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Good news!

This is about one of the most damning pieces on the European climate movement I’ve read all year, and that from Germany’s equivalent of the Washington Post. An atmosphere of resignation is truly sweeping through Germany’s climate movement. Flagship media are waking up.

We’re winning!

“Failed tricking their way past democracy”

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) has written a blistering criticism of Hans Schellnhuber’s WBGU and climate activists’ efforts to impose a green authoritarian society over the rest of the world. They overshot and missed the curve. The FAZ introduction reads:

The rescue of the planet gets cancelled. The climate advisory council to the government played high stakes poker. And lost. They failed at tricking their way past democracy.”

In the eyes of one Germany’s leading flagship national dailies, the renowned FAZ, the attempted green coup led by a small group of elitist scientists and a mass of activists has come to grinding halt.

Germany and Europe again escape a (soft) tyranny – at least for the time being.

Background – the Potsdam doomsday factory

German professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber is the director of Germany’s infamously alarmist Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, which includes alarmist climate radicals like Stefan Rahmstorf, Anders Levermann, and economist Ottmar Edenhofer. For years Schellnhuber’s institute has busily and relentlessly crafted data showing alarming climate change and putting out doomsday scenarios in an attempt to get spooked policymakers to stampede into enacting radical climate policy.

Schellnhuber is also the director of the WBGU, the German Advisory Council on Global Change. The Council is made up of nine “renowned scientists”. Their primary task: to advise policymakers in Germany and worldwide on how society should proceed in the face of dangerous climate change.

Master-plan for transforming global society

Three years ago the WBGU authored and released a 446-page “Master Plan” for “The Great Transformation of Global Society” designed to put global society on the fast-track to “sustainability” and an almost carbon-free society by 2050. In it the council even called for policies to water down democracy. One journalist once summarized: The WBGU is in favor of democracy, but only so long as the people make the right decisions.

The master-plan called for a so-called future council, made up of prophet-like wise men, who would have the power to veto democratic decisions it felt were not in the best interest of future generations.

“Climate protection as moral as abolishing slavery”

The FAZ writes that one of the fundamental aims of the WBGU was changing Germany’s constitutional law: climate protection was to become an official state priority and that going green was “as morally imperative as the abolition of slavery“. More importantly, the “transformation to a climate-protective society would have to happen very rapidly“. Dissenters would have to be stigmatized and marginalized, and so denied real participation.

Though highly controversial, the WBGU never backed down from their radical proposal, always insisting that the fate of the planet was in imminent peril, that there could be neither compromise nor delay, that time was of the essence, and the science was unanimous. The WBGU even called it a test for democracy, claiming that if society failed to act, it would tell us that democracy was no longer capable of functioning in the face of crisis.

“Failed to trick their way past democracy”

Since the release of the WGBU’s master-plan in 2011, most of the world has not heeded the council’s recommendations and CO2 emissions continue their rapid rise unabated. To the council members, democracy appears overwhelmed and no longer able to cope with the crisis of climate change. The FAZ asks: “Has democracy failed the test to check if it’s adequate for the future?” The FAZ answers:

Not at all. It appears much more so that the attempt by some climate-political advisors to the government to trick their way past democracy has failed.”

It’s truly encouraging that a major daily like the FAZ has come to realize this. We see that society once again indeed has narrowly escaped another tyranny.

“German climate movement is frustrated”

On the reaction by the WBGU scientists, the FAZ writes: “those who wanted to fire up the climate revolution are frustrated. And with them, the mainstream of the German climate movement.”

Germany gets a new heretic

The FAZ also writes how a new climate-policy heretic has entered the German climate policy scene, Dr. Oliver Geden. Geden, a warmist and a climate policy advisor to the German government, has been sharply critical of the WBGU misusing urgency to justify any means. He’s become the latest persona non grata. The FAZ writes:

By using time pressure, everything can be justified: billions in expenditures, gigantic conferences – and tampering with democracy. The good cause justifies the means.”

The FAZ describes how a green regime of the sort advocated by the WBGU would of course never force green living onto the citizenry by enacting authoritarian laws, but rather it would impose the green regime psychologically using campaigns that would teach citizens what good behavior is, e.g. vegetarianism, and marginalize dissenting behavior. In a nutshell, it would keep making the lives of dissenters miserable until they learned to choose correctly.

However, the FAZ shows this is a lot easier said than done, citing the German Green Party’s recent national election campaign where they demanded one “Veggie Day” a week be imposed in Germany. That issue backfired big time for the greens, who on election day lost hundreds of thousands of votes and ended up in the single digits. A recent poll showed that 61% of the public rejected a “Veggie Day”.

But the WBGU was not at all impressed by the public’s rejection. The FAZ writes that one WBGU scientist brushed the rejection aside, claiming the question should not have been posed in the first place and that cafeterias should just implement Veggie Day without even asking. “Just do it, and don’t vote on it,” the FAZ quips.

Climate policy has been “a giant failure”

For warmist think-tank member and government advisor Oliver Geden, the WBGU scientists have gone too far. FAZ:

He and other scientists feel many climate advisors have abused their role for years: Scientists acted like politicians who applied pressure and exercised power, and did not act like scientists who show solution paths.”

The FAZ quotes Geden regarding the policy approach taken by the WBGU:

The whole thing has been a giant failure.”

According to the FAZ, Geden constantly receives e-mails from agitated scientists who write that it’s “terrible to even express criticism” or that it’s the wrong time for criticism, “We’re close to a breakthrough!”

Mood of resignation taking hold in the green movement

At the end of the article the FAZ describes a mood of resignation that is sweeping across Europe’s climate movement. The FAZ concludes:

This year the nine scientists of the WBGU published a new book about the protection of the world’s oceans within the scope of the Great Transformation. In a mutual committee of the federal Ministries for Environment and Research, where they unveiled their results, there was not a single federal minister present, only state secretaries.”

Looks like the WBGU’s days have come and gone. Now is a good time to ask them: How does it feel not to be listened to?