. He already talked about the need to dump even more money into education (no surprise; he’s been a teacher) so i guess that that’s where the money will go.
He recently said “We have only borrowed our wealth from our children”, which is, i must say, a pathetic piece of nonsense. Kretschmann is an expert in delivering soundbytes that sound big and meaningful but in fact contain no logic; a blender.
The German word “Blender” I think can be translated in English as “phony”.
His views are no other than those of the EU.
The emission standards set by the EU eventually will kill he gasoline and diesel engine.
Hopefully the entire environmentalist house of cards will collapse.
Unfortunately we have a lot of very ignorant and stupid Germans who have casted their votes in favor of their own demise.
Germany has become an idiocracy.
The real brains behind Porsche and VW.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Pi%C3%ABch
And this guy not only developed cars; he’s also playing every political game to push through his goals. ATM, his goal is to overtake Toyota. Kretschmann, you might have a challenge there.
I worked for the auto industry for a time and met a number engineers familiar with Piech. They all said no one is more of a car-guy than Piech – he has diesel flowing in his veins. I’ve also heard he’s extremely arrogant and autocratic, so you likely are right with Kretschmann meeting his match.
Recall how Schröder always said “I’m a car-guy” whenever around Piech.
That was safer for Schröder.
Regulate THIS.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jk1t6S737Cs
(Top Gear Bugatti Veyron Top Speed Test)
Here in Ontario, the Provincial government banned local opposition to windfarm and solar farm subsidy generators; the greens cheered; they wouldn’t like it if their protests were banned though.
We could make you honorary members of the EU. You got the right spirit. 😉
A friend of mine wants to buy a small electrical car. Shall I tell her to wait for a couple of years and that she then can buy a Porsche?
Found another socialist warmist German crackpot.
“Bereits 1992 schlug Lothar Mayer in seinem ersten Buch, Ein System siegt sich zu Tode – Der Kapitalismus frißt seine Kinder ein persönliches CO2-Budget vor”
http://www.ausstieg-aus-dem-crash.de/?Kontakt
http://www.ausstieg-aus-dem-crash.de/?AUSSTIEG_AUS_DEM_KLIMA-CRASH
The socialists love AGW.
Once I read an article claiming that in the long run our progress is based on technological innovations and not on ideologies. An innovation may be shale gas. Perhaps, Pierre can give it some attention. See for a comment:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100086418/dont-let-the-watermelons-kill-the-shale-gas-revolution/
mindert eiting
8. Mai 2011 at 17:14 | Permalink | Reply
A friend of mine wants to buy a small electrical car. Shall I tell her to wait for a couple of years and that she then can buy a Porsche?
Ask your friend what sense it makes to save on electricity for home appliances and lightning, wake up in the morning and step into an electrical car?
Help her to prevent making a very bad investment.
She can buy a Porsche right now for a lot less money than any electric car.
Nice low milage boxter cabrio’s all over the place for 10.000 Euro’s (imports from the US, thanks to a low US dollar).
They combine a very reasonable milage with high speed when you need it and great safety.
On the other hand, here in the UK the madness might just be beginning to wane. The Committee on Climate Change has decided to favour nuclear over offshore wind. It may not happen(!) but such thinking would have been heresy to the CCC 12 months ago.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/nuclearpower/8501816/Nuclear-power-cheaper-option-than-offshore-wind-farms.html
Regards
Don’t expect anything rational like that here in Germany any time soon…
Another one for the collection. Can’t make this up.
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/05/06/science-good-markets-bad/
Russia redrawing European energy map
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/ME12Ag02.html
Just watched the guy on DW.
Kretchman is a very dangerous ideologue.
That makes the Germans who have voted him into office just as dangerous.
Even the opposition voted has voted him into office.
WHAT THEY SOW, THEY WILL HARVEST.