Hypocritical Germany is being brought to its knees
By Paul Homewood
How would you like to be told by the government to spend no more than five minutes in the shower – or even urged to share a bath with a friend? That’s what’s happening in Germany, where energy rationing now looks inevitable. The crisis caused by Berlin’s dependence on Russian gas and oil makes our own cost of living crisis pale by comparison.
This week there was alarm across the Continent when Russia switched off the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline, supposedly for “routine maintenance”, until next week. Will the Kremlin switch it back on again? Vladimir Putin promises that Russia is still “ready to fulfill its obligations”, but few now trust the butcher of Bucha.
Not only the German public but their government are panicking about what will happen next. Gas is being stored in huge underground freezers, but unless usage is drastically cut, supplies are expected to run out by January.
If so, Germany would face its worst slump since the 1940s, with the economy shrinking by more than 12 per cent, production in the flagship car industry collapsing by 17 per cent and up to six million jobs at risk. Family fuel bills are already due to rise by €2,000 per annum, and there are plans to provide emergency accommodation in town halls for those unable to heat their homes.
Hence Robert Habeck, the Green Party Vice-Chancellor, is appealing to families to reduce consumption. “I’ve never showered for [as long as] five minutes in my life,” he says. The energy minister boasts that he turns off his heating all day in winter because he is always out. This is cold comfort for families and the elderly, who don’t have a warm ministerial office to go to. Yet some landlords are already threatening to turn down the heating in blocks of flats, while local authorities are even switching off street lights.
Germans used to lecture their neighbours about environmental virtue. Not any more: fossil fuels such as gas are now deemed to be “clean”, while coal-fired power stations are back in business.
A bitter blame game has erupted over the disastrous decision to exit from nuclear power a decade ago, leaving the country wholly reliant on Russia. The reputation of the once-idolised Angela Merkel is in tatters, but her successor, Olaf Scholz, is held responsible by two thirds of voters for the failure to safeguard energy security. The entire German political establishment has been caught with its environmentalist trousers down. Even a normally docile press cannot ignore the rank hypocrisy of an elite that preached “net-zero” to the rest of Europe but is now moving in the opposite direction.
That collective hypocrisy goes far beyond the politics of energy. Despite their crocodile tears about the war, to save their own skins Scholz and his coalition are in effect throwing Ukraine under a bus. Apart from a handful of howitzers, Berlin has neither given Kyiv heavy weapons nor boosted their production.
Meanwhile, Scholz’s much-trumpeted hike in military spending, announced last February, turns out to have been a flash in the pan. Germany’s depleted armed forces are to be cut back even further next year.
Even the supposedly hawkish Green foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, now merely wrings her hands, saying that “there is nothing to be done”. The prospect of rationing has already caused public support for backing Ukraine to decline: as food and energy prices continue to rise, 38 per cent of Germans want no punitive action against Russia.
Scholz is attempting to placate both his Nato allies and Putin, but has earned the respect of neither. In eastern, central and northern Europe, meanwhile, Germany under Scholz is more despised and distrusted than at any time since 1945.
Either an almighty bust-up in Berlin is coming, with a real possibility that the ruling “traffic light” coalition will implode, or it will capitulate to Putin.
Last week Scholz and his colleagues were toasting the fall of Boris Johnson. But the German Chancellor faces a nightmare scenario of his own; his schadenfreude may prove to be short-lived.
Once admired and envied, Germany is now the textbook example of how much damage a misguided foreign and energy policy may do.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
We all knew this wouldn’t end well. We just didn’t know what it would look like. We are starting to find out.
So foreseeable, will the UK GOV see the light, lets not hold our breath.
The German Energy Minister boasts of turning off his heating in winter, he’ll be able to keep warm redecorating when his pipes freeze and burst! Idiot.
Donald Trump. who the left, WEF delegates, UN IPCC…….. uncle Tom Cobley and all. hate warned Germany in 2018 it was following a dangerous energy strategy.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2018/09/25/trump-accused-germany-becoming-totally-dependent-russian-energy-un-germans-just-smirked/
Remember redundant Green Party ex-MEP and supposed Prof of Economics tweeting …
ANY nation that goes so stupidly ‘Gween’ that they stop using their own coal, gas or oil in favour of another nation’s supplies, ASKS for problems. HERE, we, too, are so damned stupid that WE have halted our Fracking programme in favour of FOREIGN supplies. Under OUR nation are VAST reserves of VERY cheap gas which we MUST exploit, OR end up like Germany, buying very thick overcoats from China!! USA is fracking away, and, but for biden, would be VERY happy bunnies!
Yep. 1000 upticks. We need nukes too, longer term.
