Remember the grotesque self-righteousness of Der Spiegel<\/em> and the German “Greens” during the Kyoto Treaty debates at the end of the Clinton administration?\u00a0 Complying with the Kyoto provisions cost the Germans nothing.\u00a0 They had just shut down the heavily polluting and grossly unprofitable industries in the former East Germany, had brought large numbers of new gas-fired plants on line thanks to increasing gas supplies from the North Sea fields, and had topped it off with a lame economy in the 90’s compared to the booming U.S.\u00a0 Their greenhouse gas emissions had dropped accordingly.\u00a0 Achieving similar reductions in the U.S. wouldn’t have been a similar “freebie.”\u00a0 It would have cost tens of thousands of jobs.\u00a0 The German “Greens” didn’t have the slightest problem with this.\u00a0 They weren’t interested in achieving a fair agreement that would benefit all.\u00a0 They were only interested in striking pious poses.<\/p>\n Well, guess what?\u00a0 Times have changed.\u00a0 Last year U.S. carbon emissions were at their lowest level since 1994<\/a>, and down 3.7% from 2011.\u00a0 Our emissions are down 7.7% since 2006, the largest drop among major industrial states on the planet.\u00a0 German emissions were up at least 1.5%<\/a>\u00a0last year, and probably more like 2%.\u00a0 Mention this to a German “Green,” and he’s likely to mumble something about Germany still being within the Kyoto limits.\u00a0 That’s quite true.\u00a0 Germany is still riding the shutdown of what news magazine Focus<\/em> calls “dilapidated, filthy, communist East German industry after the fall of the Berlin Wall,” to maintain the facade of environmental “purity.”<\/p>\n That’s small comfort to her eastern European neighbors.\u00a0 Downwind from Germany’s coal-fired plants, their “benefit” from her “green” policies is acid rain, nitrous oxide laced smog, deadly particulates that kill and sicken thousands and, last but not least, a rich harvest of radioactive fallout.\u00a0 That’s right, Germany didn’t decrease the radioactive hazard to her neighbors by shutting down her nuclear plants.\u00a0 She vastly increased it.\u00a0 Coal contains several parts per million each of radioactive uranium and thorium.\u00a0 These elements are harmless enough – if kept outside the body.\u00a0 The energetic alpha particles they emit are easily stopped by a normal layer of\u00a0skin.\u00a0 When that happens, they dump the energy they carry in a very short distance, but, since skin is dead, it doesn’t matter.\u00a0 It’s an entirely different matter when they dump those several\u00a0million electron volts of energy\u00a0into a living cell – such as a lung cell.\u00a0\u00a0Among other things, that can easily derange the reproductive equipment of the\u00a0cell, causing cancer.\u00a0 How can they reach the lungs?\u00a0 Very easily if the uranium and thorium that emit them are carried in the ash from a coal-fired plant.\u00a0 A typical coal-fired plant releases about 5 tons of uranium and 12 tons of thorium <\/a>every year.\u00a0 The German “Greens” have no problem with this, even though they’re constantly bitching about the relatively miniscule release of uranium from U.S. depleted uranium munitions.\u00a0 Think scrubber technology helps?\u00a0 Guess again!\u00a0 The uranium and thorium are concentrated in the ash, whether it ends up in the air or not.\u00a0 They can easily leach into surrounding cropland and water supplies.<\/p>\n The last time there was an attempt to move radioactive waste to the Gorleben storage facility within Germany, the “Greens” could be found striking heroic poses as saviors of the environment all along the line, demonstrating, tearing up tracks, and setting police vehicles on fire.\u00a0 Their “heroic” actions forced the shutdown of Germany’s nuclear plants.\u00a0 The “gift” (German for “poison”) of their “heroic” actions to Germany’s neighbors came in the form of acid rain, smog,\u00a0and airborne radiation.\u00a0 By any reasonable standard, coal-fired plants are vastly more dangerous and damaging to the environment than the nuclear facilities they replaced.<\/p>\n It doesn’t matter to Germany’s “Greens.”\u00a0 The acid rain, the radiation, the danger of global warming they always pretend to be so concerned about?\u00a0 It doesn’t matter.\u00a0 For them, as for the vast majority of other environmental zealots worldwide, the pose is everything.\u00a0 The reality is nothing.<\/p>\n
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