To do anything you need 2 of 3 and you only would get a half hearted, a neutral, and a vicious opposition.
Notable that last one where people transfer anxiety about one thing to another thing is really common.
Electric cars may be more environmentally friendly than petroleum cars, but less environmentally friendly than a bicycle or electric bus.
Calling for more mass transit, better support for cycling, and a de-emphasis on personal automobile transport is not anarchoprimitivism.
Germany is the 65th most densely-populated country in the world, behind the U.K., Japan, the Netherlands, Taiwan and Singapore [1]. It is not too dense for industry, that’s literally just thinly-veiled NIMBYism.
My point is a realistic solution is never offered. Should Tesla not expand in favour of ICE production? Is the solution to deindustrialise Germany and put all the plants in Eastern Europe?
It’s a short-term fixation on nearby problems without regards for global impact, and it’s characteristic of the German greens.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_depend...
Tesla is not some necessity, it doesn't have to expand, this isn't like rejecting housing or new sanitation facilities.
Tesla is the largest EV-only manufacturer in Germany, and is the second-largest seller of EVs in the country [1]. (Also, unless there is a record of Tesla factories being unusually dirty, the protesters are protesting expanding EV production in general. That it’s owned by Tesla seems irrelevant, another manufacturer would raise the same stated concerns.)
[1] https://www.best-selling-cars.com/germany/2023-full-year-ger...
At some point we all just project “Gfy.” and refuse to “blink” and measure ourselves; we just keep rolling, saying “Gfy.” to those in the way. Maybe we couch that in pointless arguments like “where else should this unnecessary car company exist?”
Doesn’t really seem like just a “German greens” thing to project non-existent authority
And yes, activists will loose that fight, but they'll go on and ultimately, things will change. Paid holidays came like this. The end of slavery too. And a few other things.
There's no "realistic solution" because there is simply no choice to make. It's just "no means no".
Now, hopefully, those activists won't buy cars or buy the least possible. And that will have an effect too. But then you'll say: "if we stop selling cars then what's the solution? what about the workforce". Then again: they'll do something else. Because the governments don't want to see unemployment. And maybe there will be too much unemployment. But then again, maybe it's time to adapt to a new world where 50% of population is unemployed. But believe me, when that number will be big enough, politics will adapt.
Then motion for capping car sales, or adding a massive tax to them. This protest just shifts supply to imports and ICE vehicles. More pointedly: to cars not made in their backyard.
It has zero effect on Germany’s car cult743 because they’re not targeting cars broadly, they’re not even targeting cars near them; they’re targeting this (and only this) factory.
> when that number will be big enough, politics will adapt
If protests cause 50% unemployment (or a 50% drop in living standards), the historic political adaptation is a government that ends the right to protest.
It should also be noted that some of the US anti-nuclear activism was also funded by US fossil fuel industry, since the 1950's. [1]
[0] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/P-9-2022-00127...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement#Fossil_f...
That sentence falsely implies that all German anti-nuclear sentiment is a result of Russian (and previous soviet) financing, which gives the wrong impression, I think. Some more depth:
Growing up and living here, Germany’s anti-nuclear sentiment is majorly home-grown. You don’t get the multi-million public demonstrations just on foreign-financed activists. You don’t get multiple German federal election won just on foreign-financed activists. Insinuating so disregards the local politics and societal sentiment of Germany from ca. the 70s onwards.
Germany’s anti-nuclear sentiment is based on multiple strands, in my experience:
* General “radiation” skepticism, amplified by literature including children’s literature and tv reporting, sometimes even by real scandals like the leukemia thing.
* The very real possibility of Germany automatically becoming a nuclear battlefield of hundreds nuclear tactical explosions in the Cold War. Both the Warsaw Pact and NATO planned going nuclear from the first day. (Nuclear weapons and power are of course different things, but ... well)
* The search of nuclear waste storage location (not just spent nuclear fuel but secondary waste, high and intermediate level waste) was absurdly missmanaged. And then there is a string of accidents at pilot waste storage facilities. In my opinion you can’t explain the 2011 decision on Fukushima alone without talking about the preceding Asse II scandal.
* And yes, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima turbocharged pre-existing sentiments.
That is not to say Russia (and the Soviet Union before) as petro-states don’t have an interest and don’t try to corrupt. They certainly do.
Given what we know, they seem to have targeted politicians [1], more with a Pro-Gas-message, less with an anti-nuclear or green-energy-message. Both would be dumb for someone who wants to sell fossil fuels [2]. It’s no surprise that they seem now to target AfD and BWS, the far right and left parties with a pro-fossil-fuel-message. But that's the same in all western democracies.
[1] Small nitpick about your source [0]: Waszczykowski is a member of PIS and former minister in Poland’s PIS government. PIS has made a habit out of targeting Germany for domestic populist sentiment and in intra-EU squabbles. I’d interpret the question partially in that light. Giving the timing of that question I’d suspect the somewhat distorted kernel of truth must be Schwesig and the Nordstream II foundation, but I’d hesitate calling Schwesig an anti-nuclear activist, more a somewhat corrupt or naive politician.
[2] Russian/Soviet Gas was never a replacement for nuclear power in Germany. The vast majority of Germany’s gas usage is residential or industrial not in power plants. Burning gas domestically in apartment/house boilers for heat or in industrial applications doesn’t profit from electric energy – because replacing all these boilers is a multi-generational infrastructure project. Instead nuclear in Germany’s power mix was slowly replaced by by green energy and biofuels: https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/data-tools/energy-st...
Everyone should read this. The deal is that this is all much more complicated than a short comment could explain.
In agreement with much of what you have stated, please note my previous comment:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40330379
Regarding PiS, thanks for pointing that out. I certainly voted against them in the last election.