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Role model Thunberg - jump over your shadow, dear Greens!

The Greens should follow the example of climate activist Greta Thunberg.

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Role model Thunberg - jump over your shadow, dear Greens!

The Greens should follow the example of climate activist Greta Thunberg. Sounds like a platitude, but it is an urgent need of the hour. Because while Green leader Omid Nouripour celebrates the stubborn and ideology-driven party program in the "taz" ("We are the anti-nuclear party"), the Swedish climate activist is very pragmatic: In the ARD interview, the Fridays for Future pioneer prefers to leave the still active nuclear power plants connected to the grid instead of relying more on coal-fired power.

No, nuclear power is not a technology of the future - the coming years must above all be used for the rapid expansion of renewable energies. They can make us permanently independent of Russian gas or even uranium. But Germany is not only in an energy crisis, but in an energy war. And the associated scarcity is likely to keep industry and society as a whole busy for years.

That is why it is right now to put a sense of reality before sentimental idealism. Nouripour, his party friend and Economics Minister Robert Habeck and Co. are still blocking each other. But it is not enough to keep two nuclear power plants "ready for use" until next spring, as Habeck plans to do.

The three nuclear power plants that are still connected to the grid should remain so for the time being and beyond the spring, Thunberg is right about that. All the necessary preparations must now be made for this – fuel rods, for example, would have to be procured from partners such as Canada or Australia. We don't need Russia for that.

The first step is primarily about becoming independent of Putin's gas. And because the alternatives are (still) rare, and companies are afraid of bottlenecks and consumers are afraid of exorbitantly high prices, everything must be done to use as little natural gas as possible, at least for generating electricity. In the first half of 2022, however, 11.7 percent of German electricity was still generated with natural gas. This is a little less than in the same period last year, but still too much.

It is honorable that Habeck, contrary to his actual convictions, is again allowing more coal power to flow into the grid. With a view to the CO₂ balance and the climate crisis, the step towards a real nuclear power plant extension shouldn't really be a big one for a green party. So go ahead, dear Greens: jump over this shadow – Thunberg can also be a pioneer for you here.

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