QOTD

Remember last week's German energy irony? MaxedOutMama has more:

Germany doesn't have the transmission capacity to route the power around to make up for the shut nuclear plants, so it is using portions of grids in neighboring countries. Everybody is suing everyone. The Greens are complaining about power prices, because they just don't grasp the fact that the production cost of wind has nothing to do with the cost of incorporating a very highly variable power source into the grid. The Greens are also very unhappy about the new coal plants. The neighboring countries are very unhappy because when winter hits, Germany's transmission problems may cause them problems -- their lines will be flooded and they might face blackouts themselves. The auto companies in the south are very worried because they may be forced to shut down this winter to conserve power.

Oh, yeah, and just look at where Germany's household electricity rates are. And they have to go higher! The entire boondoggle in Germany would make an Austrian economist weep buckets. . .

This will cost the German economy for decades. It's sad, because Germany was just coming out of a very long period of suppressed economic performance due in large part to reunification costs. The entire situation is highly regressive. Energy mistakes are one of the things that destroy economies. The German economy is particularly vulnerable to high energy costs because it is reliant on heavy manufacturing.

However Germany's idiocy is quite good for the Poles, the Czechs, and possibly the Hungarians. It is likely that more heavy manufacturing will be moved from the country to the eastern bloc.

Agreed--again and again and again.