By P Gosselin
Failing socialist-green experiment. Economists warn German economy is “on the brink”… “further decline”
Hat-tip: Blackout News
Despite all the earlier rosy promises of a flourishing green economy by the Socialist-Green government led by Olaf Scholz and Robert Habeck – and those made by the earlier Merkel CDU-led government, sentiment among German companies continues to erode badly.
Germany’s online FAZ here reports that Ifo Business Climate Index fell to 85.7 points in August 2024, down from 87.4 points in the previous month. Pessimism is spreading and deepening.
That’s the lowest level sentiment in 3 years
“The current economic slump is particularly evident in the renewed decline in the Ifo business climate index, which has left many economic experts downright perplexed. One thing is certain: the economy is in a serious crisis,” reports Blackout News. And: “no one can say exactly how far the German economy will fall.”
High energy prices, hostile business environment
The current socialist-green government has botched things so much, and now has no idea how to proceed further.
“The challenges are complex and a rapid improvement is not in sight,” comments Blackout News further. “In summary, it is clear that the German economy is currently in a serious crisis.”
Many factors are contributing to the pessimistic business sentiment. Foremost are the high energy costs, which are among the highest energy costs in the world – thanks to Germany’s botched attempt to move to green energies.
War and terrorism weighing down
Also the country’s massive regulation is hostile to free enterprise. Add to this the escalating Ukraine war, which is weighing down further on sentiment.
Another depressing factor: Germany’s uncontrolled flood of refugees from countries plagued by terrorism and war, all of which has led to rapidly rising violent crimes like the one recently witnessed in Solingen. Citizens fear for their safety, and have lost trust in the government’s ability and willingness to protect them.
Not only business sentiment is plummeting, but so is confidence in the government. Unfortunately, real change will remain elusive for the foreseeable future.
Germany is mired in pessimism and fear, with little hope in sight.
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Sounds very like the UK or France.
No, you have to look at the historical context, which surely I do not have to spell out.
Yes, net zero in Germany is having the same disastrous results as it will have in the UK. But the difference is the AfD, for which there is no equivalent either in the UK or France. France is also different in not having bought in to the net zero mania, and Le Pen is a different kind of thing to the AfD. As for Farage in the UK, nothing like the AfD.
An excellent summary of the issues around these elections in Die Ziet
https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2024-08/afd-thueringen-sachsen-sperrminoritaet
Unfortunately in German – maybe google translate will help. This could be a big deal.
// … maybe google translate will help
Yes, Google Translate can easily translate a web page from German source language (sl=de) to English target language (tl=en) using its global web app(pto=wapp). Here is the setup for Michel’s link to Die Zeit:
https://www-zeit-de.translate.goog/politik/deutschland/2024-08/afd-thueringen-sachsen-sperrminoritaet?_x_tr_sl=de&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp
Reform is analogous to AfD and just starting out
strat, don’t think so. AfD is a horse of a quite different color. If Farage is ousted from Reform, and it is taken over by populists of a different kind, then there is the potential for Reform to move to an AfD analogue.
There is the potential in the UK, but the difference is, in Germany its happening, and in the UK its only a possibility. And historically the UK has not looked kindly on anything with the style or hinted allusions you find in the AfD. None of the far right splinter groups have made any progress over the years. Nor on the left. Corbyn’s rejection was an example of their aversion to anything they identify as extreme – they have a nose for it, and will have none of it, left or right. Enoch Powell destroyed his career with ‘Rivers of Blood’. Its possible, agreed, but I think its a very remote possibility, and certainly not happening yet.
France has bought into the Net Zero mania – I lived there 20 years from 2001 onwards.
France had 59 nuclear generators supplying 80% of its electricity demand. In fact those 59 had a significant over-capacity. 10% also came from géothermie and hydro, with about 8% natural gas. It has the lowest CO2 emissions for electricity of any developed Country. It was decided to shut down about half and replace with wind and solar.
During the last ten years of my time in France, we were constantly nagged to use less electricity to prevent global warming. Generous subsidies were available to install heat pumps or solar.
Why all this if the Net Zero lunacy was not being embraced?
The gilets jaunes protests were sparked by piling green taxes on diesel – to save the planet.
