Greens Remain in Opposition In Germany – Social Democrats Lose Seats
September 27th, 2009
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It seems that the Green Party has not gained much in the recent national elections in Germany. The votes are still being counted, but the party remains an opposition party and may have even lost seats in the German Parliament. In a parliamentary system, there is very little a party which is in the minority can do other than try to get in the way of other parties.
Currently, the numbers indicate that the Christian Democratic party has edged out their closest competitors and may end the long running coalition government that included the Social Democrat Party. The final results have not yet come in, but as things stand, it seems that the lead will be large enough to drop the Social Democrat party from the former coalition. Although not quite as fervent as the Greens, the Social Democrat Party has been decidedly anti-nuclear and generally supported most Green-backed energy policies.
This may be good news for the German energy sector, which has been hurting badly ever since the current regulations were passed in the 1990’s by the Green-Social Democrat Coalition. This may also be an opportunity to repeal these measures. The coalition ended when the Greens lost seats in 2005, but the ruling government since has been unable to repeal any of the previous legislation due to the influence of the Social Democrat party.
Even before the election, it was clear that the Green Party was not going to win control of the government, but they did stand a chance of regaining a part of a ruling coalition, thus returning the nation to the dark days of the 1990’s, when disastrous legislation was passed under Fuhrer Gerhard Schröder. With the Social Democrats and Greens both out of the picture, it may now be possible to reverse the trend toward dirtier energy and higher prices.
Had the Green Party won, they have pledged to continue the nuclear energy phase out and to accelerate it, with some even suggesting that all nuclear reactors be shut down immediately. They also have stated that they will reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector. Although coal remains a dirty word (in more ways than one) the official position of the German Greens is that they do not support any energy other than “renewable” energy.
Thus had the party managed to gain power and push their official position on energy, this is what the country might have expected:
Frankfurt Now:
Under Green Energy Policy:
(Nuclear phased out and with fossil fuel electricity reduced in favor of renewable energy)
But that is only a Photoshopped simulation, and thankfully it s seems it will remain that way.
This entry was posted on Sunday, September 27th, 2009 at 4:36 pm and is filed under Announcements, History, Misc, Politics, media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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September 27th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
However a majority of the German public opposes nuclear power – supporting some form of phase-out:
About 32 percent of Germans favor speeding up the phase-out while 31 percent want the government to stick to its timetable for closure, a July 12 survey published by polling company Forsa showed. Another 16 percent backed prolonging the plants’ life- cycle for an unspecified period, while 17 percent said Germany should avoid a phase-out altogether. (Bloomberg)
Pronuclear forces in Germany still have their work cut out for them.
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September 27th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
DV82XL said:
They have been subject to a very effective and well funded campaign for many years. If that’s what they want, then the best medicine may be to give it to them.
I say call their bluff. Shut down all the nuclear power plants tomorrow. Many cities will go dark – as in will have no power at all. In the areas where there is enough coal power to at least keep the lights on the prices will skyrocket.
If you cut their power production by 20%, which turning off all the nuclear plants will do, then it will be impossible to provide service to everyone. There will be rolling blackouts in cities. Rural areas will be in a state of continuous brown-out. All major industrial facilities will have to shut down.
Shut them down tomorrow. Tomorrow night, about ten percent of the population comes home to lights that won’t turn on. They’ll go to work on Tuesday and everyone who works at a factory for BASF, Audi, BMW, Daimler-Benz, BAE Systems or anyone else either gets a pink slip or is told “We don’t have a pink slip for you, but you’re laid off. We’ll have a pink slip as soon as we can find a place with electricity, because our printer does not work”
Let them reap the bitter fruit they sew.
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September 28th, 2009 at 4:49 am
The majority of Germans may be anti-nuclear to one degree or another, but I’ll warrent that most of them have never really ben exposed to the counter-arguments. If Nucleus 92 is successful in Australia, perhaps it can be used as a template for action in Germany. I know the situation there is not identical, but I aim for N92 to have a somewhat different activist philosophy to that apparently accepted by other nuclear power advocacy groups.
And at the least, this turn of events deserves a bit of celebration. The removal of the SDP from power for the time being will be a bitter blow to the international anti-nuclear movement.
