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The first 13 years of my life I lived right next to a traffic light with turn lane. Behind it lay a four-lane road, behind it a main railway line. When we were on vacation, I often could not sleep the first few nights because it was so quiet.
Today I live a good 500 meters from a six-lane highway and 180 meters from a main road. Twelve percent of all flights to and from Hamburg Airport start or end over our district and the airport is just over ten kilometers away. In front of our house, the average sound level is sometimes 45, sometimes 55 decibels, sometimes higher. Ask me for imperceptible "infrasound".
Cities are not just shut down
I'm not complaining. I am no different than the over 30 percent of Germans living in big cities. In a city - or near a motorway - it never stops, except in well-insulated interiors. Of course, there are residents protests against aircraft noise or for more noise protection on highways, but that's why traffic and cities are not just shut down.
The same applies to aesthetic questions: No one asks me if I like the new shopping center nearby, or the sprawling housing developments with moldy composite thermal insulation facades. As a city dweller you have to live with aesthetic and acoustic impositions.
Climate change does not stop at town signs
Elsewhere, different rules apply. For example, a single spinning gyroscope may "ruin families" and destroy their "lifetime achievement" because, positioned at 90-degree angles 400 meters away, it could disturb the view. The cited website features a "map of resistance" with over 1000 anti-wind initiatives and leagues. On the map all over Germany is covered with small red prohibition signs. This is what "Nimbyism" looks like in this country: "Not in my backyard" as a basic attitude.
We have a two-class society: some have to live with the impositions of the modern world, the others take advantage of their advantages, but would like to be excepted from harassment. And literally nationwide.
At this point a hint for all fans of the rural idyll: The devastating consequences of the climate crisis will not be limited to urban areas. They will destroy more species than all the world's wind turbines together.
Tens of thousands of jobs have already gone
The organized friends of rural life without aesthetic disturbances are Germany's yellow vests. Instead of demonstrations, they rely on regulations, approval procedures, lawsuits. The expansion of wind power in this country has almost completely come to a standstill:
- At the moment there is another German wind power company, Enercon, which once belonged to the most important in the world, before a dramatic job cuts, of 3000 jobs is the speech.
- The Siemens subsidiary Gamesa wants to reduce thousands of jobs, Senvion filed for bankruptcy in April.
- As early as 2017, 26,000 jobs disappeared in the German wind energy sector.
And do not come with "competitiveness" now. German hard coal was no longer competitive in the 1950s. We subsidized it for hundreds of billions, for sixty years.
We save a future industry broken
By comparison, depending on the source, around 8,000 people still work in lignite mining in Lusatia. The phasing out of lignite mining should be subsidized with at least 40 billion euros. And that lignite is so far "subsidy-free" is a myth.
The enemies of wind power are numerous. It sue and block: individuals, associations, citizens' groups, nature conservation organizations. The AfD sees itself as a "parliamentary arm of the anti-wind movement".
On Facebook, the image of an apparently dead bird of prey is shared in sacred anger in front of a wind turbine. It says: "Every year, windmills shred 12,000 buzzards, 1,500 red kites and 240,000 bats". However, these figures have not yet been confirmed by studies and are even rated as highly valued by bird protection organizations, such as bird watchers and the Federal Environmental Agency.
There are, however, reliable numbers for another bird killing tool: Did you know that, according to estimates, 18 to 115 million birds per year die through glass windows? In view of this really shocking number of vociferous nationwide citizen initiatives for bird protection film, have you heard on all German windows, in a similar intensity as in the protests against wind turbines? No? Neither do I.
A hamlet blocks three square kilometers
The air traffic control and the German Armed Forces appear to have an even greater share of the building industry. Alone the air traffic control blocked according to the NDR at the moment at least 1100 already requested wind turbines. Among other things, this has to do with the fact that it requires a distance of 15 kilometers for certain radio beacons - whereas international regulations only provide for 10 kilometers.
Politically particularly powerful, however, are apparently the many German wind power yellow vests. In the future, a hamlet with five houses will be enough to make a circle with a radius of 1000 meters and thus an area of more than three square kilometers to the wind turbine-free zone. There is not much left of Germany. Tomorrow, Monday, the federal cabinet will decide.
Germany is still ready to sacrifice entire areas and villages for brown coal mining. German governments pamper the automobile industry with tax-financed, toll-free motorways and protect them against any threshold.
But an industry with which the engineering nation of Germany would soon have a worldwide export hit in its program is being systematically destroyed. This starts with the permit jam and ends with funding rules that will ensure that masses of still functioning wind turbines will soon be dismantled.
We turn the infant off the incubator and pump infusions into zombies. Either we are rebuilding our economy now, or we are falling back hopelessly.
If other countries, especially China and India, are seriously starting to switch their energy supply, Germany could be excellently positioned as an expert nation for high-quality wind turbines. At the moment, however, it looks as if bureaucracy, nimbies, conservationists and the hesitant federal government nip this future model in the bud. It would be better to spend a few more years caring for the dying little plants of the past.