Germany

see afd musk

see merkel

primary 320 on heartland naomi

neglected:

see afd alt rt

biggest economy in EU; defacto bank, so austerity on greece; merkel best on immigration, hurt by alt rt backlash

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an 2 25

With only a few weeks until Germany’s election, Elon Musk has unambiguously thrown his support behind the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. In a video address to a party rally last week, he appeared to urge Germans to “move on” from any “past guilt” related to the Holocaust.

It’s good to be proud of German culture, German values, and not to lose that in some sort of multiculturalism that dilutes everything.

Troublingly, the AfD is now firmly entrenched as Germany’s second-most popular political party, behind the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Like all parties in German elections, however, it cannot win an outright majority. It is also unlikely to be invited to join any ruling coalition that emerges from the February 23 election.

But the AfD’s anti-migrant, anti-government sloganeering has already seriously distorted Germany’s public debate and democratic culture, leaving many to ask whether it even needs to win elections to see its policies implemented.

This was evident following a dramatic week in Germany’s Bundestag.

First, in a radical break with Germany’s political norms, opposition leader Friedrich Merz deliberately drew on the votes of the AfD on Wednesday to ram a radical anti-asylum seeker motion through the parliament.

It was the first time in the history of the Bundestag that a parliamentary majority was reached with the help of the far right. Merz’s action was widely condemned as a “taboo-breaking” step towards legitimising the AfD.

Merz tried to take this a step further with a far-reaching bill to tighten immigration controls on Friday. Although the bill narrowly failed, all of the AfD voted with Merz. Twelve members of his own CDU party refused to back him.

Merz’s courting of the far right is widely seen as politically unnecessary, given his conservative CDU is already leading the national polls, making him the favourite to succeed the Social Democratic Party (SDP)‘s Olaf Scholz as chancellor.

This raises a couple crucial questions heading into the election. Is it insiders or outsiders that are playing the biggest role in bringing the far right into the mainstream? And just how big a role will the AfD play after the election?

The Musk effect

Musk’s embrace of the AfD should come as no surprise, given the integral part he played in Donald Trump’s election victory in the United States. In the German context, however, his behaviour and statements have taken on darker hues.

Germans know only too well what is at stake when democracy is eroded by those who abuse its freedoms to attack it. Had Musk’s now notorious Nazi salutes following Trump’s inauguration been performed in Berlin, for example, he might have faced up to three years in prison.

The catchphrase “never again” has underpinned German politics since the second world war. Yet, the response to Musk’s recent provocations was oddly muted in some sections of the German media.

The German tabloid Bild made embarrassing excuses for his Hitlerian salute, while others spoke vaguely of a “questionable gesture”.

With a few notable exceptions, it was left to activists to remind Germans of the severity of this gesture – projecting an image of Musk’s salute on a German Tesla plant, alongside the word “heil”.

Given the seriousness with which Germany patrols representations of its Nazi past, it was surprising just how few journalists were prepared to state without equivocation that “a Hitler salute is a Hitler salute is a Hitler salute”.

Merz’s embrace of the far right

Initially, there were some signs Germany’s main political leaders would decry Musk’s attempts to normalise far-right politics in the country.

When Musk called the AfD the “last spark of hope” in December, both Scholz and Merz quickly condemned his meddling.

Scholz has continued to label Musk’s blatant attempts to influence German politics as “unacceptable” and “disgusting”.

Merz claims to be keeping his distance from Musk. But it appears his strategy for winning the election is not far from what Musk is suggesting – mimicking AfD policies and collaborating with the party on anti-immigration votes.

In his most radical break with the centrism that characterised the CDU under former Chancellor Angela Merkel, Merz cracked the “firewall” against working with the far-right this week. Knowing just what it meant, he used the AfD’s support to pass the starkly worded nationalist border protection motion in the Bundestag.

The AfD publicly celebrated their good fortune, calling it a “historic day for Germany”.

Democratic party leaders, meanwhile, registered their shock and dismay. Merkel herself spoke out against Merz, saying it was “wrong” to “knowingly” work with the AfD.

Her intervention appears to have been critical to the immigration bill failing on Friday, with many of her former supporters in the CDU withholding their votes.

What AfD’s rise could mean

Given the two votes in the past week and Musk’s high-profile intervention, many in Germany now fear a CDU victory in the election could signal more collaboration with the AfD.

The Left Party has as an AfD puppet and demanded Musk be forbidden from entering Germany.

The Greens’ Robert Habeck, Germany’s vice chancellor, has said Merz’s nationalist coalition would “destroy Europe”. He has also warned Musk to keep his “hands off our democracy”, prompting Musk to label Habeck “a traitor to the German people”.

Musk is by no means the cause of the AfD’s popularity, but his embrace of the extremist party has given it a global profile and credibility in circles that might not have otherwise considered supporting it.

Musk has been a controversial figure in Germany ever since his Tesla “gigafactory” arrived in Brandenburg and was promptly accused of felling 500,000 trees and irreparably damaging precious groundwater reserves. Accusations of Tesla breaching German labour laws and even conducting surprise checks on sick workers have also not endeared him to progressive Germans.

As some commentators have suggested, it is probably not coincidental the AfD’s plans for the German economy would benefit Musk’s business interests. Economic self-interest alone seems insufficient, however, to explain why Musk has gravitated to the extreme right.

The same might be said of Merz. Electoral calculations alone cannot explain his risky courting of the far right. He has long been the frontrunner to win the next election. Cosying up to the AfD will only make it harder to form a coalition with either Scholz’s Social Democratic Party or the Greens....

german ne0-nazi go qanon 10 21

https://www.justsecurity.org/72339/qanon-is-a-nazi-cult-rebranded/

stanton

a  secret cabal is taking over the world. They kidnap children, slaughter, and eat them to gain power from their blood. They control high positions in government, banks, international finance, the news media, and the church.They want to disarm the police.They promote homosexuality and pedophilia. They plan to mongrelize the white race so it will lose its essential power.

Does this conspiracy theory sound familiar? It is. The same narrative has been repackaged by QAnon.

I have studied and worked to prevent genocide for forty years. Genocide Watch and the Alliance Against Genocide, the first international anti-genocide coalition, see such hate-filled conspiracy theories as early warning signs of deadly genocidal violence.

The plot, described above, was the conspiracy “revealed” in the most influential anti-Jewish pamphlet of all time. It was called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It was written by Russian anti-Jewish propagandists around 1902. It collected myths about a Jewish plot to take over the world that had existed for hundreds of years. Central to its mythology was the Blood Libel, which claimed that Jews kidnapped and slaughtered Christian children and drained their blood to mix in the dough for matzos consumed on Jewish holidays.

The Nazis published a children’s book of the Protocolsthat they required in the curriculum of every primary school in Germany. The Nazi newspaper, Der Stürmer(derived from the German word for “Storm”) spread the Blood Libel. Hitler’s Mein Kampf, his narcissistic autobiography and manifesto for his battle against the Jewish plot to rule the world, copied his conspiracy theories from the Protocols.

The Nazis worshiped Adolf Hitler as the Leader who would rescue the white race from this secret Jewish plot. Nazi “storm troopers” (“storm detachment” – Sturmabteilung) helped bring Hitler to power. Nazi Germany went on to conquer Europe and murder six million Jews and millions of Roma, Slavs, LGBTQ and other people.

America had its own dark side. Henry Ford echoed Nazi hatred of Jews and had 500,000 copies of the Protocols printed and distributed in the U.S. Father Coughlin preached the Protocolson national radio. The Ku Klux Klan combined its white supremacist racism with hatred of Jews.[REMIX MEMES // NOW?]

QAnon’s conspiracy theory is a rebranded version of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

QAnon purveys the fantasy that a secret Satan-worshiping cabal is taking over the world. Its members kidnap white children, keep them in secret prisons run by pedophiles, slaughter, and eat them to gain power from the essence in their blood. The cabal held the American Presidency under the Clintons and Obama, nearly took power again in 2016, and lurks in a “Deep State” financed by Jews, including George Soros, and in Jews who control the media. They want to disarm citizens and defund the police. They promote abortion, transgender rights, and homosexuality. They want open borders so brown illegal aliens can invade America and mongrelize the white race.

QAnon true believers think Donald Trump will rescue America from this Satanic cabal. At the time of “The Storm,” supporters of the cabal will be rounded up and executed.

The QAnon conspiracy theory has now spread to neo-Nazis in Germany, where over 200,000 German QAnon accounts infest the internet.  A faction known as “Reichsbürger,” or citizens of the Reich, orchestrated a brief storming of Parliament on Aug. 29.

Many people are perplexed at how any rational person could fall for such an irrational conspiracy theory. But modern social science shows that people in groups don’t always think rationally. They respond to fear and terror. They blame their misfortunes on scapegoats. They support narcissistic demagogues they hope will rescue them.

In the 1930’s, millions of Europeans were unemployed. Violent battles between Nazis and Communists raged in city streets. Democratic governments were powerless. Fascist dictators ruled Spain and Italy. Hitler took power in Germany and conquered Western Europe.  Stalin’s Communists conquered the East.  The Hitler-Stalin Pact sealed totalitarian rule over most of Europe.  It took World War II and the deaths of millions to defeat the Nazis’ genocidal tyranny, and another fifty years to free the gulags of the Soviet Union.

Today the American people suffer from a Plague.  Millions of Americans have lost their jobs. Angry mobs roam American cities and battle militarized police and heavily armed militias. The American government seems to be paralyzed.  Dictators rule Russia and China. Islamic fascists rule Saudi Arabia and the old Ottoman and Persian empires. The American President appeases Russia, scapegoats China for the pandemic, and looks the other way as Vladimir Putin and Mohammed bin Salman murder their opponents.

