Nutty Germans

 Are the Germans Nuts?

By Robert Zubrin

“Many have long believed that Germans are nuts. Those versed in history can cite many examples of Germany behaving in bizarre fashion. Some critics have ascribed this to congenital mass insanity. This is unfair. Rather, it would appear that German nuttiness is due not to a lack of emotional control, but to a unique propensity to embrace a given theory and ignore all evidence that might serve to undermine it...”

7Konrad S. Graf and 6 others

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• Surse Pierpoint

  “The latest example is Germany’s refusal to reconsider its 2014 decision to shut down all of its nuclear power plants. That year, German Chancellor Angela Merkel decided to implement a phased shutdown of Germany’s nuclear industry, which at that time provided 23 GW of electricity to the nation. This had to be done, Merkel said, to prevent a repeat of the 2012 Fukushima disaster on German soil.

  In 2012, an earthquake caused a tsunami that killed 28,000 people in Fukushima, Japan, and wrecked three of the city’s six nuclear power plants. The 28,000 deaths were caused by drownings, falling buildings, exposure, suicide, stress, or the interruption of medical care. None were caused by radiation. In fact, no one outside the plant gate received a dose of radiation sufficient to affect their health in any way whatsoever. Nevertheless, Fukushima was a disaster that could not be risked in the event that Germany should be swept by a tsunami, however unlikely—or impossible—such an event might be.

  So the decision was made, and where a German decision goes, there it remains. Proceeding therefore in an orderly fashion, and ignoring the Russian 2014 seizure of Crimea and the Donbas and other evidence that the policy of switching Germany from its own nuclear power plants to reliance on Russian gas might be unwise, Germany implemented a phased shutdown, so that by this year, only 3 GW of the original 23 GW remained online.

  Now Russia has launched a full scale invasion of Ukraine, with the clear intention of wiping Ukraine off the map. This would bring Russian forces to Poland’s border, thereby directly endangering NATO, to which Germany proclaims its alliance.

  Putin has stated his plans openly: He will use armed force to recreate the Russia Empire, which included not only the Caucasus and Central Asia, but Finland, the Baltic States, and most of Poland. The West is seeking to foil these plans by sending arms to Ukraine and implementing severe sanctions on Russia.

  Sanctioning gas is key to this strategy. Russian sells more oil than gas, but sanctioning oil is difficult because oil is fungible.¹ If Europe rejects Russian oil, it can easily be sold to China or India, replacing Middle Eastern oil that would then be sold to Europe. Gas, on the other hand, must flow where there are pipelines, and it must do so as it’s produced, because storing large quantities of natural gas is extremely difficult.

  Russia’s gas sales to Germany earn the Kremlin around US$60 billion per year, about the value of Russia’s entire military budget. By buying Russian gas, Germany is not only funding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has so far caused as many as 100,000 deaths, left ten million people homeless, and inflicted hundreds of billions in property damage in Ukraine and trillions in economic losses worldwide. It is also funding Russia’s thermonuclear and hypersonic weapons programs, which could be used to destroy the world.

  Germany gets 11 GW of power from natural gas. It has shut down nearly twice that capacity in nuclear power. If Germany is actually part of the Western alliance, the rational move would be to turn its nuclear power plants back on and cease funding Putin’s program of genocide and conquest.

  But German leaders see things differently. Germany is heading into an energy crisis as Russia cuts its gas supplies in retaliation for sanctions. Finance Minister Christian Lindner warned that Germany was on the brink of a “very serious economic crisis,” saying the government needed to explore all avenues to plug the gaps.

  So last week, the Bundestag passed emergency legislation to reopen its mothballed coal-fired power plants. Legislators rejected the idea of restarting the nuclear power plants, or even pausing or slowing the phaseout. The imperative of protecting the German population from radiation spread by a tsunami would take precedence over all other considerations. Germany reaffirmed its commitment to shutting down the remaining 3 GW, thereby wrecking its nuclear industry for good.

  German indifference to the lives of others in general, and Ukrainians in particular, is appalling. German leaders don’t appear to care that they’re funding genocide in Ukraine. Indeed, they’re facilitating it through other measures, such as refusing to send significant amounts of arms for Ukraine to defend itself, and even blocking others from doing so.

  But Germans claim to be very concerned about protecting the Earth from global warming caused by CO2 emissions. They talk about visionary plans for decarbonizing their nation accordingly, but seem unable to acknowledge that the only major nation that has actually decarbonized its power grid is France, which has done so by making 75 percent of its electricity from nuclear power. Germany says it will replace its nuclear power with solar and wind, but these are unreliable power sources have proven to be—well—unreliable. In consequence, Germany has switched from clean nuclear power to filthy coal and Russian gas, and produces six times as much CO2 per GWh generated as France.

  None of this should be taken as evidence that Germany favors global warming, genocide, and Russian global conquest using thermonuclear hypersonic weapons.

  It’s just proof that Germans are nuts.”