Germany’s economy and climate minister has angrily lashed out at Angela Merkel’s party, accusing it of being responsible for “16 years of energy policy failure”.
While the ongoing gas crisis across Europe gets steadily worse, political tensions in Germany appear to be growing, with the country’s economic and climate minister, Robert Habeck, angrily lashing out at his political rivals in the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the party of former chancellor Angela Merkel.
Despite having been warned by then-President Donald Trump that relying on Russia for energy was endangering the security of both Germany and her allies, Merkel’s government presided over a green agenda-fueled shift away from domestic fossil fuel production that made the country ever more reliant on gas exports supplied by Moscow.
Now, in the wake of the Ukraine war, Germany has all but completely lost access to its supply of gas from Vladimir Putin, prompting fears that many will be unable to properly heat their homes this winter.
According to a report by Tagesschau, many have been attacking Habeck over for his own poor handling of the country’s nuclear power plants, which are still mostly due to be wound down by the end of the year.
The fact that many of these attacks appear to be originating from the CDU now appears to have struck a nerve with Habeck, who on Thursday lambasted the rival party for being the cause of the hardship he now has to deal with in the first place.
“[T]he [Christian Democratic] Union has ruled this country and many federal states for 16 years. Sixteen years of energy policy failure,” Tagesschau reports the minister as saying.
“And in a few months we will clean up what you screwed up, prevented and destroyed in 16 years,” he went on to say.
Winter of Discontent: Germany to Implement Energy Rationing Amid Fears of Gas Riotshttps://t.co/Z8WXZ94Qjb
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) August 25, 2022
While the Green party politician appears to be adamant that his coalition government will be able to fix the mess that Germany is currently in, it remains unclear exactly how he plans to do so.
Although measures have already been implemented at both the national and European Union level aimed at curbing the impact of the crisis, especially for private households, the bare fact that there is now a chronic lack of natural gas available for the continent means that Germany will likely struggle to keep itself supplied over the coming winter.
Habeck has previously been adamant that liquified natural gas (LNG) could be the saviour of his country, though problems with a lack of the infrastructure needed to receive deliveries of LNG, as well as a lack of the fuel on the open market more generally, leave significant doubts as to the efficacy of relying on it as a potential solution.
This is not even mentioning that Habeck — along with the rest of his green agenda-loving government — has arguably not done a great job of handling the crisis so far, with the so-called “traffic light” coalition of the Social Democrats, Free Democrats, and Greens being repeatedly criticised for prioritising its ideological commitment to killing the nuclear power industry in Germany over ensuring there is enough energy to go around this winter.
While authorities have pretended to U-turn on the issue in recent weeks by saying that they will keep on in reserve two of the three remaining nuclear plants in the country, planned to be shut down by January, critics have attacked the plan as simply not being feasible, with some claiming that nuclear power plants could not be used as reserve power stations as they can take days to start up.
“Sending two of the three running systems to the cold reserve at the turn of the year in order to start them up if necessary is technically not feasible and therefore unsuitable for securing the supply contribution of the systems,” a letter from one energy tsar to government officials in regards to Habeck’s plan reportedly read.
Trump Vindicated: Germany Braces for ‘Chaotic Conditions’ Ahead of Feared Loss of Russian Gas https://t.co/CV9t5KSp6t
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) July 3, 2022