In July, the Texas Republican party unveiled a new slogan, “We Are the Storm.” Over a dozen Republicans running for Congress have signaled support for the QAnon movement. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican candidate from Georgia who has endorsed QAnon’s views, is likely to win a seat in Congress. The President praises her as a “future Republican star.” The Trump campaign welcomes QAnon supporters to his rallies. When asked about QAnon on national television, the President replied, “I understand that they like me very much, which I appreciate.”

Some leading Republicans have begun to speak out against QAnon. Rep. Liz Cheney, chairwoman of the House Republican Conference, has denounced QAnon as “dangerous lunacy that should have no place in American politics.”  Republican leaders such as Rep. Adam Kinzinger and Sen. Ben Sasse have also denounced QAnon. Former Gov. Jeb Bush has said of QAnon, “Nut jobs, racists, haters have no place in either Party.”

The world has seen QAnon before. It was called Nazism. In QAnon, Nazism wants a comeback.

icn

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/31122020/germany-angela-merkel-clean-energy-transition/

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/30122020/chemical-plant-nitrous-oxide-climate-warming-emissions/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/german-chancellor-says-trump-win-risks-transatlantic-collapse/

==

ew 920

https://www.ecowatch.com/germany-climate-charter-2647708814.html

==

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/new-report-shows-the-disturbing-love-for-trump-among-germanys-far-right-groups

...Bennhold points out that although Trump is “deeply unpopular among a broad majority of Germans,” the German far right is a major exception and admires his “unvarnished nationalism and tolerance of white supremacists, coupled with his skepticism of the pandemic’s dangers.” To make matters worse, the extremist QAnon cult has been gaining German converts.

“In Germany, as in the United States, Mr. Trump has become an inspiration to these fringe groups,” Bennhold observes. “Among them are not only long-established hard-right and neo-Nazi movements, but also, now followers of QAnon — the internet conspiracy theory popular among some of Mr. Trump’s supporters in the United States that hails him as a hero and liberator. Germany’s QAnon community, barely existent when the pandemic first hit in March, may now be the biggest outside the United States along with Britain, analysts who track its most popular online channels say.”

Matthias Quent, director of Germany’s Institute for Democracy and Civil Society (das Institut für Demokratie und Zivilgesellschaft in German) told the Times that Germany is seeing the “Trumpification of the German far right.”

“Trump has managed to attract different milieus, and that’s what we’re seeing here, too,” Quent observed. “We have everything from anti-vaxxers to neo-Nazis marching against corona measures. The common denominator is that it’s people who are quitting the mainstream, who are raging against the establishment.”

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2020/02/23/meet-anti-greta-young-youtuber-campaigning-against-climate-alarmism/

no lnx vid

Climate and Environment

The anti-Greta: A conservative think tank takes on the global phenomenon

How a group allied with the Trump administration is paying a German teen to question established climate science.

Naomi Seibt poses for a portrait near her home in Munster, Germany. Seibt, 19, uses YouTube to denounce “climate alarmism,” countering the arguments of young climate activist Greta Thunberg.

Naomi Seibt poses for a portrait near her home in Munster, Germany. Seibt, 19, uses YouTube to denounce “climate alarmism,” countering the arguments of young climate activist Greta Thunberg. (Sebastien Van Malleghem for TheWashington Post)

By

Desmond Butler and

Juliet Eilperin

Feb. 23, 2020

For climate skeptics, it’s hard to compete with the youthful appeal of global phenomenon Greta Thunberg. But one U.S. think tank hopes it’s found an answer: the anti-Greta.

Naomi Seibt is a 19-year-old German who, like Greta, is blond, eloquent and European. But Naomi denounces “climate alarmism,” calls climate consciousness “a despicably anti-human ideology,” and has even deployed Greta’s now famous “How dare you?” line to take on the mainstream German media.

“She’s a fantastic voice for free markets and for climate realism,” said James Taylor, director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center for Climate and Environmental Policy at the Heartland Institute, an influential libertarian think tank in suburban Chicago that has the ear of the Trump administration.

In December, Heartland headlined Naomi at its forum at the UN climate conference in Madrid, where Taylor described her as “the star” of the show. Last month, Heartland hired Naomi as the young face of its campaign to question the scientific consensus that human activity is causing dangerous global warming.

“Naomi Seibt vs. Greta Thunberg: whom should we trust?” asked Heartland in a digital video. Later this week, Naomi is set to make her American debut at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, a high-profile annual gathering just outside Washington of right-leaning activists.

If imitation is the highest form of flattery, Heartland’s tactics amount to an acknowledgment that Greta has touched a nerve, especially among teens and young adults. Since launching her protest two years ago outside the Swedish parliament at age 15, Greta has sparked youth protests across the globe and in 2019 was named Time magazine’s “Person of the Year,” the youngest to ever win the honor.

The teenager has called on the nations of the world to cut their total carbon output by at least half over the next decade, saying that if they don’t, “then there will be horrible consequences.”

“I want you to panic,” she told attendees at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last year. “I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act.”

Naomi, for her part, argues that these predictions of dire consequences are exaggerated. In a video posted on Heartland’s website, she gazes into the camera and says, “I don’t want you to panic. I want you to think.”

Graham Brookie directs the Digital Forensic Research Lab, an arm of the nonprofit Atlantic Council that works to identify and expose disinformation. While the campaign “is not outright disinformation,” Brookie said in an email, it “does bear resemblance to a model we use called the 4d’s — dismiss the message, distort the facts, distract the audience, and express dismay at the whole thing.”

Brookie added: “The tactic is intended to create an equivalency in spokespeople and message. In this case, it is a false equivalency between a message based in climate science that went viral organically and a message based in climate skepticism trying to catch up using paid promotion.”

Naomi said her political activism was sparked a few years ago when she began asking questions in school about Germany’s liberal immigration policies. She said the backlash from teachers and other students hardened her skepticism about mainstream German thinking. More recently, she said that watching young people joining weekly “Fridays For Future” protests inspired by Greta helped spur her opposition to climate change activism.

“I get chills when I see those young people, especially at Fridays for Future. They are screaming and shouting and they’re generally terrified,” she said in an interview. “They don’t want the world to end.”

Naomi said she does not dispute that greenhouse gas emissions are warming the planet, but she argues that many scientists and activists have overstated their impact.

“I don’t want to get people to stop believing in man-made climate change, not at all,” she said. “Are manmade CO2 emissions having that much impact on the climate? I think that’s ridiculous to believe.”

Naomi argues that other factors, such as solar energy, play a role — though the amount of solar energy reaching the Earth has actually declined since the 1970s, according to federal measurements. A slew of peer-reviewed reports, from scientific bodies in the U.S. and elsewhere, have concluded that greenhouse gas emissions are the dominant cause of warming since the mid-20th century, producing a range of devastating effects from massive marine die-offs in South America to severe wildfires in Australia and sinking ground in the Arctic.

In addition to climate change, Naomi echoes far-right skepticism about feminism and immigration. The German media have described her as sympathetic to the nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD), the biggest opposition party in parliament, whose leaders have spoken of fighting “an invasion of foreigners.” Naomi says she is not a member of AfD — she describes herself as libertarian — but acknowledges speaking at a recent AfD event.

Her path to Heartland began in November with a speech at EIKE, a Munich think tank whose vice president is a prominent AfD politician. By then, Naomi was already active on YouTube, producing videos on topics ranging from migration to feminism to climate change. In the audience was Heartland’s Taylor. He said he immediately recognized her potential and approached her about working with Heartland.

Founded in 1984 and funded largely by anonymous donors, Heartland has increasingly focused on climate change over the past decade. Its staff and researchers enjoy ready access to the Trump administration, and one of its senior fellows, William Happer, served as a senior director on the White House National Security Council between September 2018 and 2019.

An emeritus professor of physics at Princeton University, Happer has repeatedly argued that carbon emissions should be viewed as beneficial to society — not a pollutant that drives global warming. During his time with the Trump administration, he sought to enlist Heartland’s help in promoting his ideas and objected to a U.S. intelligence official’s finding that climate impacts could be “possibly catastrophic,” according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.

Why would an American think tank want to get involved in German politics? Because it worries that Berlin’s strong stance on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions could be contagious, according to a recent investigation aired on German television.

For two decades, Germany has been a leader in pressing other nations to curb carbon output and shift to renewable energy.Though it is falling short of its ambitious goals, Germany has pledged to cut its greenhouse gas emissions this year by 40 percent compared to 1990 — and by up to 95 percent by mid-century.

In December, during the Madrid climate conference, two undercover staffers from the nonprofit investigative newsroom CORRECTIV approached Taylor and claimed to work for a wealthy donor from the auto industry who wanted to give Heartland a half-million euros.Taylor took the bait, and followed up with a three-page proposal outlining a campaign to push back against German efforts to regulate emissions.

“These restrictive environmental programs are largely unnecessary,” says the document, a copy of which was obtained by The Post. “Worse, other nations — including the United States and European Union nations — are increasingly being influenced by unwise German policy.”

The proposal described Naomi as “the star” of a “Climate Reality Forum” organized by Heartland during the Madrid talks. With “over 100,000 people viewing her talk on climate realism,” the proposal said, Naomi was well-positioned to fight German climate policies.

