Christian churches nowadays are pretty much always empty in Germany. But there is one church that is always full: the Church of Environmentalism. So comments Jan Fleischhhauer of Spiegel yesterday here.
Environmentalism fad in Germany ready for the scrap heap as absurdities get exposed. Public domain photo: John Muir, 1907.
Few countries have gone as fanatic as Germany when it comes to environmentalism. In Germany a mere bird’s nest or a even a beetle can stop a multi-billion euro public works project dead in its tracks and delay it indefinitely until an entire battery of comprehensive environmental studies are carried out and numerous lawsuits settled.
Fleischhauer writes of Germans today:
No other people on God’s Earth seperate garbage so devotedly, save so much water, and expend so much effort to lead an ecologically exemplary lifestyle.”
Even Spiegel seems to doubt the radical environmentalism now gripping Germany. This is not to be under-estimated. Spiegel is after all the flagship news magazine that revolution-prone university students like to quote. It serves as the casting mold for the next generation of thinkers – of changers.
Over the years, Germany’s religion of environmentalism has become so fervent that the country is now naively embarking on a climate and environmental protection crusade. Read here, second part if you have any doubts.
Fleischhauer writes that efforts to protect the planet have gotten so extreme that they actually serve to harm it instead. As an example he cites water saving, which leads to sewage systems getting clogged up because they no longer get flushed with enough water.
More than 80% of a water utility’s expenses are because of maintenance to the sewage system, and it doesn’t help at all that less and less water is coming down into it from above. All experts agree that it would be better if Germans used more, and not less water.”
And what happens to all the garbage that Germans so dutifully separate? According to Fleischhauer, much of it ends up being burned in the kilns at the nearest cement plant.
Another example of good intentions leading to destructive consequences is the use of biofuels. Fleischhauer writes:
In 2011 the well subsidized farming of corn made Germany an importer of grains for the first time in 25 years just so that it could bake enough bread. Everywhere corporations have started buying up fields and land worldwide.”
And they are not planning to use it to grow food to feed the 1.4 billion hungry people on the planet. Little wonder that food prices are going up globally.
When it comes to electric cars, Fleischhauer quotes a new, critical book written by Alexander Neubacher: “Ökofimmel”. German automobile club ADAC determined that electric cars emit more CO2 than compact diesel cars. “And if manufacturing is taken into account, then the electric cars fare even worse.” Fleischhauer adds:
‘Especially the production of batteries gobbles up huge amounts of electricity,’ writes Neubacher in his guide through the ecological world and its absurdities.’ For a single electric car, about as much additional energy is consumed as what is contained by 10,000 litres of gasoline .'”
Finally all the absurdities of the Church of Environmentalism are being communicated by a persuasive messenger. The religion is being exposed. Now it’s only a question of time before the passions of rebellion flare up. And there are signs of it everywhere in Germany. The genie is out of the bottle.
First time I see something sane in Der Spiegel.
Probably their quality control failed.
You may be right. And so it’s important to document it!
Seems like Fleischhauer is their token conservative.
Here’s his blog
http://unterlinken.de/
“Under Leftists”
Fleischhauer, BTW, was brought up in an SPD family and he calls himself a “late conservative”. Took him a while… similar to Breitbart. Maybe he’s tolerated at Der Spiegel because they used to hang out together at Nannen journalism school before he switched to the dark side…
“For a single electric car, about as much additional energy is consumed as what is contained by 10,000 litres of gasoline .”
A link to a study with battery types and such would be helpful. The obvious search terms bring up thousands of things but not the sort wanted.
Zettels Raum made it the subject of a posting today [23:59 – yes, today]:
http://zettelsraum.blogspot.com/2012/03/deutschland-im-oko-wurgegriff-29.html
As Zettel points out, Neubacher points out egregious failings and blindnesses of “Doing Good by Doing Green”, but he still basically believes in the system – advocates state intervention and regulating everybody’s lives while spending everybody’s money liberally; he just thinks that it should be wasted, ahem, invested in more efficient ways. As he (Zettel, that is) asks; How can you tell when an ideology has become the accepted, the only correct way of viewing the world? When even opposition to it accepts it and does not question the basic tenets. Just as “opposition” under socialism could not question the Marxist/Leninist bedrock and opposed the actual politics because the party did not implement it in the right way, so Neubacher is still Green, only more so. OTOH, as commenter “stuffi” points out in the comments section at ZR (Zettels kleines Zimmer), “vielleicht ist dies die einzige Form, die nicht sofort Gefahr läuft als Ketzerei gebrandmarkt zu werden, aber doch den einen oder anderen kritischen Geist dazu bewegen kann, die Dogmen zu hinterfragen und so auf die inhärenten Widersprüche des Systems zu stoßen.”
