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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • This is using the German projection reports from the UBA, which is a ministry run by the Greens. Those tend to be overly negative. Last years report projected a rise of German emissions by a few percent, what happened was a drop of 10%. This year they again project rising emissions, but the Q1 data shows a 6.6% drop in emissions, with Q2 electricity data also looking rather decent. Even so the report finds most sectors will be within emission limits. The only ones with problems are buidling, which is mainly heating, and transport. The building sector is projected to be slighly over the emission targets, with some rather important laws having been passed last year, which according to the report close the gap to 96Mt to 32Mt until 2030. Transport is doing much worse however. The gap is massive at 180Mt until 2030 and most laws, which would have a large impact being blocked. To be fair the gap is smaller then the projection from last year at 210Mt.

    Point is, that this is pessimistic. However climate change is a massive issue and obviously doing more to cut emissions is the right thing to do.



  • The EU past a lot of actually good policy in the last term. Namely ban of fossil fuel cars 2035, limiting certificates for the EUs carbon market, new carbon market for transport and housing and a bunch of other laws, which actually have some positive impact. For the most part the EU parliament was not only in favour, but activly pushing for it being one of the most pro enviromental policy parliaments in the world. That is probably going to stop and they likely try to kill some of the laws passed. So the key in the future will be defence for most enviromental groups. The laws which have been passed will lower emissions, but not fast enough.

    As for nuclear the EU is so far this year at 73.2% clean electricity. The large countries with a lot of fossil fuels are Poland, Italy and Germany. Of those only Poland is activly pushing for nuclear. The EU parliament is not able to force the other two to do that.






  • Correct on a per capita bases Portugal has been growing much much faster then Germany. The simple truth it that Germany is not benefiting from austerity either. What should happen is that the German government massively increases spending. This would turn Germany from a net exporter, to a net importer. That allows the PIIGS to export products to Germany paying down the debt, but it also stimulates the economy. Germany profits from the increased spending as well.

    The simple truth is that German life expectancy is declining since a couple of years(being below Spain, Italy and Portugal btw). Median wealth of Italy, Spain and Portugal is higher then that of Germany, which is only slightly higher then that of Greece. Real wages in Germany have gone up by 3.8% over the last decade(not annually but the entire decade).

    The only ones who really profit from this austerity are the super rich. Other then that it is as bad a policy for Germany as it is for Italy, Portugal, Spain or Greece.





  • If only Germany would not be willing to recognice Palestine, then this might happen, but that is not the case. France and Italy the two next most powerfull countries do not recognice Palestine either.

    Germany is usually fairly happy with the current state of the EU. The things Germany wants to change are usually also supported by Spain and that means blackmail is harder. The only exaption to that is finance. However Spain is not going to let billions go to waste to have Palestine recogniced. That is just more of a symbol, rather then massivly important.

    Also Germany leaving the EU would cause some massive problems in other EU countries as well. They would hardly be cheering for it.




  • First of all EVs do not need that much power. We are talking something like 25% more electricity production for a country like Japan. Then Japan has rather a lot of onshore and even more offshore wind potential. Mountains are a problem, but hardly something which can not be overcome. Solar can easily be installed on roofs and mountains are even less of a problem.

    Also really important to say it. Combustion engines in cars are massivly inefficent. So an EV is still better for the climate, even if run with coal electricity. The other factor is that Japans population is falling. So they will need less power over the long term.