Gerd Mannes, December 8, 2021, Energy Prices

Bavarian Landtag, Plenarprotokoll 18/100, pp. 147-148.

The badly botched energy transition represents a technological and economic rape of the energy system. Secure infrastructures will be battered and base load capable power plants scrapped, those which in the meantime have been erected with billions in investments. Briefly said: The government eco-fanatics’ energy policy is running amok. Their victims are the consumers, the taxpayers and our industry. By means of regulation, they make more expensive our conventional energy suppliers and then assert that the renewable energies will thus be more economic. The green demagogues thereby proceed to peddle that renewable energies were allegedly the more favorable energy supplier. That is a flat-out lie.

The Fraunhofer Institute yearly publishes the costs of production of electricity of all available energy technologies in Germany. In 2013, the Institute stated that brown coal with 40 euros per megawatt-hour was the cheapest energy supplier. Yet in 2021, brown coal electricity suddenly costs over 100 euros per megawatt-hour. Why thus is Germany’s most favorable energy supplier at once double so expensive?

The answer to the question is simple. You have with full intent ruined the economy of conventional energy suppliers with the emissions trade and the national CO₂ tax. With the planned economy feed priority by means of the EEG [Renewable Energy Law], you force step by step the load capable nuclear power plants out of the market. You have thereby in unbearable ways increased the costs of production of the conventional facilities.

This energy policy can only be designated as a careless manipulation of the markets and a wicked deception of the consumer. All of you here always say that you want to relieve the society. Yet today the state portion of the electricity price lies at 52%. All of you are thus responsible that each year up to 300,000 people will be shut off from the electricity. One SPD politician has recently said: The cheapest kilowatt-hour is that which is not consumed. – In this cynical statement may be seen how unsozial is the old parties’ energy policy. You all disconnect the citizens without any consideration. You are on an energy policy wrong way drive and it is high time the citizens were enlightened as to this insanity.

The AfD has a load capable solution for the energy price crisis caused by you. With our motion [Drucksache 18/18260], we demand the immediate reduction of electricity taxes to the EU minimum. We further demand that on the Federal level the CO₂ tax and the EEG be immediately abolished. By means of the abolition of the EEG assessment alone, we may relieve the consumers by around 30 billion euros annually. The elimination of the CO₂ tax would spare an average family in the future up to 1,400 euros annually. Let deeds also follow your promises and vote in favor of our motion.

Many thanks.

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

Gerd Mannes, May 5, 2021, Climate Dictatorship

Bavarian Landtag, Plenarprotokoll 18/82, pp. 10901-10902.

Right honorable Presidium. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen.

The Federal Constitutional Court has stated in a decision that the Federal government’s Climate Protection Law may be insufficient. The judges come to the conclusion that, in the future, serious forfeitures of freedom for the protection of the climate could be proportionately and constitutionally justified. At this point, I must quite clearly say: These forfeitures of freedom, not more clearly defined, can become dangerous licenses for the intentions of an over-reaching government. Any criticism of the climate ideology could in the future be considered to be unconstitutional.

The critics of such a climate society negligent of prosperity could be observed by the Constitution Defense or criminally prosecuted. The criminalization of business activity and individual mobility could in the future be on the daily order. Briefly stated: Under the pretense of climate protection, basic rights and rights of ownership could be restricted or abolished.

The door would be opened to eco-socialist fantasies of redistribution and expropriation. One could even be of the opinion that, as to the so-called climate protection, it is precisely about that. The CO₂ tax is a devastating example of that, as the citizens will be ripped off under the pretense of climate protection. The increased price of individual transportation, of construction and of consumer goods is attended by a great social injustice. The alleged climate protection primarily means a renunciation of the quality of life for broad classes of the population. It must be clear to the citizens where the eco-dictatorship leads. Wide portions of industry and the Mittelstand will be ruined, since the CO₂ tax for the so-called carbon leakage will thereby lead to losses of value creation in Bavaria.  

The BDI [Federation of German Industry] warns of eco-socialist ideologies: The multiplicity of prohibitions, quotas and technology standards are the foundation stones of another social order in which the life of the people and the economy will be burdened with ever more costs and our prosperity permanently destroyed. Will we soon see a climate levy on private assets, a ban on single family housing to protect the climate, or, of which we especially warn, a climate lockdown as has been demanded by confused climate youths? The climate hysteria may in no case be a reason for restrictions of freedom, or certainly a lockdown.

The Constitutional judges based their decision on the international climate researches and warnings of the so-called world climate council, the IPCC. For many reasons, this appears questionable. First, the IPCC is not democratically legitimated. Second, the IPCC has many times in the past attracted attention as a result of false forecasts. Third, the IPCC is not a neutral, scientific body but a political one. It thereby has to do with the hardened financial interests of lobby groups. Ja, it has to do with quite a lot of money. The so-called climate protection is a money-making machine for pseudo-green interests and an insatiable state.

We of the AfD will not stand idly by as the citizens continue to be deprived of their rights and ripped off. The destructive Corona policy has already shown that the government does not really take seriously the defense of the basic rights. We of the AfD must prevent that the violation of basic rights be repeated with the climate protection. Basic rights are not privileges but non-negotiable foundations of a functioning democracy. The guarantee of the basic rights and rights of freedom must be secured, even in regards the climate protection efforts.

We request a vote in favor for our motion [Drucksache 18/15544].  

 

[trans: tem]