“Funding for our Germany Environmental Issues project will enable Heartland to provide Naomi with the equipment and the sources she needs to present a series of effective videos calling attention to the negative impacts of overreaching environmental regulations,” the proposal says.

CORRECTIV aired its report on Heartland earlier this month on German TV. Taylor dismissed the report, saying, “Heck, I would have spoken with them if they told us who they were, and the answers would have been pretty much the same.”

The investigators filmed Naomi at a public event, posing as would-be donors. She struck back with her own video response. Invoking Greta, she said, “To the media, I have a few last words: How dare you?"

Greta Thunberg confronts world leaders at the U.N. climatre summit: 'How dare you?'

Despite echoes of Greta’s style, Naomi has objected to the comparison.

“The reason I don’t like the term anti-Greta is that it suggests I myself am an indoctrinated puppet, I guess, for the other side,” she says in one video. Asked if she meant that as a criticism of Greta, Naomi says: “That sounds kind of mean, actually.” She added: “I don’t want to shame her in any way.”

Taylor said the tendency to associate Naomi with Greta is “kind of natural” — and benefits Heartland’s message.

“To the extent that Naomi is pretty much the same, just with a different perspective, yeah, I think that it’s good that people will look at the two as similar in many ways,” he said.

Still, Naomi has a long climb to reach the level of global attention lavished on Greta. While Greta measures her social media following in the millions, Naomi counts slightly under 50,000 YouTube subscribers.

Through her spokespeople, Greta declined to comment.

==

==

https://correctiv.org/en/top-stories-en/2020/02/11/the-heartland-lobby/

ref

no lnx vid

A joint investigation from CORRECTIV and Frontal21 reveals how the American Heartland Institute is supporting climate change deniers in Germany with the goal of undermining climate protection measures. We went undercover to meet with the institute’s chief strategist. He told us how the network of climate change deniers works, how donations are disguised and how they intend to use a German YouTuber affiliated with the AfD to reach young people. In the end, he made us a concrete offer.

Shortly before the crucial conversation, shortly before Heartland’s chief strategist tells us how it’s all orchestrated, we sit together, some enjoying steaks. The German lobbyist and YouTuber, Heartland’s chief strategist from America, a British lord and Trump’s former security advisor are all present.

It’s the evening of Dec. 3, 2019. The location: Madrid, in the lobby of the Marriott Hotel. Gray marble flooring, expensive furniture high columns. A few kilometers away, heads of states and governments are negotiating at the World Climate Conference on how the global rise in temperature can be curbed.

We are tracking an international network of climate change deniers, ranging from conservative American billionaires to the German AfD. We want to understand their links and strategies. We tried to get the information by going through the normal channels, but we failed. There was only one way to get into the inner circle: We had to go undercover. That’s why we’re sitting at this table – and that’s why we’re nervous.

We keep checking the hidden cameras, one of them in Katarina’s pen, which she’s wearing on her conference blazer. We try to keep the cameras stable while acting naturally and making small talk.

The people around the table consider the negotiations at the Climate Conference nonsense – yet they have come to Madrid to meet in the shadows of the World Climate Conference with an international lobby of climate change deniers .

Their goal: to spread doubt about human responsibility for current global warming. Their opponents are anyone who recognize this responsibility: politicians, activists, journalists and climate researchers.

CORRECTIV reporters Jean and Katarina are not at the table. Instead, meet Mathias and Karina, two public relations consultants who work for a strategic communications agency in Berlin. We pretend to probe for potential donor opportunities for our clients in the automotive industry and energy sector, who want to anonymously support the work of climate deniers with money. Big money.

The New Right, particularly the AfD, put the fight against climate protection high on their agenda last year. They continue to fight against young activists like Greta Thunberg and present themselves as the defender of the diesel car. Former AfD leader Alexander Gauland recently proclaimed that climate change was a new key topic for his party: “Criticism of the so-called climate protection policy is the third major issue for the AfD after the Euro and Immigration”. It is a polarizing topic.

The AfD relies on an international network of climate change deniers. Here, in the hotel lobby, many of the key players have gathered. One of them is EIKE, aopaque German association that provides politicians with arguments against climate protection. We want to learn as much about them as possible, but we can’t be too pushy. We need to play our roles, discreetly and firmly. We can’t get busted.

At some point Mathias gets up and speaks to James Taylor, chief strategist and director of climate policy at the Heartland Institute, a libertarian thinktank based in the US. We suspect many of the threads that we’ve been following will convene at Taylor. If we want to learn how this network spreads doubts about human-induced climate change, we need to talk to him.

Mathias politely asks if he has a moment for a question.

Taylor understands: It’s time for business.

They get up and head to a seating area a few meters away. It’s not completely isolated, but sufficiently enough that nobody can eavesdrop. While walking, Mathias starts to explain:

“I have a client.”

Throughout the next half hour, Taylor shares the inner workings of his disinformation toolbox. He believes that Mathias, the PR agent sitting opposite him, wants to help his clients funnel cash into the intricate network of climate change deniers.

Taylor explains how he is able to raise awareness of topics in exchange for money, how people can make tax-deductible donations anonymously through a U.S. foundation, and how the Institute’s publications mimic the tone of the New York Times so obscure ideas are taken more seriously. He detailed how he intends to make a young YouTuber from Germany the star of climate denier, and how he works closely with German partners whose ideas are consistently cited by the AfD in the Bundestag.

Then a few weeks later, Taylor will send an offer in writing. It is something like a strategy document for a PR campaign in Germany: A campaign that the public will not recognize for what it really is, making it even more effective.

The goal: No more prohibitive climate laws. Diesel instead of electric cars, energy from coal instead of wind turbines, industry growth instead of environmental protection.

The document, a product of our joint investigation with ZDF Frontal21, gives exclusive insight into the million euro business of climate change deniers. It proves how disinformation is professionally scattered around society with the help of supposed experts, corrupt scientists, intentional spin and YouTube.

A Fight

Against Science

There is a worldwide consensus among climate researchers that climate change is largely caused by humans. Hundreds of climate researchers regularly evaluate the current state of scientific knowledge in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Their forecasts are conservative, yet dramatic.

Climate change deniers are disputing the results of the IPCC – supposedly based on the same methods. They call themselves “climate skeptics” or “climate realists” and conduct scientific studies to cast doubt on human-induced climate change. They write papers and magazines, organize conferences and dedicate time to lobbying. They are waging an information war to disseminate doubts about human-induced climate change.

If it were up to them, then their self-proclaimed “science“ would be confronting science. Thus, the question of whether human-induced global warming actually exists would be a question of opinion – with good arguments on both sides.

However, hardly any climate researchers or scientists agree with them. The facts speak clearly.

“The communication practiced by the Heartland Institute has nothing to do with science. These are definitely politically motivated statements,” said Kathleen Mar, a scientist at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies in Potsdam.

Throughout the US there is a traditional belief that competition and continued growth are good for the economy. It is a mindset fundamentally intertwined with the rejection of state intervention in such economic matters. Libertarian think tanks like the Heartland Institute — financed by the foundations of wealthy entrepreneurs like the Mercer family and, until a few years ago, the Koch brothers – are founded in this tradition. In Germany, this current of opinion is relatively small. But it is getting louder when it comes to the topic of human-induced climate change.

The AfD is using the frustration over climate policy to gain momentum. It’s a good topic for populist politics, given that policies meant to halt climate change often involve placing restrictions that threaten personal comfort: less driving, less garbage production, less meat consumption, less travel. The AfD is increasingly using the arguments of climate change deniers at the EIKE association by inviting representatives to technical conferences and Bundestag committees. But the spin doctors are somewhere else.

There Is No Other Choice

But To Work Undercover

We wanted to understand the extent of the climate change denial network, exactly how it’s funded, and how it’s members think and work. So we started our investigation by looking into climate change deniers in Germany. We made the decision to go undercover because we believed it was the only way to get authentic insight.CORRECTIV is well known among the German EIKE association, as their publications regularly fail our fact checks– and they frequently publish furious counter-articles. In 2018, a journalist at CORRECTIV was banned from participating in one of EIKE’s conferences when she tried to obtain press credentials. Also that year, the head of EIKE violently threatened a reporter from the ARD magazine, Monitor. We carefully weighed our decision. In the end it was clear to us that we would not get very far following the typical path.

So we built our undercover identities: Karina and Mathias, two PR agents who, on behalf of a client from the automobile industry, wanted to learn how to send money to climate change deniers in Germany –discretely, without attracting attention.

We create a fictional agency called “Faidros”, printed business cards to reinforce our fake identities, got a second pair of cellphones with new numbers and set up a website. We pretended to be experienced consultants who increase public awareness of climate-skeptical arguments on behalf of industrial clients.

Our undercover journey started in Munich. To be able to participate in an EIKE conference as private individuals, we paid 220 euros each to the association. We used PayPal because it allows you to change your name without being immediately exposed by online searches. Then we received an email confirming that the money had arrived and the venue would soon be announced. A cumbersome way to organize a conference.

An Invitation

to Madrid

Munich, late November. The tables are organized in long rows. A desk and a large screen are in front. Roughly 250 people walk through the entrance hall of the closed Munich-Riem Airfield, the so-called Coat of Arms Hall. They are mostly older men, some with doctorates or professorships, many of them already retired. We stand among them, equipped with business cards, wearing conference clothing and hidden cameras. We are significantly younger than the average attendee. Karina is a woman under 30. We stand out.

EIKE’s annual conference had almost been canceled. After protests, the contract between the original hotel and EIKE was terminated. But shortly before the planned start, we received an email with the new venue.

