A gentler form of industrial capitalism
Stephen Milder on the facade of German environmentalism
The Council of Experts on Climate Change, an independent panel tasked with monitoring Germany’s progress toward its emissions goals, recently issued its latest assessment, and the verdict was damning: if current trends hold, a range of targets to which Germany has committed will “be increasingly and significantly missed over time.” Germany is far from the only country struggling to make good on its climate promises, but its failures are glaring in light of decades of national boasting about the Energiewende, the much-vaunted German decarbonization program. As Stephen Milder argues in his Issue Seventeen essay, the disappointing fate of the Energiewende should make us skeptical of “the tantalizing idea that a few tweaks and technological fixes could turn industrial capitalism green without diminishing the comforts of consumer society” — not just in Germany, but everywhere.
The Myth of Green Germany | Energiewende Runs Out of Fuel
STEPHEN MILDER
Today, it’s increasingly hard to argue that building up green industries is a surefire means of ending fossil fuel use and tackling climate change. Instead, it seems that green technologies and carbon-intensive industries can easily live side by side. Going green has become business as usual.