This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate

by Naomi Klein

Many have attributed the emissions rise to Germany’s decision to phase out nuclear power, but the facts are not nearly so simple. It’s true that in 2011, in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel—under intense pressure from the country’s powerful antinuclear movement—announced that it would phase out nuclear power by 2022, and took aggressive action to begin the process. But at the same time, the government took no similar action to phase out coal and even allowed coal companies to export power to other countries. So even though Germans have indeed been moving in ever greater numbers to renewable energy, coal power continued to grow, with some of it displacing nuclear power, some of it displacing gas, and some of it being exported. And much of the coal in Germany is lignite, often referred to as brown coal, a low-grade variety with particularly high emissions.