EIKE stands for “Europäisches Institut für Klima und Energie” (European Institute for Climate and Energy). Many channels of self-proclaimed “climate realists” meet at this association in Germany, which states on its website that human-induced climate change is a “hoax affecting the general public”.

Like Heartland, the non-profit organization claims to be a scientific think tank and advertises its online studies as “peer reviewed”.

“They take scientific terms and misuse them for political purposes. They are not interested in scientific work at all,” said Potsdam sustainability researcher Mar about the self-appointed climate experts. “I would immediately ask myself who these scientists are, what their qualifications are.”

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Holger Thuss, the chairman of EIKE who threatened the Monitor’s reporter last year, kicked off the Munich conference. He set the framework for the conference by sayingclimate protests have assumed “terrorist proportions”.

Then we saw James Taylor, the chief strategist of the Heartland Institute, for the first time. He went on stage in good spirits to give a lecture. He looks like a company manager, slightly stocky, black hair pulled back, ironed shirt, a smile on his lips. A smart man with a meaty American accent, and an engaging speaker. Standing on the stage, he congratulates everyone for making it to the conference and says that the original hotel’s cancellation is encroachment on freedom of expression.

Taylor is a successful lobbyist and spin doctor who says of himself that he is more libertarian than conservative. He considers hostility to be praise for his work. Taylor also appears frequently on American television, and for some time he wrote a column in Forbes magazine.

For the next two days, the group of almost exclusively white men present scientific-looking graphs, diagrams and tables. There are those who consider themselves to be on the side of science, presenting their methods, explaining, arguing and evaluating series of experiments.

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And then there are the conspiracy theorists, the esotericists and the ultra-religious. A man sitting next to us in the audience says it is contempt of God to judge whether something God created is good or bad. He was talking about CO2.

EIKE was founded in 2007 and has close ties to the AfD.Michael Limburg, the organization’s vice-president, is employed by the office of Karsten Hilse, a member of the German Parliament, the Bundestag. He confirmed this to CORRECTIV. Limburg is an AfD member himself, and he participated in drafting of the AfD’s party program on climate policy as well as ran for the Bundestag in 2017 on the Brandenburg state list.

[graf]

The Transatlantic Network Over the past 20 years, the Heartland Institute has received funds from various companies and wealthy families

in the United States for the purpose of denying the climate change. It has also helped EIKE to spread its ideas in Germany.

Police officer Karsten Hilse sits on the environmental committee of the Bundestag on behalf of the AfD. He gave a speech in the Bundestag in March 2018. At the time, while being laughed at by members of other government parties, he declared war on the “false doctrine of human-induced climate change”. A year later, he distributed leaflets that contained a quiz to demonstrators of “Fridays for Future”, who he intended to embarrass.

Hans-Joachim Lüdecke, EIKE’s press officer, wrote an expert statement for the environmental committee at the invitation of the AfD. Now, members of EIKE’s entourage are writing for a new wave of right publications such as “Freie Welt” (Free World). The blog is run by the right-wing association “Zivile Koalition” (Civil Coalition), which is led by the deputy federal spokeswoman for the AfD, Beatrix von Storch.

We asked members of EIKE what kind of relationship the association has with the Heartland Institute. Michael Limburg, EIKE’s Vice-President, answered in writing: “We maintain a good relationship based on similar interests.”

After the conference, we invited Heartland lobbyist Taylor to dinner. We talked about his Institute, which is based in Chicago with just 40 employees.

While making small talk, Taylor explains that he knows how to convince people: “I think I present the actual logic, but people aren’t motivated by an actual logic. So you have to go and argue emotions.”

Things are going smoothly and we indicate our reason for meeting with him without revealing too much. We are successful, too: At the end of the evening we receive an invitation. In 10 days, climate change deniers will meet once again on the sidelines of the World Climate Conference in Madrid. The organizer of the counter-conference is the Heartland Institute.

“Our event will take place on December 3,” said Taylor. “We have eight or nine speakers and a five-hour program.”

The next stop for these consultants from “Faidros”: Madrid.

The Denial Lobbyists

Among Themselves

The “Climate Reality Forum” takes place on the first floor of the Marriott Hotel in Madrid, a small room with suspended ceilings. There are about 20 people, half of whom will give lectures today. Water in tetra packs with an environmental seal are on the tables.

The conference is significantly smaller than the one in Munich. It is shorter, without journalists, and the Heartland Institute does the filming and online streaming itself with two large cameras. The World Climate Conference was originally scheduled to take place in Chile, but a month earlier the Chilean President cancelled it due to protests against social inequality that took place throughout the capital city, Santiago de Chile. Climate change deniers also had to reschedule, rebook flights and hastily organize a new conference.

We met some acquaintances from Munich and greeted each other amicably. “It’s nice to see you again,” said one of the few women in the room. She is a YouTube influencer, 19 years old and blonde. Later on we would learn that she is supposed to become the star of the scene.

One of the speakers is William Happer, professor emeritus of physics and former security advisor to US President Donald Trump. In 2015, a team from Greenpeace, disguised as an oil and gas company, asked Happer to write a scientific paper to prove the benefits of high CO2 emissions for plants. Happer, then a professor at Princeton University, agreed – for an hourly rate of $250.

“I don’t know how far this shrillness will get,” said Happer, visibly aged, in Madrid. “First global warming, then climate change and now climate crisis and climate emergency – what else?”

German climate change deniers are also present. Wolfgang Müller, Secretary General of EIKE, praised the Heartland Institute before his lecture: “Heartland is a paragon in the fight against this climate madness.”

Christopher Monckton, an English lord residing in the Scottish Highlands, speaks later. Monckton advised neoliberal British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s – and does the same today for the British right-wing populist party UKIP. His suggestions include asking to quarantine people who are HIV positive. Monckton is a dazzling character, always polite and eloquent, who happens to also represents some of the crudest beliefs.On stage he pretends to give a speech to country representatives at the World Climate Conference. The delegates, he says, promote a cult of death through their ignorance. “Everything on which this conference in Madrid is based is fundamentally wrong.”

A few hours later, when the conference is over, Lord Monckton sits contentedly at the grand piano in the hotel lobby, playing a few songs. The other speakers sit a few meters away, ordering drinks and snacks to their table.

We sit in between, asking questions, laughing, answering without getting too personal. Secretly, we check the undercover cameras we are carrying with us.

The YouTuber talks about studying economics in Münster: She stopped because the program was too socialist for her. She also says that she is going to work for the Heartland Institute soon.

The YouTuber did not respond to a request for comment after the conversation.

Later at the bar, Karina met Debbie, who introduces herself as a cattle rancher from the States. After a while Debbie pulls a pen out of her pocket and points to the hidden camera at the end. She says she intends to secretly film people at the official UN Climate Conference. “You have no idea about what people will tell you if they don’t know who you are.” The pen is the same model, even the same color as the pen tucked into Karina’s blazer pocket.

The Moment of Truth

Finally, Mathias asks Taylor for a private meeting. This is the moment we have been working for over the past few weeks. Taylor sits relaxed in the armchair, his white shirt unbuttoned at the top, with a glass of red wine in his hand.

Business talk.

From the start, Mathias directs the conversation towards the possibility of donating to groups that deny climate change anonymously. His client, he says, is interested in a long-term investment — but requires that under no circumstances can he be linked to the transactions.

If the donor does not want to be named, there are some groups in the US, Taylor says. “One is Donors Trust.” You can tell them which group the money should go to – Donors Trust will then channel the funds.

Donors Trust’s activities are not illegal, but they do bypass the otherwise quite extensive transparency regulations in the US. Both Donors Trust and Donors Capital Trust are tax-exempt foundations that redistribute corporate donations to conservative and market-liberal think tanks. US tax law requires them to disclose to whom the funds are given. However, they are allowed to keep the name of the donor undisclosed on the grounds of anonymous. In practice, this means oil and coal companies can support anti-climate campaigns via Donors Trust or Donors Capital without having to reveal their financial support.

In the past, big players in the fossil industry like Exxon Mobil and Koch brothers were among Heartland’s major donors — but they withdrew public support a few years ago. We checked this by looking at tax returns, which are largely public in the US.

Now, Donors Trust is now one of the association’s biggest donors. The American magazine “Mother Jones” described Donors Trust in 2013 as a “Black Box ATM”. You could say that the foundation lends its name to the actual donors. Taylor confirmed this during the conversation.

Donors Trust is now directing between two thirds and three quarters of its budget to Heartland to support its climate-skeptical positions, says Taylor. He sells this as his personal doing.

Soon after, Taylor starts to speak about the German YouTuber sitting at the table a few meters away.

“We’re looking to bring her on board,” says Taylor, pointing in her direction.

Mathias asks: “The young lady?”

“To do some videos for us. Presenting to young people.”

The young influencer is to start forming new groups. She should be a dropout from mainstream society, with whom as many as young people as possible should identify. According to a Facebook post by the Rhineland-Palatinate Association of “Junge Alternative” (Young Alternative), she is a member of the AfD’s youth organization. The AfD and its members regularly distribute her videos. Taylor says the fight against climate protection measures needs a better image, to move away from old white men and instead showcase a younger generation. The YouTuber is going be the new face of the movement. She is Taylor’s media strategy for the masses.

Taylor also knows how to reach those who are not on YouTube but do vote in parliament. For a long time, he published a monthly brochure that the Heartland Institute sent to politicians.

He says it was specifically written “We do it as if it were for The New York Times or any other leftist newspaper.”

