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As a German I find that article... uhm... Interesting. I could also just call bulls*it. First: With a population of about 2m and as part of former East Germany

As a German I find that article... uhm... Interesting. I could also just call bulls*it. First: With a population of about 2m and as part of former East Germany, Thüringen is _hardly_ representative of Germany (pop 83m). That's less than 2.5% of the population. Second: In Bavaria the Green party did quite well (2nd strongest in 2018); and in Germany as a whole it does too. Edit: In Hessen (Germany's most populous state) state the Green party was the 2nd strongest as well. Third: I'm pretty sure windmills are not among the major reasons for the popularity of the AfD.

aidenn0 7y ago
Yeah. When I was younger, I did an exchange trip to a small town in Thueringen. My friend did one to Dortmund. We had completely different experiences in just about every way.
- fouc 7y ago
  Could you add some more detail? (I know nothing about Germany so just curious)
  - aidenn0 7y ago
    There were lots of differences. Here's what sticks out the most more than 20 years later. Dortmund is a large cosmopolitan city in the former West Germany. My friend was on exchange at a Gymnasium[2] so most of the kids he hung out with were college-bound. I was in a town (small enough that I'll omit the name) that was about as rural as you get in the former East Germany. I literally met every 15-19 year old that lived in the town. I don't know if they nearly all showed up to the parties normally, or if it was just because an American was there. I picked up a very strong accent while I was there; most noticeably the "ch", which, in "proper" German is a breathy sound made from the back of the throat, was pronounced more or less like the english "sh" sound. Also the "u" sound is pronounced much more closely to the ü sound; to the point where I couldn't tell the difference at conversational speeds (but I did learn to speak them differently: schwul is a not particularly nice slang term for homosexual, schwül means muggy). In Thueringen, the schools were very heavily tracked[1] from a very young age, and since there was no gymnasium[2] in the town, there was only one teenager in the entire town planning to go to University. After a week of me living in Germany, she was the only person I met who spoke English significantly better than I spoke German (and no, I didn't speak German very well, which caused lots of communication problems). In Dortmund, my friend was commonly asked "Why are you learning German? Everyone in Germany speaks English just fine!" Even when I visited areas closer to Erfurt (the capital of the Thueringen region), I often got "Gott sei dank, du kannst Deutsch" (Thank God, you can speak German). This was exaggerated by the fact that even well-educated adults would have been encouraged to learn Russian as their primary foreign language rather than English in the DDR. At the time, there was also a lot of social tension between the West and East. In Thueringen, it was a complicated relationship, because a lot of people had a sudden windfall when their DDR Marks were converted to Deutchemarks on a 2:1 basis (much better than the open-market rate). They were thankful for the West doing this, but also felt like the Wessit (westerners) looked down on them as lesser and in need of improving. On my flight back to the US, I sat next to someone from the Frankfurt area, and once I mentioned where I had been living, he went on about how the Ossit (Easterners) were lazy, but it's not their fault because they were raised under a regime where work was not rewarded &c. My friend who went to Dortmund confirmed that this was a not uncommon thing to hear when asking people what they felt about the reunification[3] I am by no means conservative, but to this day I get the same icky feeling when I hear coastal Democrats say similarly condescending things about poor red state voters voting "against their own interests." 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracking_(education) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracking_(education) 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gymnasium_(Germany) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gymnasium_(Germany) 3: German reunification, the upcoming Euro currency, and the ongoing World Cup (until Germany lost to Croatia) were some suggested conversation starters to get us speaking German more, so both my friend and I asked people about those things.
mrpopo 7y ago
> But in the first half of 2019, only 35 wind turbines were added — an 82% drop compared with the first six months of 2018. Last year was bad, too: Just 743 turbines were added, compared with 1,792 in 2017. How do you explain that drop then?
- hannob 7y ago
  Complex bureaucracy, a change in the law a few years ago that's now going into full force, lack of political support (which is a very different thing than population support). Every time surveys are done you get a vast majority (here's a recent one [1]) stating that they support more wind energy. [1] https://www.iwr.de/news.php?id=36393 https://www.iwr.de/news.php?id=36393
- pintxo 7y ago
  As I recall the financial incentives for renewables have changed sharply to the worse. Which easily explains a reluctance in investing further into the segment.
- yokaze 7y ago
  Additionally to the reasons other people cited: less sensible/profitable space. Sure, it's not like there is no space, but you have to compete with other land use, and it should be sufficiently windy. The cost/benefit ratio drops.
mikorym 7y ago
I had a similar reaction—"first world problems". Bloomberg and Forbes are largely not very informative "platforms".
pintxo 7y ago
Details: since when is Hessen the most populous state? It’s only on sixth place with less than 10% of the population (6.2m).
- linuxhansl 7y ago
  My apologies, it's Nordrhein-Westfalen, Hessen is the 5th most populated state only. Again my apologies, but the rest of the comment is accurate.

