FAZ Commentary: Germany Caught Up In Climate Protection Zeal… “Illusion It Can Rescue Planet”

German flagship daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) publisher Holger Steltzner wrote in an online commentary that the rescue of the global climate” has turned into a religious movement for “a large portion of German society”.

In his commentary, Steltzner remarks that even questioning the hundreds of billions spent thus far with hardly any progress in CO2 reductions to show is enough to get yourself branded as a heretic.

Freedom of dissent under attack

The FAZ publisher also questions the branding skeptics of manmade global warming as “climate deniers”, thus comparing them to Holocaust-deniers. He wonders: “Is this just the thoughtless use of language that abuses the historical break with civilization of the Shoah through banalization?”

Dissent over climate science in Germany is harshly scorned and the media and science community do not tolerate it.

In his commentary Steltzner reminds that man is in fact just one component in the complex climate system where huge natural factors are at play, and that the vast majority of skeptics do not even deny the climatic changes taking place today and how they are just as concerned about the environment as anyone else is.

Communist central planning

The trained business finance specialist and FAZ publisher writes that the German Energiewende (transition to renewable energies) has led to “price distortions, threatened grid stability and the writing off of modern power plants” and is accurately characterized as “eco-central planning”.

Causing more environmental harm than good

And what is even worse is that the Energiewende is likely causing more environmental harm than good. For example forests are being cleared to make way for the industrialization of the country’s once idyllic landscape, destroying biotopes with it. Stelzner adds that many Germans are filling up their cars with fuel that is 10% bio-fuel – which in turn leads to orangutans being shot dead so hat palm oil plantations can operate in places like Indonesia.

And according to Steltzer: “One fifth of Germany’s agricultural land is used for growing bio fuels.”

Another example of Germans trying to ease their conscience is the consumption of tofu in place of meat. He writes: “But weren’t there rainforests in Brazil, where today one soy plantation follows the next?”

Other examples Steltzner cites are avocado plantations in Mexico or the lithium-ion battery “which is supposed to save the climate, and whose raw material extraction in Africa, Russia or South America is devastating entire regions.”

“Illusion, religious zeal”

Steltzner also comments that it seems that environmental organizations have taken a page from the Vatican playbook, where in the past “believers could even acquire letters of indulgence for deceased people in order to wipe out sin penalties in purgatory.”

“Today the purchase of carbon dioxide certificates protects you from being plagued by a bad conscience while shopping in London,” Steltzner comments.

Though he perceives climate change as a real challenge, Steltzner summarizes by calling on Germany to “abandon the illusion that it can rescue the planet” and that “climate protection must not be driven with religious zeal”.

12 responses to “FAZ Commentary: Germany Caught Up In Climate Protection Zeal… “Illusion It Can Rescue Planet””

  1. J Martin

    Thunberg syndrome.

  2. John F. Hultquist

    So a question:
    Has German flagship daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) just now found this out?

    Was the paper a fan of the Energiewende 20 years ago, or 10 years ago?
    There is always a back-story.

  3. Don from OZ

    It matters not what FAZ was but rather what it’s views are now.
    All credit to Steltzner for calling out the stilted approach of Energiewende which to any thinking person has shown to be a very expensive failure.
    The Merkel Gov’t just doesn’t get some issues that would help the German people enormously. Closing down nuclear generators is even worse than promoting windmills because they don’t generate any CO2 whilst they produce electricity 24/7.
    @ John F H – ‘Was the paper a fan of the Energiewende 20 years ago, or 10 years ago?’ If they were then all praise to them for recognizing the need to change their view.

  4. sasquatch

    Vie vill aszk zee qwesgeons.

    The Germans invented propaganda and brainwashing all on their very own. lol

    Follow the Yellow Brick Road of Wind and Solar and march your way to disaster.

    The Germans have a propensity to concentrate, pile on, different states of being to the extreme, and at times to the obscene. Then, at the end of it all, it ends in failure, total disaster. The Weimar Republic stands out as a prime example. That would be the zeitgeist for the Deutsch.

    Not picking on the Germans, I have plenty of stubborn Kraut in me, just being brutally frank.

