The old and new No. 1: coal
It has already been announced. In early summer, when the point was passed where Germany had taken more resources from nature than it can annually return to the cycle, the burning of coal overtook the amount of energy currently generated by wind energy.
For a brief explanation:
Unlike the comparison of debt and gross national product, which in Germany is calculated the other way round, namely that we start roboting for ourselves in September, and not against the debt incurred by the state, with the environment we start from the beginning each year to determine how long it will take for the damage to nature and its exploitable resources to exceed its regenerative capacity. On the one hand, this makes sense insofar as each country is, of course, an island and there are no transboundary effects. For another, it is so much easier to set the evil counters to zero on New Year's Day, because by the time the planet will have recovered from the human parasite, one can no longer calculate back to the beginning of industrialisation, since the damage is exponential and not linear.
Preparing for the coal phase-out
The fact that the extraction and burning of coal has not only recovered, but has moved straight past the overvalued power generation by wind power, has of course to do with the coal phase-out, which may have to be postponed once more. After all, until 2038 - or perhaps 2023 (see next box) or 2080 - when the mines close and the lignite excavators have to stand still, the black and brown gold lying around is still to be consumed.
It would make no sense to stop mining while there is still some left.
If the Earth objected to our exploitation of it, it would go out like a cow when it doesn't want to be milked. That would then, because the planet has no legs but only an atmosphere, perhaps manifest itself in rainy winters followed by floods and dry summers, or in other weather extremes such as hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. No, that would be absurd and have nothing to do with it, because volcanic eruptions billions of years ago made life on Earth possible in the first place; just as droughts and forest fires are only a chance to cleanse the surface and then continue just as before.
In the first climate package, presented by Environment Minister Merkel in the 90s, coal phase-out was announced 'in 30 years' by 2023 at the latest. At that time, no one in the committees knew the word 'CO2 neutrality', and the politicians from Kohl/Genscher to Schröder/Fischer to Merkel/Merkel were excellent at overlooking their promises. The accession chancellor and foster father of the outgoing 'We can do it' incumbent called it 'sitting it out'.
It goes without saying that all the workers who used to vote for the Labour Party and were organised in trade unions cannot simply be incorporated into the industrial production, distribution and assembly of wind turbines. For there is still the bureaucratic hurdle and the popular will that no one wants to have such an environmentally polluting propeller plant standing less than a kilometre away from their home. Here, too, take coal as an example: hard coal is extracted from kilometre-deep galleries. The opencast mining of lignite is also shallow and virtually invisible, unless you climb up on a wind turbine and see nothing but dead earth as far as the horizon.
Well, the cooling towers of the power plants, the chimneys of the incinerators, the huge excavators and, of course, the nostalgic winding towers of the collieries tower over all the residential buildings in the area, but they were there before.
It's good that the infrastructure and traditional values show us how it should be. Long live coal!