I almost forgot: the first goal of the "renewable energy" fantasy was never about climate change.
It was always about replacing the best option to fight climate change (as well as other forms of immediately deadly air pollution), nuclear energy.
How I lost track of this I don't know, since I have been pronuclear after I fully understood Chernobyl, and certainly in my early tenure here and elsewhere in the blogging world, almost all of the wind and solar advocates were far more interested in attacking nuclear energy than fossil fuels, and in many cases still are.
Recently a correspondent here kindly directed my attention to a series of podcasts of which I was unaware, that brought home this point, one a discussion of the fool Amory Lovins, another a talk with a young German pronuclear activist who has an excellent command of the history of nuclear power in Germany, as well as the history of the so called "green" anti-nuclear establishment.
They are here:
A Hard Landing for Soft Energy ft. Mark Nelson
...and...
The Grim Fairy Tale of German Electricity feat. Noah Jakob Rettberg
To be sure, they were far kinder to Lovins than I would be. The point was that he elevated his (irrational) fear of all things nuclear over every other risk, including, but not limited to, climate change.
They referred to Lovins as the "Intellectual Godfather" of Energiewende, I disagree with the use of the word "intellectual" in this context, having read as much of Lovins writing as I could stomach. (To me, his writing has the feel of a ten grade term paper, to which - were I a high school teacher, I might grade with a B- or a C+, the minus for the lack of references, the + for stringing together a specious argument in a compelling way, albeit based on false premises.)
As for Energiewende, the most gripping part of Herr Rettberg's account is the depth and level of propaganda in Germany by his teachers, members of an establishment that was at one time the radical opposition when it came to all things nuclear. I was, of course, familiar with this kind of propaganda, having been an anti-nuke in my youth, and it was, in fact, the comparison between the propaganda I'd absorbed and the reality of Chernobyl that led me to change my mind and become pro-nuclear.
The point is only this: In the minds of these people nuclear energy is more dangerous than climate change. There is something almost Trumpian in the scale of this delusion, but in the age of the celebration of the lie, there's just no talking to these kinds of people.
As the events in Germany this week are showing, where coal is providing the largest share of German electricity, and where the carbon intensity of electricity has hovered between 475 g CO2/kwh and 525 g CO2/kwh, climate change takes a back burner to anti-nuke terror, no matter how many facts one presents on the respective relative risks.
Facts define reality, but many people push reality away, although it can only be pushed only so far before the price of the consequences must be paid.
The German carbon intensity this week may be compared to levels 90 g g CO2/kwh and 115 g CO2/kwh for nuclear heavy France this week, Germany's neighboring company. This is higher than the generally given figures for nuclear energy - the Electricity Map from where these numbers come - gives 11 g CO2/kwh for nuclear based on an IPCC report's calculation, other literature gives slightly higher or slightly lower carbon intensity for nuclear. The Electricity Map however, charges carbon intensity based on the carbon intensity of nations from which a nation imports. With 4 large reactors in France down until the end of March to replace some feed pipes that didn't pass routine inspection, France has occasionally been importing electricity from dirty Germany, as well as Spain, Belgium and the UK, soiling its electricity. Also, in France, there was some willingness to drink the Wind Energy Kool-Aid, hence France is burning gas for electricity this week.
I consider this a fact, and am not really open to "alternative facts:" If one fears nuclear above all else, one will be working to assure that the climate catastrophe now underway will accelerate without limit. If one, by contrast, thinks that climate change is more of a risk than the potential for radiation release, one will insist on nuclear energy.
Climate change will not be addressed without nuclear energy. This is a fact. Facts matter.
The problem that many people have with nuclear energy is simply this that they have been trained by our culture - the world culture actually - to believe that so called "renewable energy" is a positive good, even though this positive good existed and was practiced by humanity and was largely abandoned by humanity in the 19th and early 20th century for a reason. (Some people never abandoned it; we generally consider the bulk of these people "impoverished." ) Therefore, the cultural definition of so called "renewable energy" as a positive good is questionable. (Many popular things prove to be pernicious.) If we have a healthy nuclear infrastructure, we don't have any use, except in somewhat exotic situations, for so called "renewable energy." We wouldn't need it. We could let our rivers run free, avoid access roads in our wilderness, stop tearing the Earth to pieces with mines and laying concrete on the valuable benthic ecosystem.
It is a good thing to remind oneself of the origins of ideologies, less one forget how to address them.
Herr Rettburg finds himself almost laughing about how his country sees itself as a beacon to the world, this while burning coal and dumping the waste into the planetary atmosphere. He calls his country isolated. He lives in the area where the Grimms' wrote their fairy tales, and many of the landmarks of those fairy tales are familiar with him. The Grimms' of course, did not write The Emperor's New Clothes, but had they, they might have anticipated Energiewende.