Payne: Sieg Heil, warmingmongers! ( The Michigan View 04.18.11)

Posted by hpayne on April 18, 2011

In Old Europe, where Green is the state religion, Germany has been mobilizing against the devil global warming. Its leadership appears ready to go to war – with all the ruinous national sacrifice that will entail.

Pay attention, America, this is the vision of Stateside warmingmongers like Barack Obama and Jenny Granholm.

Having eliminated carbon-based fuels as a future source of fuel, Germany had planned to rely heavily on nuclear. But in the wake of Fukushima, Japan, even the right-leaning (a relative term in Far Left Deutschland) government of Chancellor Angela Merkel has abandoned the country’ last, best source of base-load energy.

Merkel’s government has announced a massive – immediate – expansion of renewable energies to make up for eliminating nukes. That means wind. Rather than leading, she is surrendering to a public spooked by green mythology that preaches they are under attack from carbon dioxide.

Merkel says the nation needs a pre-emptive strike to avert disaster. Polls says the public will sacrifice for a renewable future. Or not. A growing number of lawsuits and local referendum against thousands of landscape-choking wind turbines and high-voltage power masts indicates shallow public support for building a vast Green army.

“More than 80 percent of Germans want to see the country abandon nuclear energy. But there is one major caveat,” reports Der Spiegel.”When it comes to major energy projects, most Germans do not want them in their own backyard. Just as soon as plans are unveiled for mass wind turbines near residential areas, home owners and locals are quick to organize local campaigns to halt construction.”

But in war, democracy is often the first casualty.

Merkel plans to force the plan on the public, reports Der Spiegel, with a “master energy plan the federal government is currently hammering out following the closure of seven older nuclear power plants in the wake of Fukushima.” To transform the country from base-load power to a dependence on North Sea wind, this will involve a massive restructuring of the power grid. Obstacles like local ordinances will be trampled by central planning decree.

“The message is that Merkel’s government won’t tolerate opposition to its plans,” reports Der Spiegel of the authoritarian push that will also involve substantial energy price hikes, crippling the country’s manufacturing competitiveness. Wind power has also provoked to protest marches. Civil unrest will only accelerate as Germany goes into Green war mode.

Vast swaths of picturesque German forest – revered by Greens – will now be torn to shreds to make way for 260-foot power masts in order to feed the war effort. Paradoxically, pro-war greens oppose the lines, preferring instead that the lines be buries which will further drive up cots.

The warmingmongers’ zeal is blind to the fact that other nations have already lost the war.

“Take the example of the Netherlands,” continues Der Spiegel which tried a similar plan. “Opposition continues to grow, and the government’s goals for wind power are looking increasingly unrealistic. The Dutch don’t lack technological capacity when it comes to wind power. They simply don’t want it.”

This is where the United States is headed under Obama’s radical Green vision. High costs. Civil unrest. A strangling of local democracy. This may thrill utopians like Thomas Friedman. But it will be a grim war for the rest of us.

Henry Payne is editor of The Michigan View.com

 

 

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