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Germany: No Driving on Weekends?
Hotair ^ | 04/15/2024 | David Strom

Posted on 04/15/2024 6:54:05 PM PDT by SeekAndFind

Nut Zero strikes again.

The German Transport Minister is bowing to the inevitable: Net Zero laws in Germany must be changed. Unless they are, driving on weekends will have to be banned.

Germans were warned weekend driving may be banned to meet 'net zero ' targets.

A corresponding reduction in traffic performance would only be possible through restrictive measures that are difficult to communicate to the population, such as nationwide and indefinite driving bans on… pic.twitter.com/U6i3rdZ9Na— Steve Milloy (@JunkScience) April 15, 2024

Volker Wissing, a member of the minority Free Democratic Party--a center/center-right party in Germany that often holds the balance of power in the German Parliament--is lobbying for a change in the law to allow the transport sector a larger fraction of the emissions budget in the country. 

If that doesn't happen, he warns that cars will be forced off the roads. 

Who could have guessed?

Germany’s transport minister has warned that driving will have to be banned at the weekends unless the country’s net zero laws are changed.

Volker Wissing’s FDP party wants the law amended so the polluting transport sector can miss carbon emissions reduction targets, as long as Germany as a whole reaches them.

But the change is opposed by the Greens, who are part of the three-way coalitionwith the pro-business FDP and the Social Democrats (SPD), led by Olaf Scholz, the chancellor.

Negotiations over the law have dragged on since September last year. In a bid to heap pressure on his coalition partners to amend the law, Mr Wissing said that he would have to enforce a ban on weekend driving to abide by the law unless it was changed before mid-July.

The Greens accused Mr Wissing of stirring up unfounded fears at a time when German enthusiasm for climate-friendly legislation is at a low ebb during the cost of living crisis.

Germans' enthusiasm for "climate-friendly legislation" is at a low ebb? I wonder why? 

The fact is that net-zero has been a disaster for Germany, and whether or not a full ban on driving on weekends would be necessary is not really the point: Germans will have to radically change their transportation system and behavior in order to meet these targets, just as they have had to deindustrialize. 

Net-zero policies are designed to reduce the consumption and quality of life for ordinary people. This is so blindingly obvious that you don't even have to read all the literature of the people pushing it to know it. If you do read it, you will see that they say it often enough. 

Pushing "solutions" like renewable energy and electrifying everything are simply dodges, not solutions to a problem. If you look at what has actually happened instead of what the pie-in-the-sky utopian promises say you realize it is impossible to live a modern life without reliable, abundant, and inexpensive power. Net zero makes that impossible. 

According to the current climate protection law, the ministry responsible for underperforming sectors must launch an immediate programme to put them back on track.

Mr Wissing has not yet done so. His ministry claims reforming the sector is more challenging than other areas of the economy because it affects people’s everyday lives and cannot be changed quickly.

“A corresponding reduction in traffic performance would only be possible through restrictive measures that are difficult to communicate to the population, such as nationwide and indefinite driving bans on Saturdays and Sundays,” he wrote in a letter dated Thursday to coalition parliamentary group leaders.

Wissig's coalition partners are attacking him as a scaremonger, but the truth is obvious enough: if the climate law isn't changed, driving will have to be curtailed. Whether it is banning driving on weekends, radically increasing prices, imposing onerous limits on distance traveled, reducing speed limits, or something else, the law requires a dramatic cut in mobility. 

All the whining in the world won't change that, and the whining itself is for show. The Greens are all about reversing modernity; if they cared about greenhouse gases, they wouldn't have pushed for getting rid of nuclear power. 

You can't reduce power output, destabilize the grid, and electrify everything without a collapse of the economy. Germany is doing these things, and the Left is pretty clear about wanting to collapse the economy. They just don't want this to become a damaging political issue. 

I hope the Parliament refuses to change the law. Germans have been far too complacent about the damage being done to their economy, and it is about time they face the consequences of their actions. If Wissig goes through with his threat the coalition will blow up quickly enough. 

Then a real debate about trade-offs can begin. 