It is now the case that Macron has realised nuclear is the best option, so rather than replace the nukes, they will be renewed – to this end he has renationalised EDF so he can use public funds for the rebuild. But you will still see plenty of wind turbines blotting the French landscape.
Rassemblement National and Reform UK are comparable to AfD given national differences. Reform UK emerged from the single issue Brexit Party, without enough time to put infrastructure in place before the recent election.
Where it differs from RN and AfD, is it has no local political foothold, but that is its aim, to contest seats in local authorities in the coming years.
“The AfD” is a multi-faceted concept, which provides different excuses to different activists.
One “opportunity” for the totalitarians is to claim that “for the sake of democracy” they, a very small integer number of people, will “have to” intervene after elections … the phrase “more in sadness than in anger” is often, but not always, invoked at some point … because the ignorant peasants have (democratically) voted for the morally “wrong” political party.
In Germany there are serious efforts underway to make AfD illegal.
In the UK similar noises are made in many quarters about Reform (Nigel Farage : 14% of the vote, 5 (of 650) MPs).
In France the focus, for now, is on “Reconquete !” (or “Reconquest”, Eric Zemmour’ : only ~0.75% of the vote in the last elections, zero seats), but Marine Le Pen’s RN (30-33% of the vote over the two rounds, 126 (of 577) “deputés”) is second on the list.
In canada we finally seem to have common sense conservatives not buying into the nonsense. At very minimum questioning and not just nodding vigorously in agreement.
we need to see if the new federal leader Poilievre continues to talk sense or starts to backslide as a federal election gets closer next year.
Its easy to have a sane policy set that can be sold as a “climate policy” for the weak minded.
such as
Wind, solar and batteries are ruinously expensive and destructive to the environment and likely have no effect on emissions.
As such all subsidies for them will be terminated.
We will encourage gas production along with clean coal.
We will maintain a $20/ton carbon tax, broad based with no carve outs and no payments except to the very poor, all proceeds going to developing and implementing nuclear power electricity generation across the country where Hydro is not possible, including especially SMRs for industrial steam and for remote settlements.
EVs are a failed tech and will remain so until the magic batteries are invented. As they are the curly vacuum fluorescent bulb of the car world, mandates will be rescinded, subsidies including for battery plants will be cancelled. Until that time of magic batteries we will encourage but not mandate hybrids, a far better technology with immediate application.
As gasoline is but 1 of 1001 daily uses of oil, we will encourage the continued clean Developement of oilsands, using SMRs to boil the water instead of burning gas.
we will export LNG and nukes to the world, reducing emissions if that is important to you while making us fabulously rich.
These policies will reverse our economic decline and solidify our future, while reducing emissions.
If that is important to you.
Or the Griftocrat version of the USA.
Australia is going down the same path with our socialist government hell bent on using 100% renewables when we have an abundance of coal, gas and uranium… madness.
Totally destroying the environment in the process.
Proposed renewable energy projects across Queensland. (youtube.com)
Whats up with politicians and common sense? With green economy they mean wind and solar power, but that doesn’t produce anything. Energy is the blood of the economy, the higher the price the more expensive your economy will be. Green economy is just a cost. It’s really that easy to understand. And that Olaf guy, he could take the role of Olaf in Frozen.
It signifies the difference between politics in the west, and the east. The west, are more concerned with posturing and their image on the western world stage. Whilst the East, plot our downfall.
The west is following the UN’s IPCC climate lead.
The west should think for themselves and build their own climate models with natural as well as human causes.
There are $ trillions in profit to be made.
Watch for the election results in Saxony and Thuringia today. AfD is on the verge of changing not only state but also federal politics in Germany. Rising energy prices, a recession, and immigration – an explosive mixture in Germany.
Will the elites allow that to happen though? They stopped Le Pen in France and Reform in the UK and Trump in the US. As somebody famous once said, if voting made a difference they wouldn’t allow it.
“somebody famous“
If that somebody could be identified, they would be famous.
Being unknown, that somebody is not yet famous.
…often attributed to Mark Twain, but not in any of his writings…but he was a popular public speaker in community halls, who threw out many popular aphorisms to keep his audience laughing. These could then have been repeated by attending news reporters.
