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Comment by greenleafone7 | Hacker News Reader

Breaking news: "Wind and solar overtake fossil fuels in <insert_European_country> for the first time" for the 10th time this year.

Also on other unrelated news German economy is rocketing to the bottom, their industry is dying with thousands of layoffs, closing factories, and complains on energy prices and they can't even maintain their rail and road networks for the first time since forever. The signs of decline are not even signs anymore they are bright neon signs. But at least we are taxing cows farting. While china is steamrolling ahead and we are regulated to death by bureaucrats.

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The continent is literally on fire due to global warming. Europe does not produce any fossil fuels and needs energy independence. It's because politicians dragged their feet for so long on net zero that we are even in this mess in the first place. Better now than never.

Europe doesn't produce any fossil fuels?

Effectively. Europe and the UK do, but there isn't much easily accessible left and besides they aren't in the EU. Netherlands has had to close their gas fields. Germany still mines some coal...there are probably a couple of other gas fields etc but the big picture is that Europe is highly dependent on imports.

Russia and Norway do. Most of that is Russia, which other countries in Europe still import from. Germany doesn't directly anymore, but there are indirect routes like through Azerbaijan.

Europe has a seemingly infinite amount of coal (same as everyone else), but obviously it's not exactly what anyone really wants (gas and even oil is more climate friendly than coal sadly).

North Sea oil and gas are long past its prime, Norwegian supply is already nearly as expensive as LNG shipped from half the world away. The ideal gas station is Siberia, but that is what it is currently.

So, dunno, what's left, the Arctic? Frack the polar bears?

The only thing that I'll agree with you is that European politicians are worse than having a literal random number generator making decisions. And no, we all appreciate the fact that Europe has the highest living standards to ever exist in the planet. We don't have them thanks to political parties though. We have them thanks to our ingenuity and quality of character.

I don't want to become china obviously, I love the environment especially in my village. But the 'green' craze is not it. It's just a scam to extract even more money that will go to friends and family of the various parasites we have as leaders. We were and still are the best in nuclear energy, we have infinite amounts of fossil fuels, and Europe contributes almost nothing to global warming, even if we removed the entire continent then the amount of air/sea pollution would drop by no more than 2%. And crippling our feat because the sheep fell for one more 'global warming' scam is not something I'm OK with.

For 40 years now we have increasingly richer wolves screaming global warming will kill us all in a year (while they fly on private jets to buy a coffee and have 9 seaside villas each) and increasingly more stupid sheep that enable them (and are poorer and more sad every single year). The temperatures are normal, that's how it has always been. And if they are not, me destroying the economy and civilization of my country is not going to stop that. You can try and gather cow farts though. I'm sure that will 'save' the environment.

Average German industrial electricity prices spiked in 2021, 2022, and 2023. 3 years. That's it. By 2024, they were back to the same level as 2017.

https://www.dw.com/en/high-electricity-prices-a-threat-to-ge...

In other words it's been approximately 2.5 years since prices recovered. If Germany industry can be irrecoverably damaged by 3 years of high power bills, maybe there were deeper issues.

What’s your point in relation to this article?

While achieving renewable "success", the domestic manufacturing industry has been decimated/made uncompetitive. Great news for China on the green success!

Which is in part the fault of the industry itself! There's a high degree of arrogance in German management. Especially when it comes to China. The German car industry's refusal to go all in on BEV is a prime example how this arrogance lead to losing to the Chinese who now make better cars than Germany. And this wasn't the first time German industry lost to China due to their own arrogance and being stuck in the past. They always treated China as an export market instead of a seriuous competitor. Same with Eastern Europe.

People always blame German politics, but German management is as responsible if not more responsible for the decline. They simply made bad management decisions for decades and they didn't see the future coming.

Long time ago German car industry's decided that they need not to manufacture the most important component of EVs - batteries in Europe, that they can always buy the cheaply in Asia.

