Jörg Urban, the head of the AfD group in the Saxony state parliament, has come up with one of the all-time great one-liners. He said that, if plans to halt lignite mining went through, Saxony would become “a new, regional poorhouse with no future, but a lot of wolves.” This is right up there with “super cali go ballistic Celtic are atrocious“.
This stems from the convergence of two Green party policies. First, they support the return of Wolves in Lausatia, which is part of Saxony on the Polish border. Second, they plan to ban the mining of lignite (Brown Coal), of which Lausatia has the largest reserves in Germany.
Germany currently uses lignite for 24.4% of its energy production. Following Fukishima, Germany is planning to phase out nuclear which currently accounts for 11.5% of Germany’s energy production. Having its energy mix meet its COPO23 target of reducing Germany’s greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by 2030, relative to the 1990 levels, makes the current coalition negotiations look like child’s play.
The AfD solution is, rightly, to ignore the CO2 emissions. The world continues to prove, to the dismay of Greenies everywhere, that CO2 levels in the atmosphere have no significant effect on global temperatures. Support for COP targets is just the sort of virtue signalling that the better off in society can afford.
What is so delicious about the statement from Jörg Urban is that, for the first time, it depicts the green electorate as a pack of wolves preying on the poorer in society. As with the wolves, we may find this is an image that has legs.