He explains that the rule for their editors is to write it as if they were news stories. They cannot write anything that looks like it is opinion. “You present our angle on it, but you do it by who you decide to quote”, he says”.

Taylor’s team uses supposedly journalistic standards to raise doubts about human-induced climate change. What he is not interested is rigor and balance.

And he succeeds at that, or at least that’s what he says. There are people who will realise it is Heartland how is writing these articles, he explains, but others feel it is something they could use, and this is how they get to them.

Taylor repeatedly emphasizes the good work done by EIKE. He says it is amazing what they can do in a year with such a small budget, and claims that the organization has 200,000 euros available. They help each other, he says, by participating in each other’s conferences. Heartland also gave EIKE a small sum of money for the Munich conference in late November. When asked about EIKE’s budget, the organization’s representatives said that their “donation volume” per year is “significantly below the stated amount”.

But whenever Mathias steers the conversation toward our client’s possible investment, Taylor brings his own institution into play — even though Mathias emphasizes several times that the client wants to donate to EIKE because he is mostly concerned about the European market.

“Then he tries to convince me to give my client’s money directly to Heartland, instead of EIKE“, Mathias recalls. Taylor politely adds that EIKE could, of course, use it much better in Europe. Then, a few seconds later, he talks about the benefits of Heartland establishing and disseminating specific information at the request of the client in exchange for money.

A half hour has passed. Taylor and Mathias promise to stay in touch before returning to the other conference goers. Mathias writes down the conversation so he can jog his memory later.

This is far more than we had hoped for. Taylor has given us a deep insight into the business of climate change deniers. We now know about some of the strategies they use to disseminate disinformation.

But we want to have it in writing.

The Phone Call

A few weeks later, we call Taylor for a follow-up. How does Taylor intend to get into business in Germany? Would it even be possible to purchase content as a donor?

We mention our client from the auto industry and bring up the current diesel bans in Germany and the growing popularity of electric cars, which are hurting his business.

Again, Taylor advertises the 19-year-old YouTuber as a promising social media strategy in Germany.

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Mathias asks: Can his client decide what she says in her videos?

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Taylor hesitates, but doesn’t say no. Of course, she would have to agree with and feel comfortable with what is going to be said. And he’s pretty sure that everyone involved wants the same thing.

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Mathias: “Perhaps we could agree on certain buzzwords. Disseminate certain information.”

Taylor: “Absolutely. Key points, keywords, the way to present something.”

Content in exchange for money. It’s like a deal in the advertising industry. The only difference is that the content is political.

Taylor thinks he’s in business with Mathias. Shortly after our phone call, we text Taylor to send us a written offer to convince our client.

He agrees.

Two Hours Later:

The Offer

The document arrives via email, just two hours after our conversation. It’s three pages long, with the title: “Funding Proposal: Germany Environmental Issues”.

In the proposal, Taylor summarizes what we discussed over the phone – and goes into even more detail. He outlines a plan for a possible campaign against climate protection policies in Germany. It’s an immoral offer formulated in the advertising language of a pitch. Recognize the problem, present the solution.

He describes German climate policy as “unwise”.Conventional power plants could be closed and replaced by expensive, unreliable wind turbine systems. Diesel vehicles could be banned. “These restrictive environmental programs are largely unnecessary”, says the proposal. Even worse: Other countries would be negatively impacted by Germany, which is often viewed as a pioneer.

Taylor suggests that the Heartland Institute instead draws attention to projects that “raise German living standards through common-sense environmental stewardship.”

For climate change deniers, this means one thing: As few environmental protection measures as possible.

Taylor uses the same language utilized by Heartland and EIKE, the same language pushed by climate change deniers on social media and also by the AfD in the Bundestag: Climate alarmists are thoughtless and hysterical people who jeopardize economic growth. So, in reaction, they stand up: the climate realists, the only sensible people in the debate.

The central pillar of the German campaign is to be the AfD-affiliated YouTube influencer praised by Taylor in Madrid, “(…) she is eager to direct her viewers to topics on environmental overreach that harm German households,” writes Taylor. The funding will allow Heartland to equip her in such a way that she can produce a series of effective videos.

For the first time, Taylor is also involving staff from his institute. Their titles and degrees are intended to ensure credibility beyond YouTube.

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Peter Ferrara, a graduate in economics from Harvard University and former advisor to US Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush Senior, is to join the team. Ferrara can “(…) research and present important information on the severe economic costs of German environmental restrictions”.

Taylor also has a plan to counter the argument that diesel car emissions are harmful to health.

To tackle this particular issue, he plans to get a physician and a biostatistician in on the plan. The two scientific professionals, Dunn and Milloy,“are two of the science experts Heartland would – if properly funded – like to utilize calling attention to the minimal health impacts of diesel engines, coal power plants, and other conventional energy sources”

Their degrees and job descriptions will give off a supposed level of expertise.

The strategy is similar to the one used by Heartland US. Without mentioning EIKE explicitly, Taylor writes that “Heartland would proactively explore opportunities to galvanize our friends and allies to advocate in conjunction with our Germany Environmental Issues project.“

Taylor proposes two US trusts as payment vehicles, with confidentiality and legality guaranteed: Donors Trust and National Philanthropic Trust. “Donors fund an account with the organization and then direct the organization how it would like to distribute the funds” In exchange: One percent of the donated amount will be debited quarterly.

It is an offer designed to be convincing. And it actually is convincing, because it shows how strategically and discreetly the climate change denier network functions. It establishes topics, tailors communication strategies and offers entire campaigns while granting the donors and masterminds complete anonymity.

After the conversation, we offered the Heartland Institute the possibility to make a statement. However, they did not response to our comment.

The Influencers

Other people in the climate change denier network are, however, in the public eye: young influencers on YouTube as well as older men who present themselves as professionals at conferences, in interviews and in pseudo-scientific discussions.

The network of climate change deniers extends across the Atlantic and grows increasingly closer to the authorities. They use professional communication strategies, funded by anonymous donations.

Heartland functions as a kind of model for its German counterpart, EIKE – even if the latter has only a fraction of the budget at its disposal. Still, under German law, EIKE does not have to disclose its finances. The association itself reports that it has “almost only small and very small donors”.

In the US, Heartland’s ideas have reached the President. In Germany, EIKE benefits from the fact that the AfD now uses climate policy for itself, framing it in the context of the euro and immigration.

Heartland had already extended its hand into Europe before we went undercover. Our reporting confirms that for years, Heartland and EIKE jointly sponsored conferences, even though an EIKE spokesman said he was not aware of this when we reached out for comment. The German association is an ally to Heartland: they share the same goals and attend each other’s conferences. And on Heartland’s website, the chairman of EIKE, Holger Thuss, is listed as an “expert”. We also learned that that Heartland will run campaigns for German foundations and corporations in exchange for donations.

Climate change denial is spreading not just in the US, but also in Germany. Members of the movement do not outright deny climate change itself, instead preferring to question whether it is the fault of man’s fault, and if it even poses a serious risk. This frames their ideas as diverse, and presents the possibility that everyone else is simply hysterical. They paint their challengers as hotheads who want to introduce socialism instead of protecting individual freedoms.

Thus, the wording of the “false doctrine” of climate change, of the hysterical and erring “climate alarmists” – conceived and disseminated by institutions such as Heartland and EIKE – ends up on social media and in the Bundestag. Look no further than AfD member Karsten Hilse, who spoke of “the false doctrine of human-induced climate change” – the same language used by the YouTube influencer. Numerous members of EIKE and speakers at Heartland conferences use the same rhetoric.

A few weeks after the Madrid conference, a video appeared on Heartland’s YouTube channel. It shows fragments from the speech given by the 19-year-old influencer at the conference in Madrid, intermittent with statements by Greta Thunberg. The video ends with a question: Who do you believe more?

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/12032020/heartland-instutute-climate-change-skeptic

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/germans-think-trump-is-bigger-threat-to-world-peace-than-dictators-as-he-becomes-a-global-laughing-stock/

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German Officials Declare “Nazi Emergency” in Dresden

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"panic in the boardrooms" of europe (developing critieria for green invest? de-valuing FF portfolio;

EU 14% inflection pt b/c of 20% mandate, synergy, cost fell, china came in ... now feed-in tariffs no longer even needed [old shrink vs new grow;] electricity replaced gaslight when only 3%

vol mandate; fed green bank but must have 50% target (pension will invest in grn banks/bonds]; ike hwy to finish 2nd ind revo (coupled w/ war atomic evac route] // grren grid.

$41 trillion in worker pension,(biggest pool of $)  need scale places to put in

green energy (wind) now cheaper than nat'l gas, thus massive stranded assets

local power grid resilient b/c it's local, not dependent on larger system.

3rd industrial revo non-hier; must be glob-LOCAL; feed-in tariffs let local ppl go to bank and get loan b/c knew could repay

merkel how do future when plugged into coal and nuke?

china big green grid investment 12 wks after mtg w/ Jeremy Rifkin wrote The Green New Deal: Why the Fossil Fuel Civilization Will Collapse by 2028, and the Bold Economic Plan to Save Life on Earthaudio interview 9/19.

rifkin

vw commmit 80b$ to ev, last gas 2026, 2028 22 mil ev, 1/4 of total (but note germany now 40% solar N WIND, target 100% 2040?

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35,000 Protestors in Berlin Call for Agricultural Revolution ew 119

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Germany launches world’s first hydrogen-powered train

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Journalist Dies in Clash Over Dirty Coal in Germany ew

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bubba mcd tripsolar

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https://www.propublica.org/article/robert-rundo-denis-nikitin-hooligans-europe-hate-group

no lnx

Robert Rundo, a leader of the violent white supremacist group known as the Rise Above Movement, pounded the man, hitting him with a series of thudding punches — left, right, left — that sent his foe staggering backwards.

