Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Angela Merkel’s record on environmental policy has been a disaster

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 150 posts

Re: Angela Merkel’s record on environmental policy has been a disaster

#61

Post by gmueckl »

mixedbit wrote: post #33

I fail to understand why German automotive industry is lobbing pro diesels. All German car makers make both gasoline and diesel engines, if diesels were banned or taxed to be more expensive customers wouldn't resign from buying cars but would choose some other available option (gasoline, hybrid, electric).

1. The Diesel process is more efficient than the Otto process (the theoretical limit is much higher)

2. Taxes in Germany: Diesel fuel is taxed at a much lower rate than other gasoline. In turn, the cars themselves are taxed a bit higher. If you drive a lot, a Diesel car is more economical for that reason.

2. Have ever had a chance to drive a car with a Diesel engine? The power over RPM curve is so different that the experience feels very different and arguably much more convenient.

Re: Angela Merkel’s record on environmental policy has been a disaster

#62

Post by javra »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #9
marze wrote: post #6

Germany's generous subsidy and build out of solar, while solar was still really expensive, was key in driving the cost down which now the whole world benefits from. Huge credit there. But bio fuels are an unmitigated disaster. Electric ground transportation is the future.

> Electric ground transportation is the future. It's a relatively less evil, for now. We still haven't found a good way of dealing with old batteries and it's a huge environmental problem.

There's also ground transportation by tram, no batteries needed.

Re: Angela Merkel’s record on environmental policy has been a disaster

#63

Post by dom0 »

lispm wrote: post #19
marze wrote: post #6

Germany's generous subsidy and build out of solar, while solar was still really expensive, was key in driving the cost down which now the whole world benefits from. Huge credit there. But bio fuels are an unmitigated disaster. Electric ground transportation is the future.

> Electric ground transportation is the future. You can already use trains in a large scale: most larger European cities are well connected and have extensive local transport systems. Next the public sector will invest a lot of money into electrical busses and their infrastructure. E-Bikes are already very popular. Cars will take a few more years... Merkel's government had ambitious goals, but industry and public was…

+1

Many people commute by train from the "suburbs" or the smaller cities sprinkled around the larger cities, partly because it's convenient, partly because traffic is really bad in major cities.

Re: Angela Merkel’s record on environmental policy has been a disaster

#64

Post by ropeladder »

daniel-cussen wrote: post #37
shangxiao wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like jabs at conservative politics are the norm now with a lot of journalism. A few weeks back an article [1] I read, from reddit, started with: …the dastardly Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor seem to be a great gift to the Alt-Right’s xenophobic nationalists. Interesting article, but unnecessary (and daresay incorrect?) jab at the start. [1] http://www.thedailybeast.com/the-american-who-buried-a-kamik...

Indeed. It was exactly the other way around, as many nationalists (including the KKK) did not want to get into the war and held a lot of sway right up until Pearl Harbor. After Pearl Harbor, there was no keeping USA out of the war.

Hitler was working hard on PR to keep the US out. Recent I saw a map the Nazis had made with the proportion of the population of German descent for each US state, created for propaganda purposes.

Re: Angela Merkel’s record on environmental policy has been a disaster

#65

Post by ahartmetz »

mixedbit wrote: post #33

I fail to understand why German automotive industry is lobbing pro diesels. All German car makers make both gasoline and diesel engines, if diesels were banned or taxed to be more expensive customers wouldn't resign from buying cars but would choose some other available option (gasoline, hybrid, electric).

I think it's because they have a technical edge (well...) in diesel engines for cars and / or because they sell so many of them, especially in Germany itself. Markets favoring diesel engines thus favor German car makers.

Re: Angela Merkel’s record on environmental policy has been a disaster

#66

Post by matt4077 »

Tomte wrote: post #23
marze wrote: post #6

Germany's generous subsidy and build out of solar, while solar was still really expensive, was key in driving the cost down which now the whole world benefits from. Huge credit there. But bio fuels are an unmitigated disaster. Electric ground transportation is the future.

If scientists finally succeed in mimicking the oxygen evolving complex from photosynthesis, you get decentralized free hydrogen. Suddenly real hydrogen combustion (instead of fuel cells) makes sense and should be advantageous, even compared to electric transportation. But, of course, it's a bit like fusion power: should be achievable in principle, but the details are infuriatingly difficult.

Photosynthesis is incredibly inefficient compared to solar cells.

