Now please explain: why are you painting environmentalists as responsible for the phaseout, when the vast majority of nuclear plants were shut down under the conservative CDU? And when the Greens were simply following the laws established by the CDU following Fukushima?
The Greens, by the way, extended the lifetime of the existing plants beyond what the CDU had planned. Why are you failing to mention that?
If you were honest about your critique, I can't see how you can possibly make environmentalists responsible for Germany's course - during the last 20 years, they were the 2nd largest of 3 coalition partners during 1 governing period, compared to the CDU being the largest partner during 4 governing periods. From every angle, they deserve the majority of the blame.
It's not correct attach the same amount of blame for the nuclear phase out in Germany to both Greens and CDU. I would recommend to read little bit on the history nuclear power in Germany.
In 2002, under the Red-Green government of Gerhard Schröder, the "Act on the structured phase-out of the utilization of nuclear energy for the commercial generation of electricity" took effect, following a drawn-out political debate and lengthy negotiations with nuclear power plant operators. The act legislated for the shut-down of all German nuclear plants by 2021.
So when the Greens first came to power in the Schröder administration of 1998 they achieved their major political goal for which they had fought for 20 years: abandoning nuclear energy in Germany.
The Greens wanted swift abandoning of nuclear energy in Germany already in the 2000s, but the government would have to compensate the nuclear power plant owners for the costs of building the nuclear power plants (multiple bilion DM in the 2000s, most of the nuclear power plants were still new and the costs of construction were still not payed by the electricity). Therefor the Government negotiated with each electric utility company a rest quota of nuclear produced electricity and as a result nuclear electricity production would continue until 2021 (with a planned decrease in production every year).
In 2007 amid fears that Russian energy supplies to western Europe might not be reliable, conservative politicians, including Chancellor Angela Merkel and Economics Minister Michael Glos, continue to question the decision to phase out nuclear power in Germany.
In September 2010, German government policy shifted back toward nuclear energy and the government wanted to extend the use of nuclear energy in Germany.
After the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, the conservative German government reversed it's nuclear position and returned back the original 2002 Red-Green nuclear phase-out time table.
The current conservative German government under Merz again reversed it's nuclear position towards a more pro-nuclear stance, but decided that it's too expensive to revive the nuclear industry.
I would not say that the current German Green party are environmentalists, currently they are mostly renewable industry lobbyists. CDU has connections to German heavy industry. SPD had strong connection to coal mining regions and coal unions. FDP connections to German car manufacturing.
Also lets not forget the friendly neo-nazi party AfD, friendly with both Russia Putin regime and US MAGA movement. Its interesting to see how the Russia gas/oil oligarchs have the same interests as US oil/gas tycoons.
That does not matter at all regarding your initial statement, which is simply wrong. You didn't argue that the environmentalists would have done so, you're spreading the false rumor that environmentalists were responsible for closing down all the nuclear plants.
The Greens, by the way, extended the lifetime of the existing plants beyond what the CDU had planned. Why are you failing to mention that?
If you were honest about your critique, I can't see how you can possibly make environmentalists responsible for Germany's course - during the last 20 years, they were the 2nd largest of 3 coalition partners during 1 governing period, compared to the CDU being the largest partner during 4 governing periods. From every angle, they deserve the majority of the blame.