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September 28th, 2009 at 8:23 am
Finrod said:
Actually it’s SPD (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands).
Incidentally, I remember reading — I think it was Klaus Allmendinger on the Energy from Thorium forum — that the SPD (like the British Labour Party) metamorphosed during the ’80s and ’90s from being a party of unionized manual workers, to being a party of government employees. Perhaps they support carbon taxes, but for the revenue (which they hope will boost their salaries) rather than because they’re actually concerned about CO2 emissions. In those terms, a pro-carbon-tax and anti-nuclear position isn’t contradictory at all!
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September 28th, 2009 at 8:24 am
Oops, could you change those BBCode tags to HTML ones please?
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September 28th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
DV82XL said:
I recall hearing that the German people generally opposed the phase out and more than half were at pro nuclear or at least receptive to it. Different pole maybe?
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September 28th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
Q said:
That’s why I referenced it to Bloomberg. Different polls give different results (as we know) depending on how the questions are framed.
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September 28th, 2009 at 7:44 pm
I used to work at a poling firm. Poll data is not as straightforward as it might seem. The way the questions are phrased and even the time the survey is given makes a difference – there’s a reason they call during dinner hours, most people are home and you get a good diverse sample. Calling during the day you get tons of senior citizens and a few stay at home moms most of the time.
The best data would come from a poll with a large sample size, with good demographic controls (polls have a built-in bias due to the fact that some groups are less likely to answer than others. For some reason, women are always more likely to take the poll and men decline more.) so the polling place asks demographic questions to assure the sample is matched to the population.
Finally, the question should be as neutral and direct as possible if you actually want real opinion data. (sometimes they’re intentionally written to give an outcome so they can be referenced as proof of what the people want, but that is different).
Very brief questions with yes/no answers are the best for getting a good response. There’s a temptation to get more data by loading it with questions, but the shorter it is the better response you tend to get and the more accurate people are. Sometimes the person being polled isn’t really paying much attention.
I’d like to see the questions and the raw numbers before deciding whether a poll has good reliable data that is likely to reflect the population as a whole.
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September 28th, 2009 at 7:58 pm
drbuzz0 said:
Here it is in the raw German:
Meinungen zum Ausstieg aus der Atomkraft
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September 28th, 2009 at 8:47 pm
DV82XL said:
The second question translates as asking whether plants that are “old and vulnerable” in this case, the word for “old” also implies obsolete or beyond their prime. Once you throw in phrases like that and vulnerable the question becomes colored and potentially all after that. Few in the public would approve of “vulnerable” power plants being used. If that was the first question it could taint the rest of the questions.
The first question is also a little suspect. The way it’s phrased could be more straight forward.
It’d be nice if it gave the number of individuals polled as well.
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September 29th, 2009 at 6:46 am
As it turns out, the SPD will not be in the government at all. The coalition is of the FDP and CDU (Christian Democratic Union). This is a dark day for the green movement and atheism, I don’t see on what count it can ever be a good thing to have a “Christian” party leading a government, furthermore the CDU has an intolerant view of immigrants, especially those of middle eastern origin, and does not embody the multi-cultural society modern Europe has embraced.
Also this will probably result in longer run times for out-dated dangerous nuclear plants which Greenpeace and the German Green party have documented to have lax safety standards, and cover up accidents as well as hazards.
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September 29th, 2009 at 8:15 am
Bruce said:
I wouldn’t worry too much — Germany doesn’t have a US-style “Religious Right”. From Axel Boldt’s “A subjective comparison of Germany and the United States“:
In Germany, the Catholic Church is generally considered to be more conservative than the protestant churches in social and political issues; the situation in the US is opposite. People on the “religious right”, a large and influential movement populated mostly by white protestants, are vehemently opposed to abortion (several abortion doctors have been killed by people on the fringes), believe in the literal truth of the Bible to the extend of opposing Darwinism (these people are called “creationists”, a word that doesn’t even exist in German nor would it be needed), oppose premarital sex, and call homosexuality a sinful choice. These same people also enthusiastically embrace the death penalty, private ownership of guns, military spending and lower taxes, without even noticing a contradiction to the Christian message of “Don’t judge, live poor, love your enemies”.
