Former German chancellor Angela Merkel has released a new book called Freedom: Memoirs 1954-2021.  It deserves a different title: Serfdom: The Cost of Caution.

It is an abiding mystery how a leader who got energy, the economy, defence, foreign affairs and migration so catastrophically wrong still enjoys any support at all.

Early in her tenure the German press dubbed Merkel the Climate Chancellor for championing the country’s Energiewende (energy transition). Since 2000 the nation has spent $1 trillion shutting fossil fuel and nuclear generation and replacing it with wind and solar energy harvesting.

It is an unmitigated disaster. German electricity costs have soared to be the highest in Europe and German carbon emissions per person are about twice that of nuclear-powered France.

A quarter of a century into Germany’s transition, 78 per cent of its primary energy still comes from coal (18 per cent), oil (34 per cent) and gas (26 per cent).

Behind a green facade, Germany hid a lifeline to Russian fossil fuel. In 2022 Berlin relied on Moscow for a third of its oil and more than half of its gas imports. This was a glaring, and colossal, strategic weakness.
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It would be hard to care about Germany’s self-inflicted troubles if Merkel had not worked so assiduously at exporting them. A disturbing number of Australian politicians still cite Germany as the template for their green dream.

And they have put us on the same highway to hell.

Our grid is growing weaker and electricity prices are rising. Ludicrously, energy-rich Australia is now building LNG import terminals, adding electricity to the massive strategic weakness we already have on liquid fuel supplies.

It’s hard to credit the wilful blindness of the mandarin class and hard to see how we don’t follow Germany to Hades.

But there is one iron law of politics: somewhere on the pathway to poverty the people will revolt.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/the-german-chancellors-nightmare-rev...

Albo/Bowels are following Merkel, taking us down a path to ruin. Idiotic.

Brian Ross wrote on Dec 8^th, 2024 at 12:59pm:



What exactly is the point of your yawning and shitting your nappies??

What do YOU think you are doing?

Frank wrote on Dec 3^rd, 2024 at 10:05am:


Chris Bowels is following Germany:


“Increasingly more expensive energy in Europe due to exorbitant climate and environmental ambitions may also mean greater dependence in Russian energy sources,” Tusk said. “Hence, I will talk (to Merkel) primarily about how Germany is able to correct some economic actions so that dependence on Russian gas doesn’t paralyse Europe when it needs … a decisive stance.”

Merkel ignored this and other warnings. No one was more strident in his opposition than once and future president Donald Trump. In 2018 he told the NATO summit in Brussels that Germany had become a captive to Moscow “because it’s getting so much of its energy from Russia”.

Four months before the war was rebooted, Merkel signed off on a top-secret security assessment on a second gas pipeline from Russia, the Nord Stream 2, which concluded that “granting of certification (for the pipeline) does not jeopardise the security of gas supply in Germany and the European Union”.

Merkel believed the pipeline made Russia’s Vladimir Putin beholden to Germany. Turns out he knew her way better than she knew him. Here’s a thought to ponder: would Putin have invaded Ukraine if he did not believe Europe’s gas dependency was an achilles heel?

Patrick Wintour wrote in The Guardian that in the first two months of the Ukraine war Germany paid “€8.3bn for Russian energy – money used by Moscow to prop up the rouble and buy the artillery shells firing at Ukrainian positions in Donetsk”. Historian Timothy Snyder took to Twitter to note: “For 30 years, Germans lectured Ukrainians about fascism. When fascism actually arrived, Germans funded it, and Ukrainians died fighting it.”

Merkel’s misjudgment of Putin explains her woeful commitment to defence. Here she wagered that the US would do the heavy lifting in NATO. Despite repeated calls for Germany to do more, defence spending stayed at a paltry 1.3 per cent of GDP. Now, on a book tour, Merkel has conceded she “should have reacted more quickly to Russia’s aggressiveness”.

Get energy policy wrong and the economy will soon follow. Germany is now de-industrialising.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/the-german-chancellors-nightmare-rev...

I am still waiting on a answer?

Will the Labor party renewables scheme be again privatised by the labor party ( AGAIN)?

And if we go with the liberals ( I no longer count the National party as anything else than a painful pebble in the liberals shoes ) who ends up owning the nuclear power plants?

Lots of talk but no one will go on record saying the failed labor experiment of privatisation of essential services such as electricity will not occur again?!

It’s fair question I ask? I think?

Frank wrote on Dec 8^th, 2024 at 8:21pm:


That’s a thoughtful reply, thank you 🙏

I feel privatisation could be viable if our slime, corrupt politicians could negotiate a win win deal.

Far too often the public puts up all the $$ than it’s magical sold off when it’s proven to be a money maker.

Of course we never know how much for, that’s confidential.

Thank you for your post.

It’s always worth considering other views .