"The world's largest automotive supplier has decided against producing its own battery cells despite calls from EU politicians to do exactly that. Bosch said the investment would probably never pay off."

https://www.dw.com/en/bosch-says-battery-cells-are-too-expen...

The importance of BEV for China goes well beyond long-term concerns for climate change. For China the most important are the immediate geopolitical aspects of BEV. Every Chinese BEV in China is driving using domestic electricity and is not dependent on imported oil.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malacca_dilemma

"The Malacca dilemma is a strategic vulnerability for the People's Republic of China due to its heavy reliance on the strait of Malacca, a critical maritime choke point connecting the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea."

"The United States is viewed within Chinese strategic analysis as a potential threat to maritime energy flows through the Strait of Malacca. In the event of a conflict, particularly over Taiwan, the United States could interdict oil shipments to China by disrupting maritime routes. China has expressed concern that U.S. naval forces operating near the Strait of Malacca could obstruct critical petroleum shipments, effectively cutting off vital imports. U.S. maritime strategy has included options for restricting China's access to key sea lanes through the use of attack submarines and surface ships."

Perhaps the "uncompetitiveness" (is it with us in the room right now?) is self-inflicted due to lack of ambition and innovations.

Ok, then how about we hit you in the knee right before a 100m sprint, and once you lose we can talk about your 'lack of ambition'. No, regular people have plenty of ambition, and the fake chinese papers and patents that get deleted as garbage every 5 years that ieee cleans them up are not 'innovation'--there's a reason their main survival strategy is copy Western technology and resell it at a cheaper price thanks to slave labour. There is no one truly more innovative that us and has never been.

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Even if the entire Germany stopped existing overnight, this would barely make a dent in global carbon emissions and planet destruction rate.

Okay. What is your solution, then? Except for giving up or downplaying the problem.

What is your solution to: >German economy is rocketing to the bottom, their industry is dying with thousands of layoffs, closing factories, and complains on energy prices and they can't even maintain their rail and road networks for the first time since forever.

Except for downplaying the problems or saying they have to suffer?

Mine is re-shore all industry so that products are made according to environmental, health & safety standards. Deploy a mix of renewable and also nuclear power.

> Mine is re-shore all industry

"The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations."

Not sure exactly what the point of quoting Marx at me was supposed to be...

People need jobs and a functioning economy to live.

This thread started with the GGGP talking about the decline of Germany's economy contrasted by the meteoric rise of China.

GGP states it's capitalism's fault.

GP says even if Germany disappeared from the face of the earth the current emission levels wouldn't even notice.

My parent asked why GP was downplaying or ignoring and asked for a solution.

I provided one.

Quoting Marx is not a solution. One of the current largest polluting countries was founded in part according to Marxist ideas. Russia under the Soviets gave us Chernobyl and Lake Karachay they also continued to hunt whales far in excess of their international agreements well into the 1980s.

"As others exited the whaling industry, the Soviets, alongside the Japanese, helped reduce the world’s whales from imperiled to nearly extinct, doing the hard work of an annihilation that flew in the face of economic rationality. The Soviets were able to do this in part because of a planned economy that resisted market forces."

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/06/history-of-sovie...

So no, your economic ideology has nothing to do with your ecological ideology.

What is your solution?

> Not sure exactly what the point of quoting Marx at me was supposed to be...

You’re 178 years too late. "Reshoring" was a pipe dream then, it is even more of a pipe dream now.

> What is your solution?

What makes you think there is a solution?

Except for really really really wanting there to be one?

Source: https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995

Your cause/effect doesn't have all that much truth to it with regards to rail.

German rail has been an under-invested in mess since reunification, it's a long slide not a recent one. They are finally investing the kind of amounts in it they need to, to actually revive it to what it should be. It's going to be a long road to actually get there, of course.

Paywall but a decent read on that note: https://www.ft.com/content/db75e347-b13b-4753-8130-6301bb55c...

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