Bruce said:
I think cultural diversity is a good thing, but I don’t like the people who exploit multiculturalism to provide themselves with lucrative job opportunities off the government payroll.
Bruce said:
This could be a potential worry — we wouldn’t want a German Three Mile Island incident turning that country’s public decisively against nuclear energy again…
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September 29th, 2009 at 8:20 am
Incidentally, what type of nuclear reactors are used in Germany? Are they water-moderated like the American ones*, or graphite-moderated like the British ones?
(IIRC France’s big nuclear program was based on American reactor technology rather than home-built designs.)
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September 29th, 2009 at 8:31 am
George Carty said:
Germany has 14 operating Pressurized Water Reactors and 6 operating Boiling Water Reactor Nuclear Power Plants
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September 29th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
Bruce said:
A dark day for the Green movement is a bright day for real environmentalism (Like for those who care more about the impact on the enviornment than the philosophy of anti-industrialism).
Atheism? I don’t see that being really effected one way or the other. There’s not much of an established religious right in Germany and freedom of religion is protected. I’ve never been for state-sponsored atheism as being an official policy or that the state should officially promote atheism over any religion. A good secular state is tolerant and does not officially promote any one belief system over others.
Bruce said:
Given the alternative… it’s not perfect. It is signifficantly better though.
Bruce said:
Being for immigration regulation does not make one a bigot.
Bruce said:
I take it you really like coal.
The oldest nuclear power plants currently in operation in Germany began operation in the mid 1970’s, with many of the power plants beginning operation in the early to mid 1980’s. That’s not terribly old by most standards. There are plenty of power reactors that have been operating safely for longer.
As far as these reactors go, they’re not as effecient or modern as current designs like the AP-1000 or G-IV designs like high temperature gas cooled reactors or molten salt reactors. However, they’re still entirely within the industry standard. It would be nice to replace them, but not before the coal plants are all shut – something that will take a long time in a place like Germany.
One note though: Many of these plants have been denied the kind of systems overhauls and refits that plants of their age have received elsewhere. Nearly all plants of that generation in the US and elsewhere have received at least one major life-extension overhaul. In Germany this has not happened to the same extent for two major reasons: The government has generally denied any license for such upgrades and the plant owners have been understandably unwilling to invest money in a plant that is supposed to be shut down in the near future.
What kind of hazards? And what exactly makes them out-dated or dangerous?
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September 29th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
drbuzz0 said:
Oops, missed this!
This may have had a negative impact on the results – I remember reading comments on one of the other blogs (Atomic Insights I think) that said that women were considerably more hostile to nuclear power than men. Do you have any ideas as to what could be done about this?
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September 29th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
George Carty said:
The pollsters take note of the gender of the person being polled. This actually can create a touchy issue when the person does not give their name or their voice could go either way – it’s kinda rude to ask. But in any case, the gender is noted. (in good polls so is the age and other basic demographics.)
The ratio needs to match the demographic ratio for the area or the segment being polled. For example, if you want all the opinions in a given region of 51% women and 49% men, then you’d want that ratio. If you want likely voters and past history suggests that 52% of voters are men and 48% women, then you would want that.
It may be that some of the women polled may be thrown out if there are enough total polled to get a good enough total count and keep the ratio proper. It could be that the pollsters are told we’re all set for women and to only interview men. In that case, they would get a man on the phone and ask a couple questions like “are you likely to vote in the upcoming election” and “what is your approximate age.” They will then be politely told “Thank you, but you are not within the demographics of this survey” or something like that – it’s a bit nicer than just hanging up on them as soon as a male voice comes through.
Sometimes the males would be weighted, but they try to avoid that.
This is not just true for men and women, by the way. Another big problem is that old people like to take surveys. If you don’t actively compensate for that, you end up with the survey very heavily weighted by senior citizens opinions.
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September 29th, 2009 at 7:20 pm
Bruce said:
Who the hell are you to lecture on tolerance and multiculturalism when you define all Christians and all Christian parties or movements as being “no good”? That is about as bigoted and narrow minded as it gets.
