Much of German economy was supported by farming and manufacturing sectors. These were predicated on getting cheap energy from Russia to stay competitive. At the start of the war, German government provided subsidies to offset the shock of energy prices shooting up. The idea was that Russian economy would collapse quickly due to western sanctions, and then everything would go back to normal.
Now that subsidies are running out, Germany can’t compete with manufacturing in places like China where there energy is much cheaper, and farmers are literally coming out with pitchforks because they can’t make ends meet.
Very interesting. Thank you for the response! I’m a somewhat ignorant westerner so I always think of Germany as being very much a high end manufacturing and sciences based country - making fairly complex industrial machinery and precision tools and such. I didn’t know they relied on Russia so heavily, though I suppose it makes sense given its location.
Unfortunate that they didn’t take some notes from Frances book and get heavy into Nuclear.
Indeed, if Germany invested in alternative energy first then decoupling from Russia wouldn’t have been such a big problem. For some weird reason German greens absolutely hate nuclear though.
There’s a liberal trend in green politics here in the US that hates nuclear energy, also. They tend to justify the view by only ever bringing up the dangers of nuclear power, and arguments about nuclear waste (ignoring the fact we keep getting better in both these areas). I’m willing to bet the German greens hold the same views.
They tend to justify the view by only ever bringing up the dangers of nuclear power, and arguments about nuclear waste (ignoring the fact we keep getting better in both these areas).
I’ve even seen people like that on here before when the topic’s come up too, it’s an annoyingly common sentiment
Much of German economy was supported by farming and manufacturing sectors. These were predicated on getting cheap energy from Russia to stay competitive. At the start of the war, German government provided subsidies to offset the shock of energy prices shooting up. The idea was that Russian economy would collapse quickly due to western sanctions, and then everything would go back to normal.
Now that subsidies are running out, Germany can’t compete with manufacturing in places like China where there energy is much cheaper, and farmers are literally coming out with pitchforks because they can’t make ends meet.
Very interesting. Thank you for the response! I’m a somewhat ignorant westerner so I always think of Germany as being very much a high end manufacturing and sciences based country - making fairly complex industrial machinery and precision tools and such. I didn’t know they relied on Russia so heavily, though I suppose it makes sense given its location.
Unfortunate that they didn’t take some notes from Frances book and get heavy into Nuclear.
Indeed, if Germany invested in alternative energy first then decoupling from Russia wouldn’t have been such a big problem. For some weird reason German greens absolutely hate nuclear though.
There’s a liberal trend in green politics here in the US that hates nuclear energy, also. They tend to justify the view by only ever bringing up the dangers of nuclear power, and arguments about nuclear waste (ignoring the fact we keep getting better in both these areas). I’m willing to bet the German greens hold the same views.
That’s my impression as well. It’s just kind of become a cult at this point with no rational thought behind it.
I’ve even seen people like that on here before when the topic’s come up too, it’s an annoyingly common sentiment
I’m not surprised. I’ve seen a few green politics opinions here that seem idealistic or moralistic to me.