Germany Says “Nein” To Vegetarianism To Save Climate – Green Party Abandons “Veggie-Day” Drive

The primary drive behind the Green Movement is the attempt to seize the power to control human behavior and to enforce it with a system of severe punishment and reward.

Human behavior can be modified to some extent, as long as the change is gradual, involves some reward and does not entail unreasonable sacrifice. But once you expect too much from the public, there’s a high chance of violent revolt and the movement backfiring.

Nikolaus Blome at Spiegel reports this is precisely what has happened to the German Greens recently in their attempt to reduce meat consumption by forcing the public to swallow a nationwide weekly “Veggie Day”, where every Thursday German public cafeterias would serve up only vegetarian dishes.

Spiegel last year wrote:

Veggie Day’ should link to the tradition of a meatless Friday and promote health, animal and climate protection, Green Party leading candidate Katrin Göring-Eckardt has pushed.”

The public reacted almost instantly and handed the Germans Greens a series of costly election day defeats. Criticism was harsh from all sides. The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats blasted the food nannies, calling the agenda “paternalism” and a move towards a federal “republic of bans”. Even the German Communist Links Party warned of a “green upbringing dictatorship

What was meant to be a noble planet-rescue mission by the Greens, who thought they had tapped into a new trend sweeping across the country, turned into a political flop. Apparently Germans are not ready to part from their beloved national food icons: schnitzel and bratwurst. The German Green Party has since been forced to withdraw their “Veggie Day” from its political agenda.

Spiegel writes the Greens will be formally adopting a new position on nutrition. Spiegel writes:

In the new party program the following sentence will be included in early November: ‘What I eat and what I don’t eat shall be decided by my own taste.'”

In its online poll, over 56% of the more than 15,000 Spiegel readers who voted checked off:“Everyone should be allowed to eat as much meat as he she wishes”, while 21% checked: “Excessive meat consumption is responsible for climate change and the suffering of millions of animals.”

Goes to show: politicians may think they can shove whatever they want down the throats of the public, but in the end, more often than not, it just gets coughed right back up.

 

16 responses to “Germany Says “Nein” To Vegetarianism To Save Climate – Green Party Abandons “Veggie-Day” Drive”

  1. DirkH

    For decades now the gift of Leftism to voters is the Ersatz Freedom of sexual arbitrariness, to varying degrees, depending on the Leftist regime -sex with animals is legal in Denmark, for instance-, while slowly removing all other freedoms, especially the freedom to trade without theft by the state.

    So it will be easy for them to add another Ersatz Freedom, the freedom to eat whatever the state allows to be sold as food.

    The Greens in Germany are currently losing a whole generation, and their re-incarnation, the Pirate Party, has self-destroyed.

    1. Bernd Felsche

      “Implosion” might be a more appropriate term for the Pirate Party.

      Too many dense² ⁵ people in one place; matter collapses. (Sorry; doesn’t translate to German without ruining the pun.)

      For the benefit of non-“native” speakers of English:
      ² Hard to penetrate; thick:…
      ⁵ Slow to apprehend; thickheaded.

      1. DirkH

        The precise technical term is scuttling.
        Google “Anne Helm Thanks Bomber Harris”.

  2. Henning Nielsen

    Good old religious custom, like a meat fast. Fridays used to be fish only, I believe. All we need now are some saints. I suggest for starters St. James (Hansen), St. Al (Gore) and St. Phil (Jones). Would be nice to have Pachauri as well, but I think he is a heathen.

    Could the St. Mary perhaps be replaced by St. Connie (Hedegaard)?

    The Holy Spirit is a bit more tricky. Can’t be CO2 of course, that the Devil’s realm. May one suggest “The Spirit Of Copenhagen”?

  3. Curious George

    An interesting ideological parallel. In former Czechoslovakia the Communist Party attempted to solve meat supply problems by enforcing – you guessed it – a Veggie Thursday. Not Friday, since many people did not eat meat Fridays anyway.

  4. John F. Hultquist

    When this post loaded there was an ad for restaurant coupons beside the words schnitzel and bratwurst. They were not for green salads.

    ~~~
    The WSJ has a note on the low-fat-diet issue about the disconnect between USDA guidelines and the latest science.
    http://online.wsj.com/articles/nina-teicholz-the-last-anti-fat-crusaders-1414536989
    (subscription may be needed)
    One of the studies linked to is here:
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24723079

  5. Papy Boomer

    This link to the WSJ article of Nina Teicholz seems to be available here
    without obligation or subscription :
    http://online.wsj.com/articles/nina-teicholz-the-last-anti-fat-crusaders-1414536989

  6. John Shade

    Well done the people in Germany who opposed this latest piece of demented would-be manipulation!

  7. Papy Boomer

    Maybe it is now available for everybody.

    1. John F. Hultquist

      Maybe. Some are, but I never know for sure so that is why I mention it.

  8. m e wood

    A nightmare for me and for those with food allergies!
    I’m sensitive to most of the ingredients of vegetarian and vegan diets. So no soya, no other beans or grains and no nuts( even groundnuts) etc etc into the vegetable Kingdom..
    TVP – Texturised Vegetable Protein was fashionable in the 1950’s and 1960’s and caused me many years of illness.! No one believed in food allergies much and sensitivities were all in the head.
    BTW Greek and other Orthodox Church members avoid cheese on many fast days and many of these days have no fish or vegetable oil or dairy fat either. So if they are sensitive to wheat they can’t even have bread and water .

  9. yonason

    Go veg. Go green. Save the planet. – James Hansen, NASA data tamperer.

  10. Albert Stienstra

    How does Germany view eating insects instead of meat? In the Netherlands scientists from the Wageningen University are promoting this as a good idea to save the climate…

    1. DirkH

      Germans love their Schnitzel, bacon and roast pork, so, no normal person here would consider that, maybe a few crazies in the big cities.

      I guess you eat bugs when you haven’t yet learned how to cultivate pigs.

  11. TIM

    ‘What I eat and what I don’t eat shall be decided by my own taste.’”
    How magnanimous. Imagine living in a world where Govt officials see the need to reassure people that this is actually ok. What a revolting indictment.

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