I thought (meaning read in multiple somewheres but have no reliable source to check) that AfD was kind of toast. Germany’s (((government))) has crapped on their own people for so long, and mercilessly, it is not too hard to believe that the liberal/progressive/commy/greenie powers that be will subvert any AfD efforts. The German people are the peasants, but their ‘nobility’ is no longer noble.
and we’re all going to drown, burn up, or die in a wildfire
FireFrost20 – Fire and Ice (poem) – Wikipedia
A short poem by Robert Frost.
‘The German people are the peasants, but their ‘nobility’ is no longer noble.’
There’s some truth in that. Hereditary nobles had to have at least some concern for their subjects well being, lest their progeny inherit a debased realm. Today’s ‘nobles’ only need concern themselves with their relatively short terms in office, hence their policies are geared for maximum extraction of their subjects wealth in the present.
Plus Nobles of old likely had a healthy respect for the possibility that excessively poor treatment of the peasantry might result in them being punctured by pitchforks.
That, too. But as history has shown, we peasants seem to have a high tolerance for abusive regimes, not to mention that new regimes, e.g., the Bolsheviks, are often much abusive than their predecessors.
“ relatively short terms in office”… Would that it be so. In the USA, we have many that have been there for decade upon decade.
The woke virus of madness everywhere-
‘Garbage’: NASA infuses ‘wokeness’ with training lesson on white supremacy culture (msn.com)
If only our Teutonic brethren had a stiff upper lip.
We also have the Starmtroopers
I see your fearless leader was troubled by having a portrait of Dame Thatcher in residence.
If I were as ‘woke’ as he, I too, would be “troubled”, if M.T. was peering over my shoulder.
Maynard Keynes, apocryphal, it is still brilliant: ‘When my information changes I change my conclusions’. Unfortunately, the topic of climate has morphed, calculatedly, about something to do with your soul. When the argument was seeking traction anything that supported the thesis, CO2, diet, flooding, sea rise etc. all started out with a degree of acceptance but, over time, as one suggestion arose another was batted down. We are now in the phlogiston period where we are having difficulty putting a name to it even defining it.
We know not whether it is fish or fowl but there is a strong element of we need to discover unicorns. Much of the legacy of Climate change depends on factors where the answer has not been invented, which excites lunatics, we have the issue of hitting one bullet by firing another bullet at it. Tom Hartford gave an interesting lecture on the radio yesterday about, essentially how can we change it, where the it does not have a definition, only survives as an assumption. The example of a syndicated economist lauding the stock market the day before the great crash does not go amiss.
Hartford wants more transparency about algorithms as a start. So many climate models for instance. So many assumptions, let us see the code and test its credibility and the veracity of their originators. We have disproved so much from the fog of deflection and yet the climate business hobbles on hoping that the next day will throw another caltrop in the way of the fact seeking denial.
Very rich people pay others to be subversive, to indulge in direct action and are never cautioned over their disruptive interventions, You can pay to have an ambulance stopped, prevent someone’s holiday, bring the freeway to a halt, this makes climate change sound benign by comparison at least it is a natural process. But to have the world disrupted, order challenged by the oligarchy is unnatural. Time to revise the whole issue, to stop digging because the issue is beginning to look like one of alchemy.
Germany is still a favoured destination for immigrants from Ukraine.
Germany still has a current account surplus and has one of the highest net positive international financial position of USD3.2tr
You will know Germany is in trouble when there are no longer immigrants from Ukraine seeking a home in Germany. Or USA military remove their bases from Germany.
Simple solution is to go back to oil, water, nuclear and gas NOW. Forget unworkables like solar, wind and tide
We’ll get all the young people and the unemployed right onto it-
Renewables, gas the cheapest form of energy, report finds | Watch (msn.com)
Empty the universities with DEI and affirmative action.
Oh no, germany doomed again. But this time for real, not like the last 24134534 times we said it!!!!! They are going to eat the hamster this winter!!!!!
Meanwhile renewbale energy is absolutly booming in germany.
https://e360.yale.edu/digest/germany-wind-solar-permitting-reform
“Meanwhile renewbale energy is absolutly booming in germany.”
That’s the problem. That’s why their electricity prices are through the roof. High electricity prices are not conducive to business, thus the report on business sentiment being down.
The IEA in ‘Electricity 2024 Analysis and forecast to 2026’ say the following in relation to electricity prices in the EU
“Electricity demand in the EU’s industrial sector fell by an estimated 6% in 2022 and again in 2023. Prices of electricity for energy intensive industry in the EU in 2023 were almost double those in the US and China and the gap has widened putting EU energy intensive industry competitiveness under pressure”
Germany is leading the way in EU industrial decline.
