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A wake-up call for Germany

Charlemagne

The Economist

“Years of complacency have landed Germany in a pickle,” says The Economist’s Charlemagne columnist. For decades, political leaders lulled voters with “intoxicating talk of perpetual prosperity with minimal friction and zero emissions”. They woke to the sound of Russian tanks rolling into Ukraine, and now find that all the promises were built on cheap imported manpower and energy. The reckoning with past mistakes lacks urgency. Half of Germany’s nuclear power-generation capacity was shut down virtually overnight programme. Yet the solution to Germany’s woes lies in its own hands. Gas producers say that, given a chance, they could double their output from fracking in as little as 18 to 24 months. That could see Germany pumping gas well into the next century and trim imports by some $15bn a year.