But this wasn’t a street brawl captured on video: It was a boxing match — complete with 12-ounce gloves, a referee, and scantily attired ring girls — and it was promoted by a white supremacist fight club in Ukraine. The event was held inside a bunker-like building in Kiev, with fighters competing inside a cage of the sort familiar to mixed martial arts fans in America.

With the skinhead subculture fading, neo-Nazi organizers in Europe have turned to promoting boxing and mixed martial arts bouts with the aim of pulling in new recruits.

About This Partnership

This story is part of an ongoing collaboration between ProPublica and Frontline that includes documentaries scheduled to begin on PBS in August 2018.

Rundo’s fight in Ukraine occurred this spring, as he and two other RAM members toured Europe. In Kiev, Rundo and other RAM members hung out with Denis Nikitin, a burly Russian soccer hooligan who has become one of the most successful fight promoters in ultra-nationalist circles.

On social media the group posted video and photos from the event, which was held in May. Based in Southern California, RAM’s members were involved in political violence last year in Charlottesville and other American cities. The group says it wants to revive the “warrior spirit” of the white male, and its videos of fight-training, weight-lifting and street melees have proven popular on social media.

Before traveling to Ukraine, Rundo and another RAM member, Robert Smithson, visited theGerman town of Ostritz to compete in a mixed martial tournament at the Shield and Sword festival, a white power convergence held on Hitler’s birthday. Attracting roughly 1,000 fascists from across the continent, the gathering was arranged by Germany’s National Democratic Party, the closest thing the country has to an openly Nazi political party. The mixed martial arts tournament held that weekend, Kampf der Nibelungen, is the largest white power combat sports event in Europe, according to researchers monitoring European extremists.

Observers of the far-right in Europe are concerned about the infiltration of neo-Nazis into the boxing and MMA scenes — and they’re particularly worried about Nikitin.

“He is seen as dangerous by those who monitor the far right” due to his “outright neo-Nazi ideology — preaching racial war and the need to ‘reconquer’ the ‘living space’ of the white man in Europe,” said Pavel Klymenko, a Ukrainian researcher with the FARE Network who tracks soccer hooligans.

According to Klymenko, Nikitin has taught knife-fighting techniques and hand-to-hand combat skills to extremist groups in Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Italy, Germany and the United Kingdom. In recent years he has launched a successful streetwear company called White Rex — one T-shirt design features an iron cross, an emblem used by the Nazis, and the words “YOU MUST MURDER,” while another depicts the logo of the Spanish fascist party, or Falange.

Nikitin has repackaged older white supremacist ideas for a new generation, rebranding them as “nationalist concepts,” said Karim Zidan, an independent journalist who writes on the intersection of sports and politics. “Nikitin is a massive figure in both MMA and football hooliganism. In a way, he’s weaponized both sports for his cause,” Zidan told ProPublica and Frontline.

At the Southern Poverty Law Center, Keegan Hankes, an analyst who follows RAM, said the group’s trip to Europe “signals that they aren’t just hobbyists. It’s gives them credibility” within the U.S. white power movement.

Social media postings show Rundo acquired several new tattoos on RAM’s European excursion, including an “8” on each shoulder (88 is the white supremacist code for “Heil Hitler”) and the White Rex logo (a Viking warrior) on his right shin with the word “fanatic” emblazoned below.

RAM has also begun importing White Rex T-shirts and selling its own garments as a means of funding the group. The Southern California organization operates an online store, Right Brand Clothing, which carries items from Nikitin’s clothing line as well as other brands like Svastone.

Nikitin refused to comment when contacted by ProPublica and Frontline, saying via email, “There will be no contact or information exchange with you. Just sit quietly and see us rise.”

trump wants russia back, bullies cda, tariffs

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/10062018/g7-summit-climate-change-communique-trump-allies-estranged-germany-france-canada

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https://www.alternet.org/donald-trumps-trade-war-masks-darker-agenda-aiding-far-right-europe

djt moron but

there are others with a more sophisticated agenda, however, which may be even more concerning since they seem to see Trump as a useful tool. One of those is former Trump campaign chief and senior adviser Steve Bannon, who has been out of the limelight these last few months. The last we heard Trump was calling him "sloppy Steve," but apparently Bannon hasn't lost his affection for the big guy in spite of that. Frankly, Trump may not have lost his for Bannon either -- as long as someone is willing to kiss his ring he'll invite them back into his circle before long.

Fareed Zakaria interviewed Bannon in Rome recently where he was enthusiastically cheering on the chaos of the recent Italian elections, implying that a new day of economic populism was surging across Europe like a Panzer division on methamphetamines. He was full of the usual contradictions and muddled philosophical compost, but he essentially made the case that right-wing nationalism is the wave of the future, while trying unconvincingly to claim that race, ethnicity and religion have nothing whatsoever to do with it. He sputtered his way through an unconvincing explanation about how Trump's massive tax cuts were the basis of Trump's economic populism:

Europe is about a year ahead of the United States. . . . You see populist-nationalist movements with reform [here]. . . . You could begin to see the elements of Bernie Sanders coupled with the Trump movement that really becomes a dominant political force in American politics.

It's hard to say what's going to happen in America but it's hard to imagine a successful marriage between Sanders' left-wing populism and Trump's right-wing nativism. The xenophobia and racism is a real sticking point.

In Europe there is certainly a rising right-wing movement that Bannon and his allies are closely observing, presumably for tips on how to use Trump to make it happen in America. For instance, Trump's newly confirmed ambassador to Germany, a former right-wing hit man and odious Twitter troll named Richard Grenell, has made one of the worst first impressions of any diplomat in history with this tweet:

There was widespread indignation from across the German political spectrum but Grenell refused to back down, basically telling the German people he was only following orders:

Mind you, he was the only U.S. ambassador to do such a thing. Over the weekend Grenell went even further, giving an interview to Breitbart News in which he said he was “excited” by the rise of far-right parties in Europe and was prepared “to empower other conservatives throughout Europe, other leaders.” Breitbart reported:

Unafraid to name names, Mr Grenell expressed a deep respect and admiration for the young Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz saying, “Look, I think Sebastian Kurz is a rockstar. I’m a big fan.”

Chancellor Kurz, leader of the conservative Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP), formed a coalition with the populist Freedom Party (FPÖ) earlier this year, and has been one of the strongest advocates for securing the European Union’s external border.

Not long after the formation of the coalition, Kurz stood up to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, rejecting the controversial European Union migrant quota system. He was also been [sic] a leading conservative on the topic of counter-Islamisation while Foreign Minister in the previous coalition government, advocating and helping to pass a ban on the full-face Islamic veil.

The German government was not amused. According to Robert Mackay at The Intercept, it "demanded a formal explanation from the United States on Monday of what, exactly, the new U.S. ambassador in Berlin, Richard Grenell, meant when he promised to use his office to help far-right nationalists inspired by Donald Trump take power across Europe." Grenell tweeted that he did not plan to endorse anyone but stood by his claim that Europe, like America, is “experiencing an awakening from the silent majority — those who reject the elites and their bubble. Led by Trump.”

No doubt America's European allies were thrilled to hear that, especially with the neo-fascist rumblings coming from Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and now Slovenian right-wing nationalist Janez Janša.

The trade war is bad enough. White nationalist Trumpers stomping around Europe shooting off their mouths and giving support to far right politicians is making it worse.

In a detail nearly no one will notice, Trump just named a right-wing academic and filmmaker named Michael Pack, who is allied with Bannon, to lead the broadcasting arm of the U.S. government, a $685 million agency that oversees prominent outlets such as the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. What could possibly go wrong there?

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https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/they-can-just-have-cartoon-new-book-reveals-obamas-real-reaction-trump-election

mconn evil mfer confirmed:

Rhodes also writes about Obama's farewells to world leaders. German Chancellor Angela Merkel reportedly told Obama that Trump's victory made her feel a greater obligation to run for a fourth term which she ended up winning. When she left Obama for the last time, she "had a single tear in her eye."

Obama also apparently felt that, despite the criticism he has since received, there was little more he could have done to counter Russian interference in the 2016 election. Calling out the meddling efforts even more than he did would have resulted in Trump saying Obama was rigging the election and Putin working harder to undermine the vote, the president feared.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell pointedly refused to issue a bipartisan statement condemning Russia' actions when Obama wanted to take action, limiting his options. Rhodes called this refusal "staggeringly partisan and unpatriotic," but he says Obama was unsurprised...

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After five months of uncertainty, the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) and Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) are going to give their uneasy marriage another try.

As I described on Lawfare in September, no one party received enough votes to form a government, so Merkel’s CDU/CSU, having received the highest proportion of votes, sought to form a coalition government. After nearly five months, on Feb. 7, the the CDU/CSU and the SDP decided to renew the “grand coalition” government (or GroKo), but the SPD insisted on holding a party-wide vote to approve the coalition before any government was established. On Mar. 4, SPD voters approved the coalition government, with 66 percent voting in favor—a result predicted by a Feb. 16 opinion poll, which recorded that two-thirds of SPD supporters would support the coalition. But despite these numbers, GroKo’s approval was not a foregone conclusion. Jusos, the youth wing of the SPD, campaigned against the coalition and recruited 20,000 new anti-GroKo members in anticipation of the vote.