What support do you have to substantiate that the UK has large resources of cheap gas just waiting to be fracked. Are you an expert on oil and gas drilling and hydraulic facturing? The truth is we really do not know how commerically viable the gas resource is. Poland turned out to be a bust.
We do not have the manpower or equipment in the UK to drill the HUGE number of wells that would be required, and niether is there a gas gathering infrastructure in place. You cannot simply connect a well to the gas grid, or did you not know that? If you want to see what is required then go to a satellite map around Midland Texas and you will see the impact on the landscape. I doubt if we would accept the impact in the crowded UK.
I am not anti fraccing, far from it because done properly the risk is minimal. BUT the inputs are huge. It takes a lot of steel to case the well, a lot of sand (like 10-20 kt per well), and a lot of water that will need to be disposed of, because most likely it will be highly saline.
I am a realist. I have done 44 years in oil,gas and petrochemicals and even if we proceed with fraccing it will take many years and a lot of money to be realised.
All going to Mutti’s plan a legacy to be proud of. i guess she was/is still a card carrying member of the old USSR
Just a year too early! If it had gone to plan the nuclear stations would already be closed. Her obvious plan was that Germany should be made subservient to Russia and could never arise again as a military threat to anyone.
The long and winding energiewende, off a cliff.
And still they won’t reprieve the 3 remaining nuclear power stations!
https://www.politico.eu/article/gas-crisis-germany-nuclear-power-debate/
Only lefties are prepared for people to suffer in pursuit of their idealogical dreams.
They have plenty of forestry and will have a hard time stopping people from burning it in their homes, if push comes to shove.
German official says nuclear would do little to solve gas issue
Germany’s vice-chancellor has defended the government’s commitment to ending the use of nuclear power at the end of this year, amid fears that Russia may halt natural gas supplies entirely.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/7/12/german-says-nuclear-would-do-little-to-solve-gas-issue
So where do more renewables fit in?
Channeling my inner Cool Hand Luke “hawh,hawh,hawh”
Hardly surprising Putin might turn down the gas. EUNATO are fighting a proxy war with him, with the Ukes as the cannon fodder.
The problem is there’s pretty much nothing that can be done to solve the problems that Germany, and to a lesser extent the U.K., face in the short term. Any new natural gas field (including fracking) will take years to come on line and start producing meaningful amounts of energy especially if it faces endless legal challenges from environmentalists as happens in the U.S. Similarly new power stations take years to build (or a decade plus in the case of nuclear) when the planning process is included. Same with new pipelines, or in the case of Germany LNG terminals. Obviously this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t start these projects asap, but for the next few years we’re just going to have to grin and bear the pain.
One piece of good news is that Trudeau has decided to allow a turbine for Nordstream1 that was undergoing maintainence in Canada to be sent back to Russia in a rare example of reality over ideology.
Matt: there is at least one thing we can do to improve security of supply, viz adopt the Ireland Altrernative Fuel Obligation and equip our CCGT power stations (which are key to the future) to burn liquid fuels (naphtha, kerosene, gas oil etc), with corresponding storage capacity. Ed Randolph for heavens sake stop banging on about fracking – our shale doesn’t yield gas as proved by Cuadruilla. But by all means let’s give it another go. The governmen’s decision is due this week isn’t it? Or will it be more postponement and evasion?
Were we to switch to liquid fuels it might cause a bit of a problem. 15 GW of power on a CCGT plant would require someting like 125 kt of fuel per day. That is about 900 kboe.. What do you think that this would do to the oil markets if the EU adopted this approach, The Saudi’s have been known to burn through a similar amount of crude in the summer months to keep coll and produce water.
You are 100% correct about UK shale gas. Not any time soon, if ever.
Christofer Booker foretold of these events way back in the early noughties, when I was an avid ST reader – almost exclusively because of him. I actually had a mention in dispatches one week.
Well at least Germany had the foresight to mothball its coal/lignite power stations unlike the UK where a politician turned up for the photo opportunity to blow up the station before the boilers were cold. In my view Russia will keep pumping gas as it loves the hypocrisy of the West buying its gas to pay for the war they are trying to stop.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see Mrs. Merkel fleeing to Moscow this coming winter.
So much fun to watch Germany collapse as an industrial economy due to their own stupidity. A lot of the people signed up to this lunacy so they must take some of the blame. They didn’t actually vote for this government since thanks to the joys of proportional representation, the election produced no winner and so after weeks of talks this lash up emerged.
Once their industry has relocated it won’t be coming back anytime soon.
As regards Nord Stream there are a lot of lies circulating about Russia cutting the supply. Siemens manufactured one of the pipeline compressors which despite being a German company, was sent to Canada for servicing. The fascists in Canada refused to send it back claiming it breached the sanctions imposed on Russia. As a compromise it seems that it will be sent back to Germany and that leaves the Germans to decide how they deal with returning it to Russia, or not in order to screw their own economy in support of the Ukrainian dictator.