One source claims Germany’s electricity cost is $0.52, one penny less than Denmark. In central Washington State, my rate is going from just over 9¢/kwh to just over 10¢ for the next 12 months. I also pay $26.60 per month as a “facility charge” that makes comparisons tricky.
John, but what’s your total bill divided by your total consumption ? All those riders really add up. Our old family farm, which is now a weekend retreat, uses about 30 KwH per month, but the bill is usually about $100. There is even a rider for calculating the cost of the riders. But conversion to PV solar and a PowerWall would cost thousands.
Turns out the furnace fan motor is the biggest problem to provide power for (lots of motor runtime in cold low-sunlight Januaries), and a super old fashioned convective furnace would be better in that regard but those big ducts were taken out 1/2 a century ago…
They are going to need that hamster soon.
It will be the only reliable electrical power they have left. !
Watch the elections tonight. That will answer the question one way or the other. It is not what you think it is. Read Die Zeit on the elections and the AfD and find out what a so called “Sperrminorität” is, and why the AfD is aiming for one.
AfD top in Thuringia with 32.8% of the vote.
Close second in the Saxony.. but still counting.
I was wondering if he would show up.
This is not failure for the socialists, it is a great success! It is driving Western countries into chaos and poverty; exactly what socialists want.
Beside reduced working hours, paid vacation, pensions, safety standards, holidays, education for the general public, voting rights, sick pay, fighting poverty, improving the infrastructure, affordable healthcare, fighting for better wages…what have the socialists ever done for us?
Yet in many socialist countries… very few of those things exist. !
These are all things made possible by a capitalist system.
When are you moving to North Korea to enjoy all those benefits ??
FDR came up with much of that to SAVE capitalism- being worried about the USSR and how popular it was with the lefties.
Please stop reciting statist claptrap. Many of FDR’s policies were extensions of Hoover’s idiotic policies to end the Depression by limiting production in order to raise prices, supplemented with an expansion of government control that rivaled anything going on in Europe. Oh, and WWII didn’t end the Depression – it only ended when the worst components of the New Deal were repealed.
Read some history- WWII ended the depression. The fact that FDR did what he did to save capitalism in the ’30s, doesn’t mean it succeeded- it’s what he thought. I didn’t say it saved capitalism- it didn’t. But what’s your beef with social security and medicare (which came later) and big public works projects like the interstate highway system and many others?
A nation has to be prospering before it can afford social security and universal medical etc.
Socialists always neglect that essential established prosperity ingredient before they embark on their “Green New Deal” type lunacies.
It is the capitalists the are planning on making $US trillions in profits from so-called “climate change” they own the companies in the “green” space, not the socialists, and there are very, very few of socialists in the US anyway.
Joseph, your comment re. FDR’s policies at 10:58 am, which I agree with, completely disagrees with your comment re. FDR’s policies at 6:08 am. But since I have ‘read some history’, here’s what Henry Morgenthau Jr., FDR’s Treasury Secretary, had to say about the New Deal:
‘We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong … somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. … I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. … And an enormous debt to boot.’
As for WWII ending the Depression, I recommend that you please read some economics that isn’t based on the Keynesian claptrap that is so beloved by all Democrats (and too many Republicans) and their useful idiots like Paul Krugman.
First, however, please let me know how pulling 10 million of the most productive Americans out of the economy, while commanding the remaining work force to mostly produce non-productive assets that either we, or our enemies, will blow up or mothball, can do anything but weaken the economy?
More money is usually created to fund the war and that creates more jobs, spending, etc.
Capitalism wasn’t providing good benefits for their workers, profits were all that mattered.
That’s why the workers were turning to unions and socialism.
Not historically accurate.
Again, you don’t seem to know any German history. Find out what the origins of social welfare legislation were. Have you ever been there? Do you speak and read the language? It is not the place you think it is.
