Radio talk show host Dennis Prager has an axiom: Whatever Germany does, do the opposite.
and, if you like coal, you are a nazi?
25 Oct: Handelsblatt: Coal commission calls for surge in investment to offset coal phaseout
By Klaus Stratmann
Germany’s coal commission, a panel of politicians and energy experts set up by the government to help organize the phaseout of coal-fired power generation, recommended massive investment in the regions that will be hit. They warn that failure to do so could cause social upheaval, especially in the former communist east...
Just last week, the eastern states alone — Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Brandenburg — demanded €60 billion in federal aid to cover the phaseout of lignite mining...
There are fears that job losses could boost support for the far right in affected regions, especially in the east where coal is the main industry in some parts...
The Alternative for Germany party, the leading opposition party, has garnered support in those regions by questioning whether humans are accelerating global warming...
The commission, which is also drafting a timetable for exiting coal, said structural funds shouldn’t just go towards economic projects but also into measures “to develop civil society activities, quality of life and soft location factors.”
It said a successful structural policy could help safeguard the liberal democratic order in the east, which saw the worst neo-Nazi rioting in a generation in the town of Chemnitz in August...
More than ***30,000 miners, coal power station employees and industrial workers protested against the phaseout and job security in Bergheim, near Cologne in western Germany...
And power station operators Uniper and Steag warned against rapid cutbacks in coal, saying it would make Germany vulnerable to power outages...
https://global.handelsblatt.com/politics/coal-commission-germany-investment-phaseout-aid-975487