aidenn0 7y ago

Yeah. When I was younger, I did an exchange trip to a small town in Thueringen. My friend did one to Dortmund. We had completely different experiences in just about every way.

fouc 7y ago
Could you add some more detail? (I know nothing about Germany so just curious)
- aidenn0 7y ago
  There were lots of differences. Here's what sticks out the most more than 20 years later. Dortmund is a large cosmopolitan city in the former West Germany. My friend was on exchange at a Gymnasium[2] so most of the kids he hung out with were college-bound. I was in a town (small enough that I'll omit the name) that was about as rural as you get in the former East Germany. I literally met every 15-19 year old that lived in the town. I don't know if they nearly all showed up to the parties normally, or if it was just because an American was there. I picked up a very strong accent while I was there; most noticeably the "ch", which, in "proper" German is a breathy sound made from the back of the throat, was pronounced more or less like the english "sh" sound. Also the "u" sound is pronounced much more closely to the ü sound; to the point where I couldn't tell the difference at conversational speeds (but I did learn to speak them differently: schwul is a not particularly nice slang term for homosexual, schwül means muggy). In Thueringen, the schools were very heavily tracked[1] from a very young age, and since there was no gymnasium[2] in the town, there was only one teenager in the entire town planning to go to University. After a week of me living in Germany, she was the only person I met who spoke English significantly better than I spoke German (and no, I didn't speak German very well, which caused lots of communication problems). In Dortmund, my friend was commonly asked "Why are you learning German? Everyone in Germany speaks English just fine!" Even when I visited areas closer to Erfurt (the capital of the Thueringen region), I often got "Gott sei dank, du kannst Deutsch" (Thank God, you can speak German). This was exaggerated by the fact that even well-educated adults would have been encouraged to learn Russian as their primary foreign language rather than English in the DDR. At the time, there was also a lot of social tension between the West and East. In Thueringen, it was a complicated relationship, because a lot of people had a sudden windfall when their DDR Marks were converted to Deutchemarks on a 2:1 basis (much better than the open-market rate). They were thankful for the West doing this, but also felt like the Wessit (westerners) looked down on them as lesser and in need of improving. On my flight back to the US, I sat next to someone from the Frankfurt area, and once I mentioned where I had been living, he went on about how the Ossit (Easterners) were lazy, but it's not their fault because they were raised under a regime where work was not rewarded &c. My friend who went to Dortmund confirmed that this was a not uncommon thing to hear when asking people what they felt about the reunification[3] I am by no means conservative, but to this day I get the same icky feeling when I hear coastal Democrats say similarly condescending things about poor red state voters voting "against their own interests." 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracking_(education) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracking_(education) 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gymnasium_(Germany) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gymnasium_(Germany) 3: German reunification, the upcoming Euro currency, and the ongoing World Cup (until Germany lost to Croatia) were some suggested conversation starters to get us speaking German more, so both my friend and I asked people about those things.

mrpopo 7y ago

> But in the first half of 2019, only 35 wind turbines were added — an 82% drop compared with the first six months of 2018. Last year was bad, too: Just 743 turbines were added, compared with 1,792 in 2017. How do you explain that drop then?

hannob 7y ago
Complex bureaucracy, a change in the law a few years ago that's now going into full force, lack of political support (which is a very different thing than population support). Every time surveys are done you get a vast majority (here's a recent one [1]) stating that they support more wind energy. [1] https://www.iwr.de/news.php?id=36393 https://www.iwr.de/news.php?id=36393
pintxo 7y ago
As I recall the financial incentives for renewables have changed sharply to the worse. Which easily explains a reluctance in investing further into the segment.
yokaze 7y ago
Additionally to the reasons other people cited: less sensible/profitable space. Sure, it's not like there is no space, but you have to compete with other land use, and it should be sufficiently windy. The cost/benefit ratio drops.

mikorym 7y ago

I had a similar reaction—"first world problems". Bloomberg and Forbes are largely not very informative "platforms".

pintxo 7y ago

Details: since when is Hessen the most populous state? It’s only on sixth place with less than 10% of the population (6.2m).

linuxhansl 7y ago
My apologies, it's Nordrhein-Westfalen, Hessen is the 5th most populated state only. Again my apologies, but the rest of the comment is accurate.