You really are a dumbfuck, you deserve exactly what you get.
https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/a-failed-soviet-experiment-offers-a-warning-to-todays-burnout-generation/
https://daily.jstor.org/workers-of-the-world-take-pto/
https://www.nytimes.com/1978/11/19/archives/pension-system-in-soviet-leaves-many-of-the-aged-impoverished.html
No, we Brits started that – https://www.thebcfgroup.co.uk/health-and-safety-pages/history-health-safety-workplace.php
Nope, that was we British again https://libraryblog.lbrut.org.uk/2016/12/origins-bank-holidays/
Nope, that started before the socialists wrecked the place – https://sites.bu.edu/revolutionaryrussia/student-research/griffin-monahan/
Sure, you can vote for anyone so long as their surname is Putin (or Xinping, or Kim, depending)
Apparently the ancient Egyptians got there first. https://web.archive.org/web/20190401191933/https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/02/17/even-the-ancient-egyptians-had-paid-sick-days/?utm_term=.b11a93892dd7
Yeah tell me again how socialists fight poverty – https://www.history.com/news/ukrainian-famine-stalin
Pull the other one, it’s got bells on – https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/01/20/anger-russia-winter-soviet-era-infrastructure-buckles/
If you can “afford” to wait for it – https://www.pharmacy.biz/news/nearly-150000-patients-died-while-on-nhs-waiting-lists-last-year/
But only if there’s a few thousand of their closest mates to back them up. Not a single one could articulate why they deserve better wages individually. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/07/26/train-drivers-demand-10-per-cent-pay-rise-to-end-strike/
I walk with Liberty Prime.
One of my favorite descriptions of socialism –
“You can easily vote your way into socialism.
But you have to shoot your way out.”
Currently, it’s Brazil and Venezuela who look like proving that outcome.
Well stated… Thanks.
As usual, your attribution of cause and effect is reversed – we can’t consume what hasn’t been produced, and centrally planned economies produce much less than market economies.
But that in itself isn’t the biggest problem with socialism, this is:
https://mises.org/mises-wire/socialists-it-doesnt-matter-if-socialism-works-what-matters-power
None of those things exist in Socialiist countries.
What have they done? Robbed us blind all the while saying it was for our own good.
The capitalists are the ones in the US planning on making $ trillions in profit off of solar and wind and other “green” schemes.
They own the media, control the politicians with the campaign contributions and control the universities with their grants.
The socialists here in the US are very, very seldom even mentioned in most news media or other outlets there are so very few of them.
The Democrat Party, academia and media are full of socialists. Your self-delusion is comical.
From the article: “Many factors are contributing to the pessimistic business sentiment. Foremost are the high energy costs, which are among the highest energy costs in the world – thanks to Germany’s botched attempt to move to green energies.”
And energy costs are what determine whether one has a good economy or a bad economy.
The German economy will continue down this “Road to Ruin” until German leaders realize their windmill and solar plans are destroying their economy.
But German politicians don’t seem to be able to understand the consequences of their absurd attempts to try to reduce CO2 output, and so they will continue down this road to the end. When rock bottom is hit, then things will change, but probably not before, considering how delusional German politicians seem to be about CO2.
And the German politicians are not the only ones delusional about CO2. All the leftwing political groups in the Western World are captured by this delusion. And those not captured, use the issue for political purposes.
All efforts to reduce CO2 are delusional, since there is no evidence CO2 is anything other than a benign gas, essential for life on Earth, and the efforts are detrimental to the average person’s livelihood.
I think we can equate present leftwing government in the Western World to an Idiocracy. Our futures are being decided by people with the mentality of children.
Last sentence is spot on. Actually, the last two paragraphs are extremely accurate. Try talking to someone who is a “climate change” activist. Like dealing with a four year old, at best. Idiots, one and all.
Or like talking to a bible thumper.
The rich are planning on getting much richer from the $US 200 trillion in spending Bloomberg’s Green Energy Research Team estimates it will cost to stop warming by 2050. A 10 percent profit will make them some $20 trillion richer.
Here are two options to save Germany. Option one is to offer up a choice of ending extended holiday for workers or stopping the green policy fail. Option two is just don’t return from extended holiday in all those less green vacation spots with rising seas from the interglacial period.
“Germany is mired in pessimism and fear, with little hope in sight.”
But that makes it seem as if there is no solution. Of course there is. Give up the green energy scam. Lower taxes and reduce regulation.
Good.
The current socialist-green government has botched things so much,
For socialists, that’s not a botch, it’s a big blazing anticapitalist success. They would hope next to become the principal rulers and controllers of all economic transactions, ultimately the owners, with themselves of course giving the orders. Power to The People, comrades!
