This week, United Nations climate negotiators will gather in Bonn, Germany, to tell the rest of the world how to save the planet.The irony is staggering. Germany is the poster child of failed green paternalism. It shut down its nuclear plants, bet everything on renewables, and ended up burning more coal and buying gas from Russia. Germany has no idea how to save the planet — it cannot even save itself.That’s because Germany and other big-government climate warriors assumed the only force capable of protecting the environment was mandates, all while the market was quietly working.
THE CLIMATE CHANGE HOUSE OF CARDS IS FINALLY COLLAPSING
Germany was supposed to be the proof of concept for the green mandate approach. The Energiewende, Germany’s sweeping top-down energy transition, was announced with enormous fanfare as the model every serious nation should follow. That is, until the world saw the results.
German households now pay among the highest electricity prices in the developed world. Industrial giants like BASF have begun relocating production out of the country, citing uncompetitive energy costs. Germany’s carbon emissions remained stable or even rose in the years following its nuclear shutdown as coal plants filled the gap. The Energiewende didn’t just fail on its own terms — it created an entirely new energy crisis, one that required Germany to reopen coal plants, extend Russian gas contracts, and ultimately beg its neighbors for electricity imports.
