alt Hacker NewsThis [1] is what really brought Germany's industry down, not the green non-sense spouted by articles like this one:
> Gas prices rose to $70 per megawatt-hour in Germany — it makes it 6 times more expensive than in the US
Germany was relatively fine, industrially speaking, while it still had a working relationship with Russia and especially with cheap Russian gas. It all went to the gutters when the Americans imposed their imperial will on them, on the Germans (see also the Nord Stream fuck-up), and it has been a steady downhill road for the Germans since then.
To re-iterate, there's no German economic miracle that would allow them to be competitive against other indutrialised countries (such as the US) while they have to pay two or three times more for their energy inputs.
Replies
Germany was also fine when they still had nuclear energy
Non of these issues affect France because France had the foresight to invest in Nuclear tech that gave them energy independence from both the US and Russia while being green and sustainable. It's certainly not perfect e.g. France imports some Uranium from Russia but they are in a far better position than Germany. Germany has produced many brilliant people but it really has to self reflect on some of the major errors in big decisions it has made the past few decades.
What Imperial will if you dont mind asking? That they stoped buying gas from country that attacked europe and tries to overthrow democracy in other EU countries? Their delusion was in turning off nuclear... and it was exactly what russia wanted. By funding anti nuclear protests in EU, and selling more and more gas to make Europe attached. So when Russia does something bad, it is harder to sanction them. What happend in Germany is real political failure in seeing this, maybe even treason.
> Germany was relatively fine, industrially speaking, while it still had a working relationship with Russia and especially with cheap Russian gas. It all went to the gutters when the Americans imposed their imperial will on them, on the Germans (see also the Nord Stream fuck-up), and it has been a steady downhill road for the Germans since then.
That's quite the reversal of facts. Germany cut off Russian gas after imperial Russia started a full invasion on Ukraine. That was Germany's decision and has little to do with the US. The US also did not force Russia to invade Ukraine and to targeted kill Ukrainian civilians for their decision to strive for freedom, democracy and prosperity rather than being a corrupt satellite state to Putin's terror.
Energy prices undoubtedly skyrocketed after that, but that's just the immediate result of finally breaking with the politically engineered dependence on Russia. For decades Germany made itself reliant on Russian gas. What might have started as optimism after the cold war and the hope for good mutually beneficial relations with Russia turned into corruption and irresponsible ignorance and short term thinking at best.
Energy prices in Germany are so high because the German government deliberately sabotaged the shift to renewables. German politics made Germany dependent on fossil fuels that you can burn exactly once and that Germany has to continuously, expensively dig out of the ground and keep importing because Germany lacks enough natural gas. Digging something out of the ground to burn it once is not economic when the alternative of harvesting the sun and wind that just keep on giving you energy indefinitely exists. But Germany decided to deliberately stall building grid technology and farms for harvesting free unlimited energy. Instead they turned to Russia to get gas for cheapish in the exchange for letting Putin live out his imperialist plans. Russia's aggression is not new. They invaded Georgia in 2008 and started the war against Ukraine in 2014. Germany started building the Nordstream 2 gas pipeline, which would have even furthered its dependence, in 2015, after all that. And they kept the plan when Russia backed Assad and commited war crimes against the Syrian people.
What a strange comment. The US did not force Russia to invade Ukraine, nor did it force Germany to respond to the Fukushima daiichi disaster by killing all of its nuclear power.