Re: Angela Merkel’s record on environmental policy has been a disaster

#67

Post by TeMPOraL »

ahartmetz wrote: post #59
Grue3 wrote: post #49

IMO being anti-nuclear and pro-environment are mutually exclusive positions. Easy way to discern who really wants to reduce carbon emissions and who is just a populist.

According to environmentalists in Germany, nuclear and pro-environment are indeed mutually exclusive. But I prefer not to copy all of my opinions from the group I most agree with. FWIW I think nuclear is good in principle, but neither states nor companies have proven responsible enough to handle it. So I'm kind of against nuclear but not in this dogmatic way. The practical difference is that I think there should be f…

> The nuclear waste "killer argument" is mostly bullshit. Highly radioactive substances are spent quickly, long lived substances radiate weakly. 100000 years are quite predictable in geology.

Also the amount of nuclear waste produced is minuscule compared to much more toxic and more difficult to handle substances produced by various industrial processes. And people somehow have no issue with the latter.

Re: Angela Merkel’s record on environmental policy has been a disaster

#68

Post by eurozone »

lispm wrote: post #11
kome wrote: post #5

Very good article. The industry-government nexus in Germany is indeed super powerful and underrated: other countries call it corruption, in Germany is called corporatism. In the last few years we saw it in action, with important repercussion on the global level: for example, the way the Greek crisis was managed it had to do much more with the safety of German banks, that with the welfare of Greece ( https://www.esmt.…

Without European (and incl. German) money Greece would be bancrupt and no longer in the Eurozone. Bancrupt banks in Europe would have helped no one, particularly not Greece. For the welfare of the people in Greece the greek government is responsible, not Angela Merkel.

To add to discussion: Greece GDP growth is less than 0% from 2006 to 2016. The map data is here https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/70mf7u/european_gdp...

Re: Angela Merkel’s record on environmental policy has been a disaster

#69

Post by matt4077 »

shangxiao wrote: post #25
yorwba wrote: post #10

The article voices a bunch of valid criticism, but I really wish it could have done so without turning environmental damage into a contest and using unsubstantiated superlatives. Is it not enough to criticize someone without claiming that they are the worst ? The jab at Trump felt misplaced as well.

I feel like jabs at conservative politics are the norm now with a lot of journalism. A few weeks back an article [1] I read, from reddit, started with: …the dastardly Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor seem to be a great gift to the Alt-Right’s xenophobic nationalists. Interesting article, but unnecessary (and daresay incorrect?) jab at the start. [1] http://www.thedailybeast.com/the-american-who-buried-a-kamik...

The wrong form of the verb 'seem' in that sentence betrays your incredibly dishonest attempt at selective quoting.

Re: Angela Merkel’s record on environmental policy has been a disaster

#70

Post by wjnc »

guitarbill wrote: post #32
kome wrote: post #5

Very good article. The industry-government nexus in Germany is indeed super powerful and underrated: other countries call it corruption, in Germany is called corporatism. In the last few years we saw it in action, with important repercussion on the global level: for example, the way the Greek crisis was managed it had to do much more with the safety of German banks, that with the welfare of Greece ( https://www.esmt.…

> other countries call it corruption, in Germany is called corporatism. That's insulting, and factually inaccurate - unless you have evidence to substantiate this hyperbole? > for example, the way the Greek crisis was managed The Greek crisis had other origins, and the financial checks/obligations upon joining the Euro are supposed to mitigate against the risk of not being able to devalue a national currency to e.g.…

It's actually a pet-peeve of mine that corporatism (Rheinland model) could be easily seen as enabling certain forms of corruption. It's very clean: hardly any bribery or extortion in this model. But networking, clientilism and favoritism are widespread. Those are aspects of corruption, but more on a systemic level than on an individual level. You won't find a police officer solliciting euros, but you will find that any business leader has extensive ties, political and/or union. And these ties influence the civil society in such a way that there are less limits on unethical conduct by those in power (:: a definition of corruption).

There's a very cozy relationship between politics, business leadership and most of the union leadership in countries like Germany and the Netherlands.

The relationship is that cozy, that pretty clearly unethical acts hardly warrant official responses of the juridicary, politics or unions. One step worse for the public is that even enacted legislation is not always upheld when the three parties agree on it not being in their (local) interest. The Rheinland model transfers legitimacy from the individual to the parties representing the different interests. At that point power is concentrated, and corrupts.

Best recent example is the Volkswagen-example. But most large Rhineland corporations have such examples (Shell in Nigeria, Siemens in Spain, ...) I recently re-read a well-cited article on corporate social responsibility. Guess which firm was one of the examples... Volkswagen.

Post reply on HN