Daily ‘Die Welt’ Reports German Greens Facing Political Extinction…”Apocalyptic Narrative Approaching An End”

Germany’s once formidable Green Party just held its annual convention in Hamburg.

Over the past few years Germans in general have grown fatigued of the planet-rescuing Greens and their dire warnings that man’s technology was destroying the planet. So faced with the prospect of slipping into irrelevance, the Greens are now scrambling to find an issue that will re-energize public enthusiasm.

German flagship daily Die Welt here has just published an online analysis of the Green Party’s convention. The piece is dubbed: “Farewell Apocalypse – the Greens are running out of issues“.

Once a party of devout Luddites, Die Welt writes:

The Party Convention shows that the Greens, now in their fourth decade of existence, are hardly needed anymore. The technology that they used to vilify has since solved more problems than it has created.”

One major problem the German Greens face is that the party is divided between the Fundis (fundamentalist greens) and the so-called Realos (hip progressives in business suits) who have taken over the party and adopted issues that other mainstream parties have long had in their platforms. Die Welt calls the German Greens “the children of Lenin and the Club of Rome“, a party whose leaders were “Maoists, Trotskyites and hardcore communists“; with the primary enemy: capitalism and the evils of a technological society, which they viewed would lead to global, ecological demise.

Though popular in the 1980s, Die Welt writes that narrative no longer finds much public appeal today. It’s totally out.

Today’s Green Party is now seeing its old anti-capitalist leaders going into retirement and its new leaders struggling to chart a meaningful course for the party’s future. The old Green zeitgeist is gone. The issues and philosophies that once resonated and brought the Greens huge success in the 1980s and 90s are today worn out, outdated. The appeal is gone, Die Welt writes.

In their fourth decade of existence, the apocalyptic narrative is approaching an end. Failure from fatigue looms. The mantra-like repeated invocation of the apocalypse hardly has any remaining energizing potential.”

Ironically, the Greens are facing a political extinction due to the very technology they once preached would lead to the global apocalypse. Die Welt:

Fusion could be delivering energy in just 10 years. Architects are designing skyscrapers that produce more energy then they consume. 900-hp sports car will be driven by engines that get 50 miles a gallon. The transition away from CO2 in oil and petrol is just a step away from the assembly line.

Contemporary capitalism has met the innovation challenges posed by ecology. […]

This weekend’s party convention showed that after the end of nuclear energy and mainstream ecology, the Greens have run out of issues.”

The Greens are now calling for an agricultural revolution. But as Die Welt points out: “capitalism has already long since recognized this. Thus there’s hardly any use left for the Greens“.

After 40 years of hearing apocalypse, the zeitgeist no longer desires doom and gloom. Engineers and scientists are basking in a sea of hopes and real breakthroughs. Who still needs the Greens when air, water and food are clean?”

 

26 responses to “Daily ‘Die Welt’ Reports German Greens Facing Political Extinction…”Apocalyptic Narrative Approaching An End””

  1. DirkH

    This just in: Cem Özdemür, top German Green, journalist by education, has been prepared for his role, just like many CDU politicians (Guttenberg, Wulff, von der Leyen), by the American Deep State during long America visits, through the “think tank” “Atlantikbruecke”.
    http://www.atlantik-bruecke.org/w/files/dokumente/yl-history-2011.pdf

    Noteworthy, Thomas De Maiziere, current minister of the inner; just proclaimed he doesn’t want to deport Asylum seekers whose applications are rejected – exactly what Obama does. So I thought, now that’s strange. Turns out he’s been conditioned by the same handlers I guess, or using the same conditioning, as Obama.

    1. DirkH

      People have looked at the CV of the pols in question. There are mysterious inexplicable gaps. Likely for the in-depth training / brainwashing.

      These people survive all scandals – until they’re dropped, like Wulff.

    2. DirkH

      And notice that Atlantikbruecke takes care to produce some top journalists as well – a STERN boss, Bertelsmann, slightly left – and Diekmann, a BILD boss, slightly to the right. Hegelian dialectic; control both sides of the debate, protect your “Young Leaders” you have carefully nurtured from irresponsible uncontrolled journalism.

      1. Edward.

        It’s not just the Germans, Dirk.

  2. Bruce of Newcastle

    “the Greens are now scrambling to find an issue that will re-energize public enthusiasm.”

    How about saving birds from extinction? They could then campaign against wind turbines and force their dismantling.

  3. Edward.

    Greens down the toilet?

    It could not happen to a ‘nicer’ bunch.

    Times were better for Germany, just after the post war period it was grim but throughout the late Fifties, into the Sixties and throughout the Seventies times were good and those baby boomers were anti war, anti nukes and anti right wing politics, for obvious reasons.
    Neatly into a niche, the green party was a good fit – peaceniks ruled OK and everything green seemed good, particularly when the weed was toked, even a nod to Baader Meinhof [viva la revolucion!].

    Like it is in Britain, the younger generation of Germans, are not so certain, are usually poorer and less secure in their jobs.

    ‘Die Jugend’, they are aware of RealPolitik and of the iniquity and inequity of the Brussels Empire. What with, the single currency pulling the eurozone apart and German economy in relative slowdown, its banks in debt up to their eyeballs. These kids know that, the German economic miracle is coming to an abrupt halt. When you look at life through the prism of pragmatic logic, of realism, then Green politics and values must seem to be as distant as is Pyongyang and North Korea.

  4. Henning Nielsen

    Great GREEN news from Germany!

