Attempting to apply nonsensical environmentalist ideology to her nation’s energy policies, Germany’s Angela Merkel left her country exposed. With their main supply imperiled by war and with winter approaching, Germans are in dire straits.
It's been said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. For proof one need look no further than Germany. In seeking to atone for the sins of World War 2 Germany has done the very things that caused World War 2. Under the leadership of Merkel the country has pursued head-in-the-sand international policies and appeasement. Merkel was elected Chancellor in 2005, riding the wave of 'empowered' women leaders who could do no wrong. By simply being in the top job the former engineer was breaking through the glass ceiling and was therefore proudly held up as a bastion of female achievement – a person strongly maintaining particular principles and attitudes – but although she was a favourite of the left-wing media she failed to see that her globalist and socialist policies were going to lead Germany to disaster.
Far from being the brilliant leader portrayed in the media this Christian Democratic Union politician was just average, being another intellectual elite who, failing to understand human nature, believed solar panels and diplomacy were the answer to everything. The problem, of course, is that the sun doesn’t always shine. People with bad intent (think Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping) will see this, and if possible take full advantage of the situation. Angela Merkel took leadership of a strong industrial country that is now in a much weaker state than when she rose to power. Just a year after she left office Germany is short on power, relying on Russia for oil and gas and on China for goods and services. Production has been rolled back.
Merkel’s decision to shut down nuclear power and ramp up weather-dependent energy, backed up only by massive gas imports from Russia, will go down as one of the most staggeringly incompetent national infrastructure policies in history. Any logical explanation would require the use of psychologists rather than political historians. Her rejection of nuclear power – a knee-jerk reaction to the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan in 2011 – combined with her naïve trust in Putin now has her country at the mercy of the Russians, who threaten to cut off the country's gas supply as winter approaches. Germany imports over 40 percent of its gas and a third of its oil from Russia.
In 2019 Donald Trump went to the United Nations and pointed out Germany’s folly in putting all their energy eggs in one basket. The German delegation laughed at him. When he then suggested that European nations should invest more in their own defence, Angela Merkel rolled her eyes. Germany has been sourcing more and more of its gas from Russia via the Nord Stream pipeline. To access even more Russian gas the Germans pursued a second pipeline (the recently-commissioned Nord Stream 2) that runs beneath the Baltic Sea direct to Germany. Ukraine didn’t like this plan, warning it would give Russia too much control over European gas and could be used as a dangerous political weapon. Merkel countered this by promising to fund green energy infrastructure in Ukraine and to push hard for sanctions on Russia if it bullied the country.
Russia has now invaded Ukraine, and if it cuts off Germany’s gas supply it will leaving the Germans with nothing but green energy which, to quote an oft-used phrase hasn't a snowflake's chance in hell of supplying Germany's energy needs. Contingency plans are in place across the country that involve everything from closing public swimming pools, turning off street lamps and traffic lights and housing citizens in industrial-scale dormitories that were built for Covid patients but are now being classified as 'warm rooms' or 'warm islands'. Meanwhile, demand for everything that can heat without gas – even basic camping stoves – is at an unprecedented high. Installers of wood-burning ovens report long waiting lists and cite a chronic lack of parts, as well as a shortage of qualified personnel.
A leader’s primary responsibility is to ensure secure borders, reliable and affordable energy and food security. Angela Merkel’s Germany is a salient lesson in stupidity that our own green-obsessed leaders would do well to pay attention to. Her legacy is probably best summed up in Germany’s initial offer to war-ravaged Ukraine of 1,000 helmets.
Meanwhile, green ideology in the Netherlands is systematically destroying agricultural production and food security, which will have worldwide ramifications. Thousands of farmers have come out in protest against the globalists: their fear-mongering over climate change and their plans to completely change Dutch farming practices.
In September 2015 the UN General Assembly adopted their 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This agenda has 17 goals which include the promotion of sustainable agriculture, sustainable energy, sustainable industrialisation and sustainable consumption. According to Dutch political commentator Eva Vlaardingerbroek, her government’s radical climate policy follows a socialist agenda of the global elites. “For years the Dutch government has planned to drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions produced by livestock in order to meet the European Union’s climate goals. On 10 June it announced a national and area-specific plan for curbing these emissions. Some parts of the country would have to reduce them by between 70 and 90 percent. Farmers have been subjected to insane regulations that have compelled them to reorganise their entire farms over and over and over again. Some have committed suicide because of these regulations.”
The protests commenced after the announcement. More and more farmers have been blocking highways and food distribution centres, and plan to protest at some airports. Dutch ministers have called the proposal 'an unavoidable transition' and warned that farmers might have to face the prospect of closing their businesses, not ruling out the possibility of expropriating land from farmers who don’t comply. The government is attempting to steal land from Dutch farmers due to a supposed emissions crisis, but it's a food crisis that will be the result of these moves to be involved in farming and food production. Perhaps these bureaucrats should consider the Sri Lankan crisis, in which massive crop failures and the ensuing starvation of its people caused them to storm the presidential palace and topple the government after it implemented draconian bans on imported chemical fertilisers last year. Meanwhile, Bill Gates has bought hundreds of thousands of acres of private arable land in the US, which has many of this country's people concerned. What is he planning? Some are speculating that globalist elites are preparing to secure their own food supply whilst leaving the rest of us to starve!