[Perhaps this is the only way that does not risk being branded as heresy, but might bring some critical spirit around to question the dogmas and discover the inherent contradictions of the system.]
There is one very positive aspect of the German eco religion.
It keeps them busy.
Imagine what they would come up with if they wouldn’t have to worry all day about some stupid beetle or hamster or how to sort their rubbish or protesting against a new McDonalds. Heck, I even still have electricity despite the loss of half the nukes.
I saw a V-formation of flying geese today, in about 50 m height, crossing over the Autobahn.
They were heading towards the wind turbines.
If it is like here (UK) over there (in Germany), the geese should be OK. Those wind turbines only turn 25% of the time in any case. Let’s hope the geese made it!
Yes well.
You see we did all this before.
And when it comes to electric cars well I wrote about what we did: here:
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/11/13/electric-cars/
You may need to cut and paste.
It amuses me no end how everything we did back then has been forgotten. Perhaps because it was never digitised and is not on the WWW.
As for the standards of these engineers well I have my own view.
The NiZn cell we improved from the Drumm cell was effective and with modern technology outperforms Lithium cells. It is much more robust, much cheaper, the materials easily recycled and overall has a better performance. Yet only now is it being made as a dry cell which is driving its rivals out of the market.
Likewise electric motors, ours were purely inductive and more efficient than the permanent magnet ones they use today. And let me tell you those permanent magnets cost money. Whereas copper or aluminium is very cheap and again it can be easily recycled.
Sometimes I wonder.
Kindest Regards
Steam engine time, apparently. Ask anyone abroad, and the meme “British electric cars” brings up the Sinclair C5.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_C5
Well, but once folks are set in their ways, they will keep the earlier revolutions buried. In the late 1970s there were some people insisting on the superiority of the Stanley Steamers over the Infernal Combustion Engine. The nasty plutocrats nip any challenge to their same-old-same-old in the bud:
The Tucker, the Ford Edson, the rotor engine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSU_Ro_80
the GE Walking Truck
http://cyberneticzoo.com/?p=2032
and the flying carpets.
Another NSU product…
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kettenkrad
The Ford EdSEL, s’il vous plait…
Must have been thinking of Edson Cordeiro, wouldn’t you say, Dr. Freud?.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akA4j8OFVyI&feature=related
Edsel Ford was a son of Henry Ford.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edsel_Ford
Any idea that comes from these “Green Whackos” has never ever been thought through to the end………..nobody has done research on what possible negative affects their Green Dream can actually have on the world around them. Wind Energy= total destruction of landscapes, health, wildlife. Electric Cars=nobody can afford them and they don’t do what the Greenies say they will. BioFuels= shortage of food for the world’s poorer populations………………..you get the idea…………..
I visited the Daimler Benz museum in Sindelfingen in 1954 during my all-expenses paid two year tour in Germany. I don’t recall seeing any steam cars. The well known and prodigious D-B engineering capabilities most certainly would have designed and produce steam cars if they were commercially practicable. What has changed since the to consider steam cars as a viable alternative to gas and diesel powered vehicles?
I do vaguely recall seeing one or more electric cars. The same question applies to them now.
I think that what is overlooked in the Greenie debate is how the kids are basically being taught that they have fools and village idiots as parents and grandparents.
Why were the people from your parents and grandparents generation so stupid not to use wind turbines instead of nasty dirty coal? The fact that people tried to harness wind power with generators in previous generations and found it a foolish idea and wanting is not broadcast widely enough.
We are also not debating and shooting down stupid ideas with enough vigour!
A good point. But…but… if the Church of AGW loses its status as the state religion, none of the apocalyptic riders visits town, all those windmills are left as memorials on how to waste Other People’s Money, what will the kids learn? That their parents’ cum grandparents’ generations consisted of utter fools indeed.
(OTOH: it has been the lesson every single generation has learned, everywhere, at least since 1945 – or 1914 – or 1890. It has never preventing the kids from being hornswoggled into collective idiocy themselves. But maybe doing a bit less damage to themselves and other fools.)
Love & peace.
The English has a good word for it: Folly.
Our landscapes are going to be dotted with these defunct windmills, the folly of this Green generation.
I am still trying to figure out how we can use these structures in the future.
The guy that comes up with a good business plan is going to make lots of money, not as much as the present lot of vampires, but enough for a quiet life.
Fighting vampires! Yes, that’s it. They turn into bats to get around, don’t they? “Van Helsing’s Dark Satanic Mills…”
The most robust and enduring thing we learn from history is that no new generation learns anything from history.
“I am still trying to figure out how we can use these structures in the future.”
Add Windmill to BASE – Building, Antenna, Span (bridge), Earth (cliff) – jumping and sell tickets to the idiots… err… extreme sportists to jump off them.
But where to put the W? BWASE? BAWSE?
I looked up a word finder for Scrabble and it couldn’t come up with one using all those letters.