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Energy transition – Germany is not Prometheus

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In the “salon columnists” Bernd Rheinberg places our Minister of Economics and his actions in an interesting historical context. And remains fair to Habeck. As Rheinberg correctly sees, we have all enjoyed the comforts of civilizational advance fueled by the fire of Prometheus.

… not only capitalists, but also socialists. For example, anyone who reads Ernst Bloch with his “Principle of Hope” will recognize in the propagated unleashing of the world of machines and natural sciences a left that wants to surpass the capitalists in every respect with its euphoria.

To a certain extent, however, “Prometheus … won too triumphantly.” Because the massive extraction and burning of fossil raw materials means that the natural springs of our prosperity are irretrievably lost, and the atmosphere warms up in a way that is threatening, perhaps even dangerous for the survival of mankind.

Although this problem is global, nowhere does it play a greater political role than in Germany. Let’s not invoke the usual, if not necessarily false, explanatory paradigms of post-romantic idealism and “German angst” here—but the history of ecological thought is, above all, a German history. And that also has to do with the party Die Grünen. And their success.

one global survey (in April 2022 by the French market research company IPSOS), the Fear of an apocalypse triggered by climate change is distributed very differently around the world. Inflation was at the forefront. Climate change, which has been the dominant topic in the media and politics in Germany for years, came in tenth place globally.

But it wasn’t just the Greens. The American historian Stephen Gross counts in Germany no fewer than five always controversial energy transitionswhich he calls special ways of a nervous nation.

  • The first energy transition (between 1958 and 1970) began under Ludwig Erhard and was the transition from coal to oil.
  • The second was a half-turn towards nuclear energy. It began under Adenauer, aThe largest expansion of nuclear power plants happened under Willy Brandt.

The Social Democrats were very much in favor of nuclear energy. For them, nuclear power held the promise of cheap energy. Because cheap energy would enable economic growth, and on the basis of growth they could then implement their social programs. Nuclear power was associated with enormous historical optimism… According to Ernst Bloch, nuclear energy should transform deserts into lush gardens. In addition, atomic energy should be used for medicine, for public transport. But what interested the SPD and CDU even more was the prospect of export.

  • The third energy transition was the attempt by the Greens and the SPD to make saving energy an energy source. In the period after 1973, the anti-nuclear movement began to grow stronger and, among other things, the focus was on reducing consumption and waste.
  • The fourth energy transition was the shift towards natural gas, primarily from the Soviet Union.
  • The transition to renewable energies and further savings is now the fifth of its kind. With long roots going back to the late 1980s.
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Let’s get back to Robert Habeck. Bernd Rheinberg initially says about his current predicament:

It is of course not such a good idea for the Ministry of Economics to insist on the heat pump in the heating law and to tie the changeover to very tight deadlines. The technology is mature, good models are also quiet, and it is easy to install in new buildings. But things are different in the existing building, where it costs a lot of money… Even the Fraunhofer Institute assumes that not as many buildings as desired can be heated in this way. But the alternatives are hardly available because of the Merkel government’s long period of inactivity and the corrupting handing over to Putin’s fossil fuels – to prolong doing nothing would certainly be the worst of all alternatives.

But in politics, it is ultimately the practical implementation that counts. Politics must find working solutions. According to the NZZ, the economics minister and man of letters fails because of this concrete morality Habeck right now:

Without the very German whim of phasing out nuclear power, Germany would produce significantly less CO2 today. By undeterred, the Greens pushed through the nuclear phase-out (with the help of the Merkel-CDU), they weighted the ideal more than the practical result. That’s what’s amoral in politics.”

The salon columnists also state a reason for the economics minister’s overperforming:

After the grand coalition, Robert Habeck wanted to see a new seriousness, a new republicanism, a new focus on the future and a new sense of urgency in politics – something that clearly stands out from the mildew years under Merkel. It was he who traveled to Ukraine nine months before the Russian invasion to show solidarity with the country, which was already under pressure.

He wasn’t above kowtowing to the gas dealers in the Gulf. And seemed a bit like “a model student with the burden of proof before himself and the voters”. According to the assessment, he acts with an absoluteness, an excessive demand on oneself, which is not good for any cause or office. And quickly leads to overload. This excessive demand is nurtured

through the auto-suggestion, which is constantly repeated in public, that Germany could save the climate, the world, humanity. But no government, no party, no ministry can save the world. Each country must make the necessary efforts, in proportion to its share, to halt climate change, resource depletion and the catastrophic loss of biodiversity. More is not possible. A global task can only be solved globally.

And you have to move realpolitik within the global developments and also ensure your national survival. But the German debate is repeatedly determined by the fringes, by “stoppers and apocalypticists.” Magical thinking prevails. One approves the capitalist economy does not allow for any evolution, any innovative developments towards an ecological market economy.

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No progress without risk – Prometheus knew that well. You can’t block everything that scares you, but you can block out all the problems with your favorite solutions.

maybe we can find out more, if Peter Sloterdijk discussed with Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) about the remorse of Prometheus: on the Phil.Cologne on June 9th at 6 p.m. in the WDR-Funkhaus in Cologne.

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