The new government could be established and sworn in as early as Mar. 14. Once the GroKo is in place, the resulting cabinet will be split between the two parties. Particularly important to the future of the European financial picture, the finance ministry will be run by the SPD’s Olaf Scholz, changing hands from the CDU for the first time since 2009. The CDU will keep the defense ministry under Ursula von der Leyen, but the SPD will take the foreign ministry—although the matter of who precisely will serve as foreign minister remains unsettled. The coalition blueprint includes some notable foreign relations plans: in light of criticism of Merkel’s handling of the numbers of refugees admitted to Germany, refugee intake will be limited to an upper limit of 220,000 people per year. Separately, the government will cooperate with France on defense integration and potential cooperation on financial policy; the coalition plan advocates for European Monetary Fund reforms and higher contributions to the EU’s budget. With Emmanuel Macron’s proposals for an EU financial and defense overhaul and consolidation, it is important that Germany has a functioning government to negotiate the terms of any reform of European federalism.

The formation of the coalition government marks the beginning of Angela Merkel’s fourth term as chancellor (she has been operating as acting chancellor since the election in September) and another four years of relative political predictability for Germany. But it doesn’t mean that the country in the clear. The GroKo, and its fraught formation, may be part and parcel of the burgeoning problems that were of concern during the election itself.

First, this saga—Germany’s longest post-election period without a settled government—has both highlighted and exacerbated the perception of a “weakening” Germany. By some accounts, the five months of uncertainty and negotiation have made Germany look like less of a stable European leader than it normally projects. And the formation of the coalition does not erase the fact that the election results in September were the worst results for the CDU/CSU and the SPD since the Federal Republic was established in 1949. Moreover, the GroKo is Merkel’s second attempt to form a government; in November, she failed to build a coalition with the Free Democrats and the Greens before beginning talks with the SPD. The SPD had initially announced that it would take on the role of opposition party to any CDU/CSU coalition government, so its acquiescence seems like more of a compromise of necessity than a planned victory. The vote demonstrated that the party has not rejected the coalition despite at least one very public instance of hypocrisy: SPD party leader Martin Schulz, who had said that he would not serve a Merkel cabinet, later warmed to the idea of serving as foreign minister in the new GroKo but eventually said he would not serve under pressure from his party.

Despite Schulz’s personal embarrassment, the SPD’s control over the foreign ministry and the finance ministry is a coup that will cede significant power to the left-of-center party as the European financial picture continues to face uncertain times. Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, the fact that the SPD made the GroKo contingent on a party vote signalled an acknowledgment that the potential partnership with the CDU/CSU was unpopular and complicated enough to require broad validation before the party could sign on.

And not to be forgotten, the coalition government makes the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) the strongest opposition party in the Bundestag.Not only does that position validate the party’s radical right wing and anti-immigration positions, but it puts the AfD in the position to act as the leading foil to the coalition.

From an international security perspective, it will be important to keep an eye on the GroKo’s stance toward Russia. While the CDU/CSU and SPD coalition government is a new iteration of an old coalition, the SPD will remain in charge of the foreign ministry, and Germany’s current foreign minister, Sigmar Gabriel (SPD), has publicly articulated his desire for rapprochement with Russia. He has been open in his support of economic ties to Russia, especially the proposed Nord Stream 2 pipeline—which would be another offshore natural gas pipeline connecting Russia and Germany. But Gabriel is not the front-runner for foreign minister in the GroKo. On top of that, recent tensions between Gabriel and his party—he told one media source that he believes his work is underappreciated by the SPD—may marginalize his views on a Russian detente. As I mentioned in September, the SPD has historically been more open to dialogue with Russia. But Merkel was instrumental in implementing EU sanctions against Russia—and with EU equities as they are, there’s a good chance that Germany will remain the backbone of European opposition to Russia.

Moreover, newfound German stability is unfolding on the heels of a suspected Russian cyberattack against the German Federal Office for Information Security, reported on Feb. 28. One German news source and cybersecurity group, Palo Alto Networks, reported that the Foreign Ministry had also been targeted by the group known as FancyBear (remember them?) in this attack. Der Spiegel and Deutsch Presse-Agentur attributed the attack to “Snake,” another group with Russian affiliations. The Kremlin has denied the allegations—but, then again, it always does. Setting the truth of the attribution aside, the episode is likely another building block in the growing tension between Western democracies and Russia over the latter’s technological interference in the democratic infrastructure of the former.

All told, a stable Germany is a good thing for the EU—and for the United States too. With Brexit negotiations and an emboldened Russia, the German government sits (to some extent alongside France) at the heart of that portion of the EU that is still functioning. The September election and subsequent delay in government formation suggests that Germany is not as stable or unified as it was even a year ago, and the fracturing of German politics does not bode well for further EU consolidation or for some of the more economically and politically vulnerable entities in the union. But the GroKo buys time for the leading democratic forces in Europe’s leading democracy to regroup—keeping the extremes at the margins in the meantime.

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https://www.democracynow.org/2018/1/23/headlines/germany_halts_weapons_sales_to_saudi_arabia_over_war_in_yemen

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LA RFP 12/17 wells fargo bad actor

pot $ dangerous?! cf gray davis boom and bust swings; john change will go for gov?

eco update 30 min in? ND non-partisan league, grain mill

North dakota bank held up well in Gt Recession? written into stat const, full faith and credit of state

germany green energy

https://kpfa.org/episode/economic-update-december-22-2017/

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http://www.ecowatch.com/coal-mine-hydroelectric-2321724350.html

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Germany Bans Meat at Official Functions to 'Set a Good Example for Climate Protection'

Eating less meat is essential to curbing climate change, which is why ... :{READ MORE:(style="-webkit-padding-start:0px"):}:

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http://www.alternet.org/environment/germany-wants-ban-fossil-fuel-powered-cars

...The Bundesrat, the upper house of Germany’s parliament, passed a resolution on Monday that calls for the elimination of vehicles powered by gasoline and diesel engines by 2030.

The resolution is nonbinding and needs the approval of the European Union, as it would also apply to vehicles from other EU nations. But it marks a shift in thinking for a country whose automobile industry is one of the largest in the world and the driver of the German economy.

“If the Paris agreement to curb climate-warming emissions is to be taken seriously, no new combustion engine cars should be allowed on roads after 2030,” Green Party lawmaker Oliver Krischer told news magazine Der Spiegel.

Germany has promised to reduce carbon dioxide emissions 95 percent by 2050. Despite large subsidies available for electric car buyers in EU states, sales of zero-emission vehicles have been slow. About half of all vehicles on Europe’s roads are diesel fueled....

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8/15

http://ecowatch.com/2015/08/17/say-no-to-big-coal/

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6/15

http://www.globalpossibilities.org/climate-politics-and-the-disruption-of-conservative-orthodoxy/

UFFINGTON POST, BY CARL POPE, SIERRA CLUB

The Republican reaction to Pope Francis’s climate encyclical, juxtaposed to the Democratic congressional rebellion against President Obama on trade, suggest that climate and energy are powerfully disrupting the grid-locked orthodoxy which has dominated American politics for the last decade.

The Tea Party-Koch Brothers wing of conservatism, (and the corporate wing of the Democratic Party), are clearly on the defensive.

The most significant “tell” is the flailingresponses of reactionaries to the looming threat posed to climate denial by Francis’s Laudato Si.

Jeb Bush’s latest flip-flop — first asserting in New Hampshire that he wouldn’t take his economics from his church, and then backpedaling in Iowa — was merely the most recent spasm of right-wing discomfort.

Earlier Rick Santorum’s sputteringly strove to explain — on Fox news — why he was scolding the Pope, a non-scientist, to remain silent on climate, while Santorum himself, as a politician, had both right and duty to his own climate pulpit.

The assault began when the Heartland Institute tried to bully the Pope — unsuccessfully — into withholding or water down the encyclical by arguing that some of the voices urging climate action — UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Columbia economist Jeffrey Sachs — opposed the Catholic Church on abortion. Indeed the overriding, major chord of the conservative assault on the encyclical is that Christian values only govern sex and family — economics, geopolitics, and climate should be left to secular, capitalist ideology.

Francis’s allies within the Church understand what this means better than outsiders. Archbishop Pedro Barreto Jimeno of Huancayo, Peruwarned that Francis“will have many critics, because they want to continue setting rules of the game in which money takes first place. We have to be prepared for those kinds of attacks.”

The Pope took his critics into account —making it clear within the textof Laudato Si that his approach to the environment is firmly rooted in traditional Catholic views of the uniqueness of human life and the need for a non-market based common good — drawing a line clarifying that he is not preaching a “new age” form of Catholicism.

(Reactionaries’ bewilderment that the Catholic Church’s option for the poor includes protecting them from greenhouse enhanced droughts, heat waves and rising oceans echoes their glib assumption that a presumed “social conservatism” would fence in American Hispanic voters, overriding their communitarian economic and environmental attitudes, and allowing Republicans to retain Hispanic voter loyalty while still promising to “self-deport” 11 million of their relatives.)

It is more a gale than a fresh breeze when the most ground-breaking Pope since John XXIII links poverty and climate, in a way which leaves the far-right sputtering — (just as it was a powerful symbol when a daughter of the Church, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, broke with President Obama on tradeciting climate concerns.)

Indeed, something fundamental is shifting this summer in political and cultural attitudes around climate.

Compare this year to the summer that preceded Copenhagen, the dominant 2009 news on climate was the grinding failure of the US Senate and the Obama Administration on climate and energy legislation. And the rest of the news was equally dispiriting — no progress, little ambition, cynicism about the prospects.

