After the party congress: Baerbock in the green idyll

The Green Party conference was tailored to two people whose names do not need to be mentioned.

But the days and weeks before the party congress, and the party congress itself, must have shown the Greens that it cannot be these two alone who will win the election for the party in September.

The other two candidates for chancellor and their parties already have this experience behind them. Olaf Scholz would be much better off if the SPD could shine again, and Armin Laschet made the “team solution” his strategy from the start. Annalena Baerbock has been in the limelight as a solo dancer in recent weeks. Their missteps are all the more embarrassing and put a media empathy to the test that Laschet and Scholz could only dream of.

With the party congress, the program of the Greens comes back to the fore. That doesn't necessarily make life easier for Baerbock, but the solo dancer becomes part of an ensemble again. The debate about the increase in the price of gasoline by 16 cents and the strenuous preparations for the party congress have already shown that, despite the party's discipline, ideologically motivated exaggerations and excesses cannot be whitewashed with idyllic visions and pirouettes. How the Greens deal with it will decide whether Baerbock should be taken seriously as a candidate for chancellor.

In their body and stomach issue, climate protection, the power of persuasion seems to fly to the Greens. But they differ from other parties in that they do not want to be outbid in terms of goals, but this raises the question of how all of this is to be achieved. If the onshore wind power is to be expanded by 5 to 6 gigawatts by 2035, that would certainly be a nice plan. But on an area that is far larger than the Saarland? At a pace that has been promised for years but nowhere near achieved? On the basis of predictions about electricity consumption, which within ten years have turned into their opposite, from halving them to gigantic additional demand?

The climate goals of the Greens have, as it were, received a certificate since the ruling from Karlsruhe. But apart from the fact that they (and the coalition) still saddle up, the election manifesto of the Greens tacitly exudes the confidence that not only the German voters are enthusiastic about it, but also the Chinese leadership, the Indian states, the Kremlin and the whites House. Without their willingness to join the green revolution, the German contribution to climate rehabilitation will be a blow in the water, albeit a considerable one.

If the Greens and German politicians had been able to turn the energy transition into an export hit, they could now claim greater trust.

But the opposite is true.

Germany serves as an example of how not to do it.

The sore point is and remains the absurd renunciation of nuclear power before the phase out from fossil fuels.

In order to be able to make up for this green taboo, an election manifesto would at least have to show how it intends to exist internationally.

In addition, the Greens only have a thin passage about trade contracts and the recurring assertion that German green technology will conquer the world market.

Outside of the green election program, however, all considerations are currently focused on how the German (and European) climate project can be shielded from traditional competition from all over the world.

Left pocket, right pocket

The Greens have learned that such adventures only work in Germany if social security is promised.

It has nothing to do with climate protection if the CO2 price is paid out of the left pocket, but the state then puts the money back in selected right pockets.

It's just redistribution.

What is more serious is that the Greens are announcing the radical end of an entire industry, especially its medium-sized suppliers, but the social and economic protection consists largely of experimenting in “real-world laboratories” and paying for “regional transformation funds”.

Climate protection may create many new jobs. But whether that is enough to farm a country that is exposed to ever greater stresses is in the stars. The Greens want to make the impossible possible. They stand in their own way with their planned economy legacy.

All this does not prevent the party from further increasing these burdens through large-scale socio-political projects. A shift to the left may have been prevented at the party congress - but a left-wing program that the SPD and the Left Party would find difficult to beat was already in the draft. He surely also lives from the fact that Germany cannot continue as before. The second German, the green economic miracle will only happen if it doesn't completely ignore the rules of the first. They consisted of anything but a left-programmed idyll.