  5. Bloke down the pub

    Conversely, in the UK, the major parties are likely to suffer at the next general election. The Lib-Dems who were the traditional home for old hippies faces obliteration. The Conservatives are moving away from their ‘vote blue, go green’ stance and the Labour party is doing it’s best to self destruct. As a result, smaller parties have a real chance of picking up seats and the Green party will be hoping to increase their current total of one although the biggest gainer may turn out to be UKIP, whose stance on climate change is decidedly sceptical.

    1. Loodt Pretorius

      Actually, we are seeing a bit of a see-saw. Just when the Greenies are running out of steam in Germany, the polls are predicting that the support for the Green Party in the UK will rise as the disenchanted LibDems move over to the anti-capitalist pro-socialism Green Party. The Greenies will find a new way of rewarding layabouts as the capitalist system reward people who work and not the global thinkers who worry about the rape of Mother Gaia.

      1. Mick J

        I found this curious. I came across this graphic posted at Brietbart-London that portrays the movement of voters between parties during the recent Rochester – Strood election. I don’t know the source of the data but it suggests that LibDem voters were are also keen to switch to UKIP.
        The LibDem vote percentage fell by 15%, apparently 3% going to the Greens and 12% to UKIP. Strange as some might think that the respective politics for the LibDems and UKIP is poles apart.

        UKIP unlike the LibDems does have a real energy policy that excludes wind turbines et al and is sceptical of the catastrophic elements of AGW and not forgetting anti EU, hardly comfortable ground for a traditional LibDem voter.

        http://a.disquscdn.com/uploads/mediaembed/images/1468/8552/original.jpg

        Mick.

  6. DirkH

    Now Gabriel, SPD, says xxx million tons of CO2 emissions must be avoided til 20xx and he will make a law that leaves it to the electricity providers how they achieve that. He suggests they switch off old coal power plants.
    http://www.stuttgarter-zeitung.de/inhalt.abschaltung-von-kohlekraftwerken-gabriel-sieht-die-strombranche-in-der-pflicht.02d029e0-3d1c-4f89-a96c-e4f8d88d2dd9.html

    Goodbye sanity, hello conformism. Gabriel is a good politician. He can say different things every day without remembering anything.

    1. Mick J

      Would that mean that they can restart the nuclear power stations?

      1. DirkH

        Why do you think did they shut half of them down but didn’t destroy them…

        1. Mick J

          The energy companies have a firmer grip on reality than the average politician. 🙂

  7. Graeme No.3

    Well, if the Greens aren’t any use german voters will have to look for an Alternative.

  8. John F. Hultquist

    The Greens are now calling for an agricultural revolution.

    I hate to ask, but that can’t be good, unless they want to increase beef and other meats, and get the price down.

    1. DirkH

      They are , of course demanding all food be produced in organic food farms. Again, they ignore all numbers. And, food prices would of course skyrocket; as they would regulate things into existence. They have the inverse midas touch.

  9. ethical Green blackouts … | pindanpost

    […] The Greens are their own worst enemy. Their ideological stance on the power grid, and their attraction to wind turbines and solar, their depiction of coal, gas and oil as unethical, is driving them into extinction. Germany is feeling the pain: Daily ‘Die Welt’ Reports German Greens Facing Political Extinction…”Apocalyptic Narrative Ap… […]

  10. Kurt in Switzerland

    Meanwhile, financing is drying up for grand plans to save the planet.

    http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20141125/situation-grave-global-climate-financing-report-warns

    Perhaps this has something to do with the following:

    a) government coffers are essentially empty – the pie has grown smaller, yet the number of mouths is growing.
    b) most “clean tech” projects fail miserably as private sector investments – ROI is negative.

    I find it remarkable that there are no legal challenges by Germany or the USA against the large donations / promises being made to the UN’s Green Climate Fund.

    1. DirkH

      Kurt; to avoid a deflationary collapse (in which the debtors will be destroyed – and the biggest debtor is the state), the money+credit supply in a debt money system must always grow (even if only slightly).

      That means there must always be new projects that can be financed with credit.
      In the beginning of the 20th century even public works project delivered high rates of return – say, a hydropower plant serving an area newly electrified.
      Vast returns were realized, so that even centrally planned systems like FDR’s new deal or Stalin’s 5 year plans were worthwhile.

      Since then the rate of return has constantly diminished. The first Autobahn is the backbone of your nation; the 100th Autobahn is barely useful, maybe even has a negative value due to future maintenance cost, the marginal use value of adding more infrastructure is close to zero or negative in the West now.

      The marginal use value of solar panels and wind turbines is SURELY negative – but anyway – the monetary system desparately needs MORE credit creation to survive.

      It is not the mouths to feed that kill the system – it is the by now CATASTROPHIC quality of credit. All of this will turn into non performing loans – little bubbles popping – the foam of credit creation will implode piecemeal – while the centrasl banks frantically try to reinflate more bubbles – mis-allocating capital even WORSE than before, wrecking returns even more.

      1. Kurt in Switzerland

        Dirk –

        Sure they are still trying to pump the system with more credit!
        But private investors are aware just how poor renewables perform.

        So the only “solution” is to pass laws which guarantee positive returns (at consumers’ expense). The task of Aufklärung is one we must rise to.

  11. oebele bruinsma

    The Greens have been taken over by progress. Amazing isn’t it? As a consequence their ideas (centralised and pre-programmed progress) have been permanently outdated.

  12. L Michael Hohmann

    Follow the money – here http://tinyurl.com/orwzfjj – there http://tinyurl.com/mgg58da – and everywhere http://tinyurl.com/q4rtmvf

  13. Val Martin

    The mistaken belief that wind turbines can save fossil fuel for electrical generation and the pubic revulsion at the environmental damage done destroyed the Green movement beyond redemption. Irish Energy Blogg and valmartin reland you tube myth about wind energy

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