Six months out from Paris, a new dynamism is palpable. Hawaii justcommitted itself to 100 percent clean energy by 2045.The California Senatepledged the world’s seventh largest economy to a 50 percent emission cut by 2030 – including petroleum. The first quarter witnessed a stunning 76 percent growth in US residential solar installations over the previous year. Georgia joined the growing list of states that permit homeowners to generate their own rooftop solar electrons, while giant (and historically conservative) Georgia Power proclaims that it will promote and grow clean power just as aggressively as it previously dominated coal and nuclear.

Globally renewable energy was more than half of added capacity. Chinese emissions declined in the first quarterby an amount equal to the total carbon pollution of Great Britain, Mexico became the first major emerging market to pledge solid emission reductions, and Ethiopia offered to reduce its projected 2030 carbon pollution by 64 percent — if climate finance is made available. Alberta tossed out its pro-tar sands Conservative Premier and elected the first left-leaning government in its history.

Led by “Climate Chancellor” Angela Merkel, :{the world’s major industrial nations called for a binding climate treaty at the “upper end” of the ambition levels:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}::{ required by climate science,:(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}: and agreed that the era of fossil fuels must end this century. The Saudi Oil Minister signaled that his kingdom fears the era of oil by end by mid-century. And 199 nations meeting in Germany reached a breakthrough agreement on how to curb deforestationand lay the groundwork for an eventual reduction – through forest and grassland sequestration – in atmospheric carbon concentrations.

The price of oil remained mired below $70; OPEC agreed again to keep pumping and fighting for market share; and the share value of coal companies, already down by three-quarters, just kept slumping. (Purchasers two months ago of Peabody junk bonds have already lost 18 percent of their money.)

Sensing a change in the landscape, Europe’s six biggest oil and gas companies abandoned their fossil fuel common front with coal, and threw the black rock and its shareholders under the bus. Re-branding themselves as “almost gas” companies (shades of John Brown and BP’s “Beyond Petroleum” phase) Shell, BP, Total, Eni and British gas called on the international community to levy a global carbon taxthat would drive electricity generators from coal to gas.

This is exciting news for climate. But there are signs that this climate and energy revolution is also breaking apart the frozen tectonic plates which have locked American conservatism into an orthodoxy of inaction not just on global warming, but on almost every problem challenging our society.

No longer do all conservatives join Koch, Heartland, and Republican Presidential candidates in dismissing conservative engagement with climate solutions. Not only are both libertarians (the new Niskanen Center)and business conservatives (American Enterprise Institute)alike debating the need for conservative solutions like carbon taxes, but the first conservative climate progress mega-donor, Jay Faison has surfaced, pledging to spend $175 million on encouraging his movement to come to grips with atmospheric reality.

Over the past decade — ever since the nascent Tea Party partly seized control of Republican politics, shutting down George W. Bush’s forgotten campaign promise to clean up carbon pollution, rebuffing his immigration reforms, and eventually thrusting his “compassionate conservatism” into the fiery abyss of conservative heresy — a new Republican orthodoxy locked down the primary fault zone in American politics, where new realities and social change forces collide with conservative political, cultural, and economic habits.

The Supreme Court’s “money is speech and corporations are people” jurisprudence weakened the ability of business elites to buffer Tea Party pressures on elected Republicans. Even such routine public business as the reauthorization of infrastructure spending or the Export-Import Banks ground to a halt. Nothing, it seemed, was possible.

Tectonic drift isn’t dangerous when the plates glide and rub against each other, releasing their energy gradually. But when they freeze up, the “thrust fault” that results accumulates energy until it cracks, relieving stored up stress in a few seconds, and creating new landscapes and mountain ranges. And when three moving “oceanic” plates (demography, globalization, and climate) converge on the stationary continental plate of American conservatism, the eventual outcome, while unpredictable, is certain to be spectacular.

The crack-up has begun — and surprisingly it seems that climate, not Hispanic voting blocks or global competition, may be the disruption that shatters conservative orthodoxy

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Germans Line Up Against Fracking, Spurred by Fears of a U.S.-Style Boom

BERLIN—In Germany debate is raging over whether to allow fracking, and America's example is serving as the cautionary tale for both supporters and critics.

Read more.

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http://ecowatch.us7.list-manage.com/track/click?u=214ab5fbb3f6015d74ffab4ec&id=8e06397080&e=c2e8fdabfa  solar

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gore RS 6/18/14

...

Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

There is surprising – even shocking – good news: Our ability to convert sunshine into usable energy has become much cheaper far more rapidly than anyone had predicted. The cost of electricity from photovoltaic, or PV, solar cells is now equal to or less than the cost of electricity from other sources powering electric grids in at least 79 countries. By 2020 – as the scale of deployments grows and the costs continue to decline – more than 80 percent of the world's people will live in regions where solar will be competitive with electricity from other sources.

No matter what the large carbon polluters and their ideological allies say or do, in markets there is a huge difference between "more expensive than" and "cheaper than." Not unlike the difference between 32 degrees and 33 degrees Fahrenheit. It's not just a difference of a degree, it's the difference between a market that's frozen up and one that's liquid. As a result, all over the world, the executives of companies selling electricity generated from the burning of carbon-based fuels (primarily from coal) are openly discussing their growing fears of a "utility death spiral."

Germany,Europe's industrial powerhouse, where renewable subsidies have been especially high, now generates 37 percent of its daily electricity from wind and solar; and analysts predict that number will rise to 50 percent by 2020. (Indeed, one day this year, renewables created 74 percent of the nation's electricity!)

Scorched Earth: How Climate Change Is Spreading Drought Throughout the Globe

What's more, Germany's two largest coal-burning utilities have lost 56 percent of their value over the past four years, and the losses have continued into the first half of 2014. And it's not just Germany. Last year, the top 20 utilities throughout Europe reported losing half of their value since 2008. According to the Swiss bank UBS, nine out of 10 European coal and gas plants are now losing money.

In the United States, where up to 49 percent of the new generating capacity came from renewables in 2012, 166 coal-fired electricity-generating plants have either closed or have announced they are closing in the past four and a half years. An additional 183 proposed new coal plants have been canceled since 2005.

To be sure, some of these closings have been due to the substitution of gas for coal, but the transition under way in both the American and global energy markets is far more significant than one fossil fuel replacing another. We are witnessing the beginning of a massive shift to a new energy-distribution model – from the "central station" utility-grid model that goes back to the 1880s to a "widely distributed" model with rooftop solar cells, on-site and grid battery storage, and microgrids.

The principal trade group representing U.S. electric utilities, the Edison Electric Institute, has identified distributed generation as the "largest near-term threat to the utility model." Last May, Barclays downgraded the entirety of the U.S. electric sector, warning that "a confluence of declining cost trends in distributed solar­photovoltaic-power generation and residential­scale power storage is likely to disrupt the status quo" and make utility investments less attractive.

See the 10 Dumbest Things Said

:{

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-turning-point-new-hope-for-the-climate-20140618#ixzz350KCIUmP 

Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook...}:

Germany gets 3/4 of its energy from renewables! 5/14. See Germany

thninkprogress

On Sunday, Germany’s impressive streak of renewable energy milestones continued, with renewable energy generation surging to a record portion — nearly 75 percent — of the country’s overall electricity demand by midday. With wind and solar in particular filling such a huge portion of the country’s power demand, electricity prices actually dipped into the negative for much of the afternoon, according to Renewables International.

In the first quarter of 2014, renewable energy sources met arecord 27 percent of the country’s electricity demand, thanks to additional installations and favorable weather. “Renewable generators produced 40.2 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity, up from 35.7 billion kilowatt-hours in the same period last year,” Bloomberg reported. Much of the country’s renewable energy growth has occurred in the past decade and, as a point of comparison, Germany’s 27 percent is double the approximately 13 percent of U.S. electricity supply powered by renewables as of November 2013.

Observers say the records will keep coming as Germany continues its Energiewende, or energy transformation, which aims to power the country almost entirely on renewable sources by 2050.

“Once again, it was demonstrated that a modern electricity system such as the German one can already accept large penetration rates of variable but predictable renewable energy sources such as wind and solar PV power,” said Bernard Chabot, a renewable energy consultant based in France, via email. “In fact there are no technical and economic obstacles to go first to 20 percent of annual electricity demand penetration rate from a combination of those two technologies, then 50 percent and beyond by combining them with other renewables and energy efficiency measures and some progressive storage solutions at a modest level.”

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shutting down nukes:

a strange contrast: Over the past decade, Germany has become a world leader in creating electricity from renewable sources, like the sun and the wind, that don’t spew climate-warming greenhouse gases. The government has committed to some of the world’s most aggressive climate goals: By 2050, it wants to slash its greenhouse emissions by between 80 and 95 percent compared with 1990 levels while getting at least 80 percent of its power from renewable sources. Renewables already provide nearly a quarter of the country’s electricity, double the U.S. rate and among the highest in Europe.

Energy policymakers in the United States are keeping a close eye on Germany, because curbing coal use is a central tenet of President Obama’s climate action plan. This year the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is pushing a pair of proposed regulations to limit carbon emissions from new and existing coal plants. Obama’s coal strategy is more head-on than the German model, which looks more like death by a thousand solar panels, and which is proving to be a very slow death indeed.

Despite its progress with renewable energy,Germany is still dependent on coal for nearly half its power—a larger proportion than even the United States is. And there’s little hope for that to drop anytime soon. In 2013, coal’s share of the country’s energy mix rose 1.5 percent over the previous year, nearly three times the growth in renewables....bloomberg 2014