He had a pretty unfortunate card dealt to him with the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Germanys dependence on Russian gas, especially in its industry.
I think the move away from nuclear energy in Germany was a mistake, but one which was decided on way before he came into office. Doubling down on nuclear would have cost a fortune (old reactors weren't maintained well enough to run for longer due to phase out decision after Fukushima & not enough new engineers in Germany). He was in a lose lose situation, I think he did pretty well overall, but was blamed for old decisions (Altmaiers abandonment of German solar industry, heating reform by CDU+SPD) and had bad handling of reports on him in the news.
He is on of the few politicians who follow his beliefs about what needs to be done, less so about what is popular. He also made sure Germany had enough gas. He had nothing todo with the pushback of nuclear energy (that was the CDU/Merkel). Nuclear energy is not cheap.
All politicians follow their beliefs. They just become more problematic the more interventionist they are. And Habeck was extremely interventionist. On top of that he used his position of power to go against private citizens under the excuse of free speech. He filed 805 criminal complaints, in some situations just for being called an idiot online.
Nuclear energy pushback in DE was a result of the fear caused by Chernobyl in 1986. Refreshed by the Fukushima incident. The CDU was not brave enough to go against that fear. And Habeck just continued that approach even in difficult moments for the German industry. Nuclear is not cheap, but it’s stable, predictable, does not generate CO2 and if well planned, also provides self-reliance for the country using it.
>All politicians follow their beliefs
No they don't they, a lot them will do whatever is needed (change their minds at will) to stay in power.
If you ever listened to Habeck, there are simple rational arguments why it did not makes sense to continue running the nuclear plants for longer. There was anyway no easy affordable way to just let them run for many years (contracts).
At the end nuclear was only contributing 1.5% to the overall energy production.
And just to be explicit, because I see people lie about this very often: this decision was made by the conservative party (CDU) while the Greens were not part of the government.
Incorrect. The decision was made by the SPD (leftist)+ Green coalition government in 2000, and was a condition by the Greens to enter the coalition (and then was adopted by an SPD chancellor who later took a job with Gazprom).
When the conservatives got back into power a decade later, they started to roll back the nuclear exit. But during the panic after the Japan tsunami this policy became unpopular so the conservatives reversed course and stuck with the disastrous Green policy.
But make no mistake, if the Greens did not make it into government, the Atomausstieg would never have happened.
Subjects to read for details:
* “Atomkonsens” 2000 and
“Novellierung des Atomgesetzes” 2002, Kabinett Schröder,
* “Laufzeitverlängerung deutscher Kernkraftwerke”, 2010, Kabinett Merkel II
* “13. Gesetz zur Änderung des Atomgesetzes“ 2011 post-Fukushima, taking back the 2010 extensions
It was agreed upon under completely different circumstances, namely a stable supply of Russian gas. I cannot believe that people do not get this into their head.
And after a decade of planning the shutdown, stopping contracts, deferring unneeded maintenance, ... you can't just say "actually, never mind, keep them running". The plant operators themselves said it wasn't really possible or only at extreme costs.
And the politicians loudly screaming about it are mostly from parties that are responsible for the "we'll have russian gas, it's fine" policy, and didn't use the decade+ of being in power beforehand to do anything about extending nuclear, but rather often also strongly insisted the shutdown had to be done. Right until the point they weren't in power anymore and they started to blame the Greens for the consequences of their own policies.
That none of the energy companies went "oh, yes, totally, give us a few billions of the special budgets for dealing with the consequences of the war and we'll happily keep them running" should tell you something about the viability of that.
That post is some dangerous half-knowledge and simplifications stated as fact.
Yes, Habeck is an interventionist, but his biggest interventions were a direct response to... you know, the war in Ukraine. What did anyone expect? When Putin turned off the gas, was Habeck supposed to just let the free market sort it out while factories shut down and people froze? Those price caps and the Uniper buyout weren't pre-planned. I'm sure he would have preferred to have never been in that situation in the first place.
And the reactor shutdown argument never gets old, does it? The decision to ditch nuclear power was made in 2011 by Angela Merkel. Habeck was just the guy who had to turn off the lights at a party that ended a decade earlier. Remember all those predictions of nationwide blackouts in April 23? Funny how the lights are still on.
The claim about coal usage was true for about five minutes in the winter of 22. It was a temporary panic move to save gas, and since then, coal consumption has dropped to a historic low. It's also funny how renewables—the actual backbone of our energy system, which were on the rise long before Habeck, are framed as a "gamble." The upsides and downsides are very well understood by now. There was never any gambling involved but I guess let's just frame a strategic, well understood, decade long move to renewables as a snap decision gamble.
Look, no one's saying his term was perfect. And yes, the man has charisma, which is apparently a bad thing now?
But calling his term a "disaster" while ignoring the reality of the crises he faced—coming out of COVID, the energy war, is just strange.
> "That post is some dangerous half-knowledge and simplifications stated as fact."
That's... putting it mildly. To call a spade a spade: The post you replied to consists of nothing more than anti-Green crankery. The kind of tedious, intellectually dishonest click-bait crap you see disseminated in the Springer-Presse, e. g. ze WELT-Plus-Commentariat, or media of even less repute.
There was no strong push way from nuclear energy, just a continuation of Germany's general nuclear energy path.
Studies also showed that this had no negative effect on electricity prices.
Core voters of the green party are mostly highly educated people[1].
There are not many more women than men in their voters[2].
I hear the first time about public employmemt, and haven't seen any statistics about that.
Regarding energy he certainly didn't gamble on energy.
He gave everything for a transition away from gas and coal and invested in renewable storage systems (short and long term storage) backed by scientific institutions continuously evaluating, planning and simulating the transition of Germanys energy system including related sectors until 2045/2050 [3].
Thanks to storage a renewable energy system can be reliable while highly dynamic.
He reduced the time needed to create wind turbines massively as well.
He also prevented a complete crash of the economy and infrastructure caused by the dependency on gas of Putin which greens have not been a fan of, because of ecological issues as well as the danger of Putin which only the greens recognized before Putin started the war on Ukraine.
Rising debt to invest into the future and infrastructure was then plan of the greens, but they got blocked (and medially attacked for it - claiming it was not needed) by the current government which then realized this plan (at least from a high level perspective) with the help of the greens in the opposition, because a simple majority isn't enough for increasing debt.
I am not aware of active acceleration of a decline of the industry beyond the decline which was already in the system for years and the situation we were in due to COVID and the war.
> dependency on gas of Putin which greens have not been a fan of, because of ecological issues as well as the danger of Putin which only the greens recognized before Putin started the war on Ukraine.
Thats a lot of historical revision if you blame a dude who was minister for 3.5 years about decisions made 20-30 years ago. Same for your last paragraph. Nothing even close to that happened in the years he governed. Maybe you should start showing recipes because it looks like your grievances are personal in nature and everything but factual.
It's fine to have those grievances if you can articulate them factual. Hell they are even fine if you can't. The only thing I am saying is that you don't need to make stuff up just to give those grievances weight or convey others to your sentiment...
