nuclear-news

In anti-nuclear Germany, Conservatives may partner with the Greens

Environment Minister Norbert Roettgen said Monday the nuclear exit could end decades of ugly fighting in society. It may also render Mrs. Merkel a new coalition partner — the Greens.

Will Merkel’s Nuclear Exit Lead to Coalition With the Greens? WSJ, June 7, 2011 Germany’s bold strategy for an exit from atomic power by 2022 was only announced by the cabinet of Chancellor Angela Merkel Monday. Yet it has already been attacked on multiple fronts, varying from the International Energy Agency and environmental organizations to “friendly fire” from within Mrs. Merkel’s center-right government coalition. What most critics are missing, however, is that Mrs. Merkel’s alternative to a rapid exit from nuclear energy would be an almost certain loss of power in general elections two years from now at the hands of an increasingly antinuclear electorate….

.. The German federation for the environment and nature protection, or BUND, says the government’s plan for boosting renewable energy — mostly through a massive buildup of land and offshore wind power — doesn’t go beyond targets the government already had before its nuclear turnaround…..

.. Mrs. Merkel was right — politically at least — in pushing for a fast exit. Since the disaster at Fukushima, she has faced repeated mass demonstrations against nuclear energy, and the CDU and FDP have lost a series of state elections. Among them in the key industrial state of Baden-Wuertemberg, where a coalition led by the traditionally anti-nuclear Greens has won, giving the Greens their first state premier in the country. In elections in the small state of Bremen, the CDU for the first time came in third — behind the Green Party. Nationwide opinion polls for months have shown the Greens trailing behind Mrs. Merkel’s CDU by only a couple of percentage points. Environment Minister Norbert Roettgen said Monday the nuclear exit could end decades of ugly fighting in society. It may also render Mrs. Merkel a new coalition partner — the Greens. Nuclear power, after all, was the main stumbling block to Conservative-Green cooperation…. Will Merkel’s Nuclear Exit Lead to Coalition With the Greens? – The Source – WSJ

June 13, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Germany, politics