Germany's Anti-Nuclear Fallout

It's also a cautionary tale for Americans.

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Writing at the Atlantic, David Frum offers a fuller explanation than you might have heard for why Germany is in the process of abandoning nuclear power despite its leaders' professed concern with rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. In addition, he notes some of the less obvious bad consequences of Angela Merkel's politically-motivated shift.

First, regarding the shift, it seems that Fukushima was more of an excuse than a solid reason. Frum describes the political situation in Germany leading up to the change by the previously pro-nuclear chancellor, culminating in the following:

Unreliable. (Image by Tyler Collins, via Unsplash, license.)

... The 2008-09 financial crisis touched Germany comparatively lightly, but it hit Germany's European trading partners hard. In 2010 and 2011, the countries of Southern Europe plunged into debt crises that forced a tough choice on Germany: rescue them, or risk seeing the euro currency zone dissolve. Under that pressure, Merkel's popularity sagged. Her disapproval numbers reached their peak of 43 percent in mid-2010. This was the political context at the time of Fukushima. And you can see why it forced a deep [sic] rethink on a profoundly risk-averse, formerly pro-nuclear chancellor.

Germany has long been home to an active, mobilized movement against nuclear energy, much more so than other nuclear-using democracies. You can spend a lively evening with German friends discussing the sources of this movement's strength. Whatever the origin, however, the antinuclear movement offered a considerable political resource to a politician willing to use it. Many politicians had pondered this opportunity in the past, including Merkel's immediate predecessors. Merkel grasped it. [bold added]

From there, Frum lays out some of the consequences:

Merkel pledged that the gap would be filled by renewables. That promise has not been kept. Germany's top power source in 2021 has been coal, which provided 27 percent of the country's electricity. Wind ranks only second.

Germany is also burning more natural gas -- about 40 percent of it imported from Russia. That dependence will rise in the years ahead. Germany is working with Russia to complete a second under-the-Baltic pipeline with the reluctant acquiescence of the Biden administration. Much of Germany's hesitance to support Ukrainian democracy against Russian aggression can be traced to Merkel's choice against nuclear power in 2011. [bold added]

Frum is correct to note that Merkel's choice was short-sighted and to sound the alarm about the fact that the United States is in danger of going down the same road. However, his analysis is severely limited because it either takes for granted the premise that global warming is a crisis properly solved by central planning -- or it at best fails to call that into question.

Furthermore, Frum does not discuss how difficult the measures European countries have taken so far have made life for ordinary people there. For this, let me recommend energy expert Alex Epstein, whose testimony before the US Senate includes the following remark about things on the ground in Germany:

[M]uch, much milder versions of [President Obama's] energy policy have been tried in Europe -- and resulted in skyrocketing energy prices every time.

Take Germany. Over the last decade, Germany pursued the popular ideal of running on unreliable energy from solar and wind. But since unreliable energy can't be relied upon, it has to be propped up by reliable energy -- mostly fossil fuels -- making the solar panels and wind turbines an unnecessary and enormous cost to the system. As a result, the average German pays 3-4 times more for electricity than the average American. It's so bad that Germans have had to add a new term to the language: "energy poverty." [note markers omitted, bold added]

Epstein's "Energy Talking Points" website, which I highly recommend, warns us that this problem is already here.

It is interesting and unfortunate that Frum fails to note the heavy toll green energy policies take on individuals whenever they are tried: If more Americans knew, the prospects of an energy-starved future would likely be much slimmer than they appear to be now.

There is nothing wrong with saying, Abandoning nuclear energy thwarts the professed goal of emissions reduction. As Frum himself might say, "You don't want to say that any of that is untrue. But it's also not the whole truth." Doing so also made Germany's grid more unreliable and its electricity more expensive than they would have been without decomissioning its nuclear plants.

Americans need the whole truth before it's too late -- to "improve the planet for humans" -- as Epstein has put it."

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Added a sentence.