TOPICS: Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; Germany; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: climatechange; driving; germany; nutzero
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1 posted on 04/15/2024 6:54:05 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

The war on freedom is being won by a fake crisis.


2 posted on 04/15/2024 6:55:11 PM PDT by bray (Science says a human life begins at conception.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Can’t wait for the Transportation Minister, his wife or relatives get caught driving on the weekends.


3 posted on 04/15/2024 6:55:58 PM PDT by bgill (.)
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To: SeekAndFind

No driving for Germans on the autobahn the weekends? Unmoglich! Unglaublich!


4 posted on 04/15/2024 6:56:48 PM PDT by Rummyfan (In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man.c)
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To: SeekAndFind

Damit die Regierung dumm sein kann, muss das Volk gezwungen werden, ebenfalls dumm zu sein.


5 posted on 04/15/2024 6:57:39 PM PDT by Worldtraveler once upon a time (Degrow government)
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To: SeekAndFind

People need to learn they can revolt against tyrants.

Tyrants need to realize they are mortals and be very concerned about that.


6 posted on 04/15/2024 7:13:37 PM PDT by Secret Agent Man (Gone Galt; not averse to Going Bronson.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Germany’s vaunted Energiewende is in chaos, major pushback from sectors of the population, return to ff power generation because the wind turbines aren’t cutting it and they stupidly closed their nuclear plants, cutting old growth forest to put in a wind farm, and the economy is tanking. People collecting wood to burn in their homes to keep warm. And still the fools in government press on.


7 posted on 04/15/2024 7:29:15 PM PDT by hinckley buzzard ( Resist the narrative. )
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To: SeekAndFind

No fun on the autobahn. At least not on weekends.


8 posted on 04/15/2024 7:45:17 PM PDT by plain talk
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To: SeekAndFind

I’m n Autobahn survivor. If implemented, I think this will end the Net Zero nonsense in Germany. Germans believe it’s their God-given right to drive at insane speeds any time.


9 posted on 04/15/2024 7:55:01 PM PDT by Bernard Marx
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To: SeekAndFind

East Germany was more free than this Germany will be.


10 posted on 04/15/2024 7:56:17 PM PDT by Trumpisourlastchance
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To: Rummyfan

UNMOEGLICH.....I know English doesn’t have any UMLAUTE...hmmm


11 posted on 04/15/2024 8:16:46 PM PDT by Saintgermain ( )
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To: Saintgermain

Apple has one. Just hold down the vowel carrying the umlaut and a menu of accents appears.


12 posted on 04/15/2024 8:20:11 PM PDT by HIDEK6 (God bless Donald Trump. A)
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To: SeekAndFind

Get a load of the freedom leftist idiots bring. SMH.


13 posted on 04/15/2024 8:22:28 PM PDT by vpintheak (Sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug. )
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To: SeekAndFind

All other German political groups need to form a political coalition against the Greens, and with that all “Netzero” agendas, else Germany will become a very big weakness to Western Europe - capable of much more than it will achieve.


14 posted on 04/15/2024 8:40:44 PM PDT by Wuli ( )
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To: bray

this is a test, sorry.


15 posted on 04/15/2024 8:57:34 PM PDT by Parttime Redneck
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To: vpintheak

Test, sorry


16 posted on 04/15/2024 8:57:34 PM PDT by Parttime Redneck
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To: SeekAndFind

This group of nuts gets fruitier and fruitier.


17 posted on 04/15/2024 9:37:17 PM PDT by DoughtyOne (I pledge allegiance to the flag of the USofA & to the Constitutional REPUBLIC for which it stands. )
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To: SeekAndFind

Rush: Red barchetta comes to mind.


18 posted on 04/15/2024 9:50:22 PM PDT by Texas resident (Biden=Obama=Jarrett=Soros)
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To: SeekAndFind

They should just put the wall back up, so nobody can go anywhere.


19 posted on 04/15/2024 9:55:30 PM PDT by mass55th (“Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.” ― John Wayne)
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To: SeekAndFind

Volker Wissing? Sounds like a urologist.


20 posted on 04/15/2024 10:04:44 PM PDT by rfp1234 (E Porcibus Unum )
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