    When it comes to energy, producing electricity, since electricity is the number one reason there is even an engine, gotta have spark, by pressure or by current, it has to exist. No spark, no fuel can combust. You can light it on fire, not going to get you that far. A controlled burn of fuel inside a piston chamber is going to produce some punch, you’ll be happy knowing what it can really do.

    Flint and steel together packaged in a spark plug will make that ICE go.

    A 20 horsepower electric motor can power a drive which will move a belt on the leg at the grain elevator, the cups will fill with grain, a quart at a time, and yet, after some time and harvesting, there will be close to 45 thousand bushels in just one round bin 24 feet in diameter 120 feet tall. Of course, you need a 660 volt feed from the power line which is powered by the coal-fired power plant one hundred miles from the grain elevator. The electric panel at a grain elevator has some hefty copper line to allow for plenty of flow of electrons. Not as easy as it all looks.

    Kind of hard to duplicate that kind of system, no matter what you do.

    Not digressing, it takes plenty of power to make civilization go from midnight to midnight the next day.

    Whether it is a steam plant by burning coal to produce electricity or a a diesel engine to power a drivetrain on a ship, fossil fuels make it all happen like it has never been before.

    270 years of anthropogenic carbon emissions has increased the atmospheric CO2 by 125 ppm.

    The temps outside still can dip to minus 40 F/C during the winter season up here in the northland in the middle of nowhere.

  5. Henning Nielsen

    Well, if he beleives in the danger of climate change (presumably man-made), but does not accept that Germany must save the climate, who will do it? Certainly not those nations that have the largest emissions and the largest increase of these.

    So his conclusion -if his fear is real, and not just window-dressing – must be that we are doomed. He just does not want to pay for Doomsday.

  6. Bitter&twisted

    Back in the Middle Ages, you could “offset” your sins, by giving money to the Church in return for forgiveness.
    These payments were called “Indulgences”.
    Carbon offsets, today, are exactly the same.

  7. Yonason

    The concept of Carbon “offsets” being like “indulgences” has been around for a LONG time. Here’s an article from 2006 by G. Monbiot.
    https://www.monbiot.com/2006/10/19/selling-indulgences/

    Another by a blogger commenting on a Mark Steyn article in 2007
    https://rantingkraut.wordpress.com/2007/03/05/indulgences-anyone/

    Original Steyn article:
    https://web.archive.org/web/20070306064713/http://www.suntimes.com/news/steyn/281949,CST-EDT-STEYN04.article

    Another article from 2009.
    https://climateandcapitalism.com/2009/12/28/and-you-thought-carbon-offsets-couldnt-get-worse/

    So, you see, the concept isn’t new, and was very well known a decade and more ago. Some pretty funny stuff, as well. Credit to Steltzner for reusing the concept, though. It helps put the carbon trading nonsense in perspective.

    1. Yonason

      I should have drawn attention to the fact that one of my refs (last one) was from a hard Left blog, and that despite their being off base on most of what they write about, even they were calling offsets “indulgences.”

      And the same with the hard Left “grist,” who seemed surprisingly aware of at least some of the folly back in 2007.
      https://grist.org/article/offsets-never-ever-resemble-indulgences-part-ii/

      Again, my sole point was that the concept of carbon “indulgences” has a long history, even among the far Left eco-socialists. And it’s such a bad idea that even some of them think so. My posting them is NOT an endorsement of their sites or the many screwy ideas they purvey.

    2. Yonason

      And of course George (moonbat) Monbiot in the first link of my first post above is also a watermelon.

      1. Yonason

        Pierre, you’ve posted my first and third comment, but my second is missing. Thanks.

  8. tom0mason

    You can not ‘save the planet’, this planet looks after itself and requires no human savior.
    Humanity needs a savior as it is lost on a planet that they mostly misunderstand.

  9. Patrick healy

    Whilst this article refers to the stupidity of the germans in their global warming religion, let’s be fair, the whole world’s politicians and religious leaders are equally obsessed, with the possible exception of the usa whilst Donald Trump is in tentative charge.
    May my Christian God protect me when he goes – that is our only hope.

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