Political tensions in Germany appear to be growing, while the ongoing gas crisis across Europe, gets steadily worse. The country’s economic and climate minister, Robert Habeck, is angrily lashing out at his political rivals in the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the party of former chancellor Angela Merkel. He literally accused the CDU, of being responsible for “16 years of energy policy failure”.
Warned by former President Donald Trump, that relying on Russia for energy was endangering the security of both Germany and her allies, Merkel ignored his comments. She then proceeded to preside over a green agenda-fuel shift away from domestic fossil fuel production, that made the country ever more reliant on gas exports supplied by Moscow.
Now, fears that many will be unable to properly heat their homes this winter, are very real, in the wake of the Ukraine war. Essentially, Germany has all but completely lost access to its supply of gas from Vladimir Putin,
Many have been attacking Habeck, for his own poor handling of the country’s nuclear power plants, which are still mostly due to be wound down, by the end of the year, according to a report by Tagesschau. The fact that many of these attacks appear to be originating from the CDU now appears to have struck a nerve with Habeck, who on Thursday severely criticized the rival party, for being the cause of the hardship, that he now has to deal with in the first place.
According to Tagesschau Habeck was quoted as saying-
“[T]he [Christian Democratic] Union has ruled this country and many federal states for 16 years. Sixteen years of energy policy failure,” adding…“And in a few months we will clean up what you screwed up, prevented and destroyed in 16 years,”
- Robert Habeck, Germany’s Economic and Climate minister
While Habeck appears to be determined that his coalition government will be able to fix Germany’s current mess, it remains unclear exactly how he plans to do so.
Aimed at curbing the impact of the crisis, especially for private households, measures have already been implemented at both the national and European Union level. The bare fact that there is now a chronic lack of natural gas available for the continent, means that Germany will likely struggle to keep itself supplied over the coming winter.
Though problems with a lack of the infrastructure needed to receive deliveries of liquified natural gas (LNG), as well as a lack of the fuel on the open market more generally, Habeck has still been adamant that liquified natural gas (LNG) could be just the ticket to save his country. All this uncertainty leaves significant doubts as to the efficacy of relying on LNG as a potential solution.
So far, with the so-called “traffic light” coalition of the Social Democrats, Free Democrats, and Greens being repeatedly criticized, for prioritizing its ideological commitment to killing the nuclear power industry, in Germany over ensuring there is enough energy to go around this winter, Habek and his green agenda government are not making much headway in this crisis.
Pretending to have made a U-turn on the issue, officials in recent weeks, are saying that they will keep on, in reserve, two of the three remaining nuclear plants in the country, that had been planned to be shut down by January. Critics have attacked the plan as simply not being feasible, with some claiming that nuclear power plants could not be used as reserve power stations, as they can take days to start up. As noted, in a letter to government officials, from one energy czar –
“Sending two of the three running systems to the cold reserve at the turn of the year in order to start them up if necessary is technically not feasible and therefore unsuitable for securing the supply contribution of the systems,”
- German Energy Czar
Sadly, Russia seems to hold all the cards at present with the dependency of Germany on their resources.
Had they listened to Trump, they might have been in a less vulnerable position. Live and learn. This winter will serve as lesson for all, with largely all of Europe struggling with the gas shortage, post Ukraine invasion by Putin.
All the more a great reason for America’s energy needs to return to self-sufficiency. We need to stop begging on the world stage (Biden) for our enemies to help us, expecting them to do so without hidden strings and a cost we could simply avoid. November can’t come soon enough.
“Only the self-sufficient stand alone - most people follow the crowd and imitate.”
-Bruce Lee