Here in Germany we’re gonna have a new chancellor soon after a whole 16 years of Merkel.
The Green Party’s candidate, Annalena Baerbock, isn’t great but she’s the only candidate who remotely considers the climate a factor that might be worth keeping in mind, and as you could expect, the conservative CDU, the libertarian FDP and ofc the fascist AfD hate her guts for it, alongside large parts of the media. They’re trying to Corbyn her, pretty much.
And the libs’ analysis of this: “Ah yes, it must be because she is a woman.”
We have had Angela Merkel in office for the past sixteen years. SIXTEEN YEARS.
The fact that maybe she’s getting shat on because she’s trying to minimally go against capital doesn’t even cross their minds. Terminal idpol brain.
To be fair I’m like 90% certain a lot of the hate for Baerbock is because she’s a woman.
Mysogyny doesn’t exist purely on it’s own. Alice Weidel is both an immigrant and a lesbian and since we live in the dumbest fucking timeline, she’s also a major figure for the fascists.
Yeah sure nobody was against Merkel because she’s a woman. Doesn’t mean nobody is against ACAB because she’s a woman. You give people an entry (i.e. in this case fuel goes up 1 more cent) and the whole shitshow starts.
I’m gonna assume the Green candidate hates nuclear energy just like mainstream German politicians.
Nuclear Energy has some serious fucking problems, not the least of which being we never bothered to learn how to build low-waste plants reliably or mine uranium without fucking up everything in the surrounding area. Oh, and also plus too, once you start building plants you are setting the groundwork for building bombs, creating a geopolitical nightmare.
That’s not even dealing with the lead time of construction. Georgia’s Vogtle 3 and 4 have been in construction since 2006. They still haven’t produced a watt of consumer electricity.
There are a whole litany of reasons why nuclear isn’t a viable option or why a Green candidate might want to focus on alternatives. Hell, at this stage of the game, just rotating out coal plants for natural gas plants is a sizable improvement to emissions. One reason why Europeans who’ve been starring hungrily at Russia’s natural gas reserves aren’t biting on the American Cold War bullshit.
Maybe if the Germans can learn to play nice with the French and just start importing their nuclear tech (or, fuck it, just start sending surplus power across the border) nuke plants will be viable for hitting 2050 zero-emissions targets. But shitting on a Green MP for failing to dive face first into “Fossil Fuels 2: Radioactive Edition” is foolish.
fuck it, just start sending surplus power across the border
Don’t worry, we’ve been trading energy in Europe since the 90s. Check out the European Energy Exchange, if you want to know more. Also, I just found this cool map (‘show cross border only’)
Nuclear is the only existing and viable way out of climate apocalypse on the energy production side of the equation. All forms of energy production have significant problems, but fundamentally, all of the rest with acceptable GHG production lack capacity given existing technologies.
Mentioning natural gas is not being serious enough about this, particularly given how many people in the Global South are going to die from people in the imperial core fucking around and pretending half-measures are anything other than slightly less rapid horror. Natural gas is, itself, a powerful GHG. Though it dissipates faster than CO2, its strong effect means that it still increases warming, pushing us towards and past several points of no return. Acquiring and using natural gas involves releasing large quantities directly into the atmosphere. Next, burning it for energy (or just as a matter of extraction, with flare offs) produces CO2, of course. It’s just combustion, same as oil or coal: when fully combusted you just get the carbon atoms in the originating materials attached to oxygen from the atmosphere and most of the energy from the original chemical bonds. CO2 emissions are going to be on the same order of magnitude per watt given the bonds typically present. In addition, natural gas extraction and oil extraction are frequently a paired process and are in many ways the same industry.
With nuclear you have to put shit in a pit. It could buy millennia of time to find alternatives or develop better breeder reactor tech that eliminates waste / produces fuel. Or hell, just use what we have now at increased (but worth it) cost if that is the sticking point for environmentally-minded people who will kill us all rather than risk a Chernobyl or radioactive sludge in a pit.
There are a whole litany of reasons why nuclear isn’t a viable option or why a Green candidate might want to focus on alternatives.
The fuck there are. Nuclear is an existing technology that already works. This isn’t a theoretical discussion about some new tech that’s never scaled or doesn’t exist yet, like most “green” tech. This has provided the vast majority of power to several energy-hungry countries, including the countries right next door to Germany.
The real challenge is that it has very high per-plant capital costs for construction and decommissioning, effectively requiring central planning. This is the sticking point for a neoliberalized world that would rather greenwash solar panels, themselves having much higher per-watt and even environmental costs but much smaller costs per panel (of course).
Hell, at this stage of the game, just rotating out coal plants for natural gas plants is a sizable improvement to emissions.
This makes no sense at all given how combustion works and the tendency to release methane directly into the atmosphere. The upside is you get less gross shit in the air that gives people asthma and cancer, it’s doing virtually nothing for climate change. In terms of GHGs, the kind of thinking that underlies “gas is better than coal” assumes theoretical best case scenarios that still produce half the carbon as burning coal. Nuclear produces about 1/10 and this is due mostly to currently fossil fuel-dependent construction and transportation processes. Natural gas’ will never decrease below this theoretical limit.
Maybe if the Germans can learn to play nice with the French and just start importing their nuclear tech (or, fuck it, just start sending surplus power across the border) nuke plants will be viable for hitting 2050 zero-emissions targets. But shitting on a Green MP for failing to dive face first into “Fossil Fuels 2: Radioactive Edition” is foolish.
I didn’t say anything about the candidate except that I assume they have absurd ideas about addressing the energy production side of climate change like all mainstream German pols.
Environmentalism is not by itself going against capital. At worst, it’s just allying with that fraction of capital that does not depend on the extraction of natural resources. There’s a reason the Greens receive donations from insurance companies. At any rate, she’s a NATO warmonger demanding moderate social democracy.
Nevertheless, the media attacks on her are transparently cheap and misogynist, even ageist (“No experience!”, “Didn’t even finish college!”). But there’s no point weighing up sexism and anti-social-democracy here, I think.
Baerbock seems nothing like Corbyn. Her wiki page makes her sound like a fucking ecofascist.
Man, yesterday we had a thread titled, “Which imperial core country will be the first to become socialist?”
I think the better question is which western country will be the last to turn full fash?
You know what I don’t really know what I’m talking about because after I read further I discovered that she’s pretty good on immigration policies but this gave me pause when I read it:
Baerbock is regarded as taking a centrist line on defense and pushing for a stronger common EU foreign policy,[31] especially against Russia, Turkey and China.[32] She has proposed a post pacifism foreign policy.[33] calling for a European army under the supervision of the European Parliament
EU army is the next logical step. An ever closer union, remember? Don’t worry, the army won’t be used for imperialism. It’ll be used to bring countries like Hungary and Poland in line. Remember when they were refusing refugees? Imagine an EU battalion airdropping into Warsaw airport, seizing control, and forcibly landing airliners full of refugees into Poland. That’s what an EU army will do.
