“Climate protection is the protection of humanity – and at the end of the day nothing more than a huge job engine,” the co-chair of the Greens, Ricarda Lang, announced six weeks ago at the small party conference. But many Germans do not feel at all protected by the traffic light government in view of rising energy prices. And there is really no question that companies in this country are starting up the job engine thanks to green politics.
If climate protection were to produce as many jobs as the Greens have always proclaimed, Germany would not be doing so badly in terms of economic growth. Then it wouldn’t be – once again – the sick man in Europe. In fact, the climate policy of the last two decades has massively damaged Germany as a business location.
Ricarda Lang avoids an important question
No other country came up with the idea of phasing out nuclear power first and coal soon after. The Greens were and are still proud of that. After all, red-green initiated the end of nuclear power. And when it came to coal, the Greens, even when they were in the opposition, with the support of most of the media, ensured a climate of opinion in which there was no longer any room for economic arguments.
The Greens haven’t learned much from all of this, and certainly not Ricarda Lang. “I resist badmouthing the economy and our country,” she said in a summer interview with ARD. After all, despite the failure of Russian gas, they got through last winter well. The latter is correct. But the Greens avoided the question of why our economy is doing so much worse than that of other countries.
Lang, once a long-term law student without a degree, has not yet attracted attention with clever economic policy analyses. Now she wants to “strengthen the location”. But their current proposals – reducing bureaucracy, immigration law for skilled workers, law on collective bargaining loyalty – miss the core of the problem. Companies are increasingly relocating their production abroad because it is not primarily the annoying, excessive bureaucracy that is annoying, but because the energy prices are far too high.
Greens make life difficult for entrepreneurs
Speaking of bureaucracy: It was and is the Greens in particular who are making life difficult for companies, delaying or even preventing investments with ever new environmental regulations. The founding fathers of the Greens are still proud that the first environment minister from their ranks, Joschka Fischer, succeeded in preventing the Hoechst company’s genetic engineering activities in Hesse in the 1980s. The company took the consequences – and withdrew the genetic engineering from Germany.
Anyone who wants to curb bureaucracy in this country should protect companies from a collective bargaining loyalty law in the federal government. Nowhere is it written that companies belong to an employers’ association and therefore have to adhere to collective agreements. But anyone who wants to check applicants for public contracts to see whether they voluntarily pay collectively agreed wages or not creates new bureaucracy.
After all, in the summer interview, Lang supported the climate protection investment premium proposed by Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) for companies that invest in energy and resource efficiency. Strictly speaking, the state helps with subsidies to alleviate the burdens on companies caused by the high energy prices. Strict economic promotion probably looks different.
For Lang, the miracle medicine is the reduced industrial electricity price proposed by Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck (Greens). This should enable energy-intensive industries that are suffering from the high prices to obtain electricity more cheaply. It will be interesting to see how many companies suddenly declare themselves “energy-intensive”.
In any case, the FDP does not want to participate in the industrial electricity price and has most economists on their side. Because unlike Lang and the Greens, the opponents of a price subsidy for electricity are aware that temporary subsidies have the property of becoming permanent. In addition, a subsidized electricity price would boost demand and thus drive up the electricity price. All companies and households would then have to shoulder this and would definitely not stimulate the economy.
The “huge job motor” starts elsewhere
No, the protection of humanity propagated by the Greens has not made German citizens any happier. On top of that, contrary to all claims, the purely ideologically justified adherence to “100 percent renewable energy” has obviously not led to a significant number of new jobs.
It’s true that the energy transition is currently boosting the production of wind turbines and turbines. However, we mainly obtain the raw materials required for this from abroad. As the “world” reports, rotor blades come from Great Britain and Denmark. The energy company RWE is even supposed to get the foundations for an offshore wind farm in the North Sea from China. So Lang’s “huge job engine” has started – but obviously not really with us.
Somehow the Greens are to be envied: the miserable grades for their top politicians, the ever-declining poll numbers, the influx to the AfD encouraged by the anger about the traffic lights, that the green “protection of humanity” is viewed by many citizens as a threat and the lack of it is ecologically justified Economic miracle – they are not responsible for any of this themselves. The bad guys are always the others.
Surf tip: Wrong decisions and energy transition – unpopular measures to stop deindustrialization in Germany
Source: https://www.focus.de/politik/meinung/kommentar-gruenen-chefin-lang-schwadroniert-von-standort-staerken-und-ignoriert-die-fakten_id_200542923.html