You’ll say out of one side of your mouth how we need to accept Muslims and how wrong it would be oppose them entering a society or restrict it and how much importance there is for multiculturalism and then you say that any entities of the world’s largest religion (if you count the denominations together) is something from which no good can come? That before they have passed a single bill, because they are christian it’s a dark day?
Where the hell do you get off? I have more respect for someone who is intolerant of others and admits it than someone who claims to be all for acceptance and then says something like that.
I am not a practicing Christian myself. I was raised Lutheran in a family that is only slightly religious, so don’t call me a bible-thumper. I don’t define myself but you could call me agnostic, I guess.
I don’t care what you believe or what anyone believes as long as it is their buisiness and they don’t impose it on others, but there are plenty of descent Christians and I don’t see why the fact that the religion has been used for bad excuses that level of ignorant catch-all intolerance.
Please don’t even get me started on the nuclear issue. Germany mines more coal today than it did when the Green-SPD coalition took power, and part of the nuclear phase out calls for the construction of two major coal power plants and the expansion of several others. The use of natural gas has gone up and emissions are starting to rise. They will reverse the gains made after reunification for emissions in less than ten years as things are going. Energy prices are higher than ever and they import more electricity than any other country in mainland Europe.
Please explain to me how this policy is such a good thing?
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September 30th, 2009 at 1:23 am
drbuzz0 said:
Sorry, what I meant by “What can be done about this?” is “What can be done about female anti-nuclear sentiment”?
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September 30th, 2009 at 1:59 am
George Carty said:
If that was directed at me, then you’re really asking the wrong person. I don’t generally understand women. I have difficulty even understanding a single woman. Sometimes I think I do, but then she throws me a curveball and does something I would have never anticipated and can’t understand the reason for, thus destroying what seemed like a totally reasonable theory model.
As far as trying to get women to like things: I try quite a bit to get them to like me, and have found no one pattern or plan to be more effective. In fact, they all seem to be equally ineffective. There have been occasions when a woman does seem to respond favorably, it seems to occur entirely at random. There is no unifying common element nor does the post event analysis ever detect any key factor or combination thereof.
I’m not one to give up on understanding something, but this problem has perplexed me for some time. One could use the analogy of my mind being like a group of scientists, sitting in my head, in lab coats who have been pouring over volumes of observed data on female behavior and responses to various things. It started out with about fifty full timers. Now it’s down to about twenty. Several just gave up. Another dozen are now hospitalized for insanity and the rest committed suicide. Those still at work have sweat stains on their tight white starched shirts and are chewing on the butts of mostly burned out cigarettes while drinking stale coffee by the gallon. It’s like Mission Control during Apollo 13. The situation is becoming increasingly desperate.
In short, I am not the person to ask on issues involving women. Though they only differ in one chromosome, I sit in a futile attempt to understand them. I’m like Einstein trudging through half of his life trying to disprove quantum mechanics… (not comparing myself to Einstein in achievement or anything, just in being vexed by an unsolvable problem)
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September 30th, 2009 at 11:30 pm
Well I married a woman, my mother was also a woman as were my two sisters, and ironically so is my daughter. I can tell you as a son, brother boyfriend, husband and as a father, that one never understands them individually or as a class.
Best not to try and just take them as they are.
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October 1st, 2009 at 12:25 am
“I think of man, and then I take away reason and accountability” – As Good AS it Gets
But seriously… don’t try to figure out women by starting off with the presumption that there is a pattern or rhyme or reason to the gender collectively or to any one individual woman. There isn’t.
Women are like slot machines. They look fancy on the outside and there is all this stuff that gives the illusion of some kind of logic going on, but it’s all for show. The hard truth is that it all just hides a random number generator that controls everything. Sometimes things go one way and usually they go another way. No rhyme or reason, no way of predicting it.
People drive themselves crazy by trying to determine which slot machine is “hot” or on a “winning streak” and when a slot machine is “due for a payout” or whatever. It’s all an illusion.
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October 1st, 2009 at 11:57 am
Chem Geek Gregor said:
I suspect there is a female analogue to this common experience.
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