Garzweiler surface lignite mine. Photo by Martin Falbisoner.

In the 1987 film Wall Street the odious financier Gordon Gekko baldly proclaims, “Greed is good.” This New Years 2022, the German government has updated Gekko’s missive to “Global Warming is Good.”

As of January 2022 the Germans are completing their plan to shut down six low-carbon nuclear power plants. Facilities that are superbly run, indeed, are acknowledged as among the best in the world. Each of them could operate for decades more. They provide 8.4 gigawatts of power to the German grid and produce virtually no CO2. But they are being shut down for purely ideological reasons. “Nuclear power is bad, we don’t care about global warming” is the depth of the policy from the German Green Party and the German government.

And what will replace the power from these plants? High carbon emissions from German coal plants. These are particularly bad because many of them burn lignite or brown coal, which is a worse polluter than standard hard coal. And the Germans strip mine this lignite so voraciously that whole towns have been wiped off the map to get at it. 

Maybe the coal plants should be turned off too. According to the German government they will be, but not for another ten years or so!

So the plan is to shut down the non-carbon producing plants now but let the carbon monsters keep spewing their emissions for another decade. 

It’s Germany’s tip of the hat to Mr. Gekko.