Germany Is Dropping Its Global Warming Goals After Climate-Shaming Trump

Germany’s utopian dream of transforming itself into the world’s green powerhouse is collapsing as its political and media establishment is mugged by reality. The country’s climate obsession has turned into one of the country’s biggest political and economic handicaps, making Germany almost ungovernable.

Most remarkable: Germany’s failed and increasingly unpopular climate policies are at the core of the crisis. It also signals the collapse of Germany’s decade-old climate consensus.–Benny Peiser, Mugged By Reality, Germany’s Climate Consensus Is Collapsing,  20 November 2017

Germany’s would-be coalition partners have agreed to drop an ambitious plan to lower carbon dioxide emissions by 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2020, two sources told Reuters on Monday — a potential embarrassment for Chancellor Angela Merkel. —Reuters, 8 January 2018

A 19th-century village cathedral in western Germany was razed to the ground on Tuesday to make way for the expansion of coal mega mines. —Huffington Post, 10 January 2018

TV bosses were forced to issue a correction after BBC2’s Russia with Simon Reeve gave incorrect information about the numbers of deer in Northern Russia. BBC claims that reindeer populations were in “steep decline” because of climate change have been proven to be false, it was confirmed yesterday. As the complaint by Lord Lawson pointed out, a 2016 study showed 17 out of 19 subpopulations of Eurasian deer were either increasing in number or had a stable population trend. —The Sun, 10 January 2018

Hold the front page! The BBC has accepted it has made a mistake – over sensationalist claims about climate change. But don’t faint: as always with the BBC and complaints, there is a sting in the tail. — David Keighley, The Conservative Woman, 10 January 2018

In fact, the Yamal Government has decided to cull 100,000 of these domesticated reindeer because experts have told them that the region has more reindeer than it can support. It turns out that the high population of reindeer in the Yamal peninsula is posing an environmental risk of its own. —Global Warming Policy Forum, 9 January 2018