Even the designers of the “Have I Got News for You” Intro cartoon saw what would happen. When exactly did they start the show with a Russian turning a valve and the EU going dark? If flipping cartoonists could see it, why not the Politicians? Oh, OK, I know.
RS
Without wanting to provoke a debate on the rights and wrongs of Russia’s intervention In Ukraine, why is it suddenly Putin’s fault that Germany (and much of Europe) screwed up their energy policies?
As with many things, once again, the wicked Trump was right when he told the Germans to their face whet they were doing was stupid, and they laughed at him.
I don’t see an apology winging its way to Mar-a-Lago.
Meanwhile, the conflict between east and west Ukraine had all but fizzled out. Trump and Putin had a good relationship and NATO wasn’t being weaponised against Russia until Biden cheated his way into the Whitehouse and undoubtedly emboldened western Ukraine to resume hostilities against eastern Ukraine.
I think it’s fairly clear there was going to be a genocidal attack on the Donbas but, unlike the west when Rwanda and Bosnia were ethnically cleansed, Putin wasn’t prepared to watch that happen.
What every ‘popular’ media omits to mention is that Russia did not start the shooting. Whilst Russian troops were amassed on their side of the Ukraine/Russian border, western Ukraine mounted an artillery barrage into Donbas for seven days prior to Putin’s intervention. This is witnessed and documented by the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe) down to individual ordnance strikes.
Quite apart from the admission by a Biden regime official that America is fighting a proxy war against Russia, this is sufficient evidence that Russia is not the aggressor here. By way of more evidence, why has NATO not put boots on the ground in Ukraine?
Quite simply, because they would be aiding an aggressor, Ukraine. Even when Ukraine called for a no fly zone to be established they were refused as this would represent the same thing.
It’s also significant that China, India (the worlds largest democracy) Africa and Latin America (amongst others) have refused to condemn Russia. That’s over half the worlds population. Why, then, with the history of overseas aggression the west has displayed over the 20th and 21st Century, does anyone imagine we are any more right now than we were were going into Vietnam, Afghanistan etc.?
Putin has stated, unequivocally, that one of his objectives is to halt the disease of elitist globalism. Meanwhile, this ‘dictatorial tyrant’ allows his population the freedom to travel anywhere in the world with no more restrictions than the western governments impose on us.
Strangely though, there are no queues of Russian refugees at the US southern border, not paddling across the English Channel in RIBS.
Putin has participated in building 30,000 Christian Churches across Russia since 1991. He’s told immigrants in no uncertain terms that Russia is a Christian country and if they want to be welcomed they should conform or leave.
Tyrants are not noted for their open borders nor support of the Church, in fact those very freedoms are usually the first ones tyrants attack.
On the other hand, his Ukrainian intervention was also announced as his desire to protect the culture, language and faith of ethnic Christian Russians in Donbas. His attack on Kiev was, in my opinion, the pursuit of Ukrainian heavy arms to their natural home to destroy them. Since then he has withdrawn to, and liberated areas solely in eastern Ukraine.
What he also did, of course, was to expose the 40+ Biological laboratories America had built in Ukraine. They were there because they are illegal on American soil. What does that tell us?
Now we have the spectre of pedo Joe and his son Hunter’s emerging murky dealings with Ukrainian, Chinese and Russian Oil and Gas businesses, including the sale of a million barrels of US reserve oil (reserved for national security events i.e war) to a Chinese Oil business his son has investments with, whilst he’s pleading with unsavoury middle east nations for more oil, and America is awash with the stuff.
However, we should really be celebrating. Biden has done more to damage the green blob in 18 months than climate sceptics have managed in 40 years.
Thanks for that bit of realism.
I think that Putin likes his country and his people.
Honestly, which Western leader could you say that about?
…likewise The Donald
Biden is laundering U.S. money through Ukraine back to his crime family.
Barack, Bill and Hillary, who invented laundering money in various causes (Solyndra, Haiti), know what’s going on, so are likely getting a piece, too.
As far as whether it is Ukraine’ or Russia’s fault, I don’t care. Two countries on the other side of the world shooting each other up is of no interest to me. However, there is a significant factor: The American press from the git-go said we have to support Ukraine. The press picking Ukraine strongly suggests that Russia is the good guys.
I wouldn’t give Putin a free pass, for all the Western shenanigans. He clearly has ambitions, as well as plenty of previous. See Georgia, Ossetia, Chechnya (with better excuse), etc.
His nuclear threats are less idle than I like too.
Don’t think we’re out of it
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/markets/article-11014783/Shell-boss-warns-grim-winter-ahead-Russia-cuts-gas-supplies.html