The German economy, is the foundation for the EU. As we’ve seen over the years, it has funded many aspects of the EU survival. Are we possibly seeing the first crack in the EU empire?
Rather unfortunate and quite sad given these officials cannot recognize their folly nor admit they were utterly wrong. Good heavens does the economy have to literally crash for these dolts to get it? The waste and hardship placed upon the people is inexcusable and a testament to the foolishness of this green energy/climate change cult.
You wrote “…Germany’s botched attempt to move to green energies.” The attempt wasn’t a botch. It was a goal of deploying wind and a bit of solar and killing off nuclear to try and operate a grid without nuclear or any other dispatchable power source. This goal has been disproven by any number of simple straightforward engineering analyses and the experience of two windy sunny islands, El Hierro in the Canaries and King Island in Bass Strait between Tasmania and Australia. Both showed it simply cannot be done as both depend on diesel electric generators to fill in the large and frequent gaps in supply, at times even for 100% of each island’s electricity needs. And this at extremely high cost.
And yet thousands of innumerate politicians worldwide and equally innumerate ordinary people persist in continuing with this nonsense. It is a fool’s errand encouraged by subsidy seeking industrialists and politicians who are willing to continue this nonsense to get their bucks and their power. As Warren Buffett said, “Wind and solar do not work without the subsidies.”
Now to the mix, many are advocating a “hydrogen economy.” A simple analysis of the properties of hydrogen (hard to make, hard to compress, harder to liquify, hard to deliver and containing very little energy) will reveal to anybody with the interest to find out, that can be no such thing. The amount of energy to produce, distribute, and use hydrogen as a fuel gas exceeds always and everywhere the amount of energy that hydrogen can carry.
We and the other nations caught up in this nonsense have spent $trillions on wind and solar machines which, as some analyses conclude, will never return as much energy as it takes to build them. How many more $trillions will be spent on wind, solar and now “the hydrogen economy” before nature instructs with no equivocation, that they don’t work.
Very erudite and incisive observations and analyses Denis.
Of course most of what you say is self-evident to everyone who is not an ideological captive of the socialist left.
Here in the US it is the capitalists who hope to make $trillion in profit. We have very, very few socialists and they don’t have any power.
Most of those making $trillions in profit are not US capitalists.
Here is a long, but interesting article about using Hydrogen:
A review of challenges with using the natural gas system for hydrogen
https://scijournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ese3.1861
Fossil fuels are stored energy. Wind and solar are not. This difference is why renewables cannot replace fossil fuels.
Net Zero will fail because it relies on a false equivalence.
This was what Angela Merkel said on the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall:
“No wall that keeps people out and restricts freedom is so high… that it cannot be broken down.”
She surely knew which way the Berlin Wall worked? But I guess growing up in the DDR must have influenced her views?
“Angela Merkal’s astounding open border policy granting close to a million Muslim immigrants entry into Germany could be seen as self-flagellation for Germany’s historical transgressions. Laced with typical progressive lunacy. What better way to make up for the Holocaust than by admitting “refugees” who frequently exhibit genocidal hatred of Jews.”
Gad Saad
BBC comment on the difference between Hungary and Germany on the 30th anniversary of the Pan European Picnic.
“Theirs are two very different views of the European project.
One liberal, seeking to incorporate outsiders who can contribute to Europe’s future, the other the more nationalist, eager to erect barriers and to stress the continents traditional Christian outlook.”
The Green New Deal is becoming the Green Leap Forward.
Forward to what destiny?
I believe the UK are spending, circa, $1billion on geoengineering including launching vast mirrors into space to deflect sunlight!
Hang on a sec. Were we not told that the Sun had nothing to do with GW, it was the nasty anthropogenic CO2 that was leading us down the road to Disaster(?)
If it’s the Sun then, surely, we can all get back to normal and eat our nice steaks, BBQ’d on charcoal fires? No need to slaughter millions of flatulent cows; rip out my oil boiler; bin my petrol engine car and spend tens of trillions, worldwide, on white elephants blowing in our beautiful landscapes.
What is really scary is what happened in Germany between WWI and WWII.
I am reminded of the adage, if you don’t learn from history, you are doomed to repeat it.