The sixth Tesla in Europe

Last week, I saw a Tesla in person in Germany. There are only five of these things in Europe according to the technician, who was also quick to point out that Europeans could consider themselves lucky to be getting the next generation, which will apparently include some improvements. That's another way of saying sorry we did not even really offer the car over here the first time around, but we are used to that in Europe with iPhones and all kinds of other devices.

Anyway, the battery in the US version I saw (the black box that takes up half of the trunk in the picture below) weighs 600 kilos alone. According to the executive of the company that plans to purchase five of them, the car is faster than anything in the straightaway (electric motors reaches maximum torque more or less right away, whereas internal combustion engines generally do not have much power until they reach around 2000 RPM), but because of the weight the car is actually not that great in curves.

Of course, this car is a good demonstration of what is possible with electric vehicles, but it certainly will not help us reduce our energy consumption. The thing is designed as a power hog, not a thrifty means of transportation; there is just barely room in the trunk for a slender suitcase. But it is a nice toy for grown-up little boys, so I am sure we are going to get as many of these vehicles as money can buy, while I still wait on an affordable version of my ultra-thrifty Twike.

Why we need to study the humanities

Last month, I wrote about the announcement of the concentrated solar power project planned in the Sahara. I expressed my disbelief that anyone could believe that imports of renewable energy would not constitute the same kind of security vulnerabilities that imports of fossil fuels already do.

After that post, I visited Desertec's website and found the following at the top of the FAQs:

Is this simply another way in which Europe will exploit Africa? What are the benefits for the MENA communities?

• The current situation is based on exploiting limited resources like gas and oil, but solar energy is practically unlimited and as such, the owners can’t be "exploited".

This answer shows an astonishing ignorance of history. Basically, we have turned over a lot of financial resources to a bunch of engineers, and if they can figure out that the technology will work, then of course there will be no societal problems, right? After all, we didn't come across any social upheaval in any of our engineering classes.

So here is a synopsis from someone who did spend some time looking into what colonialism and the history of oil exploration were. The people who decide whether locals are being exploited are not the European engineers behind the project, nor the politicians representing local people when contracts are negotiated and signed. Rather, these agreements can potentially be called into question at any moment by anyone affected.

Imagine a democratic uprising like the one we are witnessing in Iran (I understand that Iran is not part of the Desertec project; I merely mention it because of the current political protests). If a new government takes power after such a revolution, the new government might want to represent the people better. It might then look at these contracts with European energy firms and realize that there is quite a hefty margin. For instance, Europeans might be importing this electricity for two or three cents less than they can produce it at home. Since these investments are literally stranded in these foreign countries, this new government -- not the one that negotiated and signed the original contracts -- might then decide that there is nothing to stop them from charging a tax that will bring the price of electricity up to the rates that Europeans already pay at home.

At that point, power from the Sahara will cost exactly as much as power from Europe, so the very purpose of the project -- providing cheaper renewable electricity to Europe -- will have been ruined. Europe will then be caught between a rock and a hard place: if we are getting a large chunk of our electricity from the Sahara at that point (say, 15 percent), we will not be able to do without this power. The whole thing will become a way of making these Saharan countries richer, and when non-democratic countries follow the example of the country with the democratic revolution, we will then be funding states that we have serious human rights problems with.

It has all happened before with oil and gas, and it will not be any different with renewables.

In retrospect, another fact seems astounding: this project was all over the news even though nothing has happened at all. A number of major firms have merely announced that they will be conducting some meetings. I suppose you can not only be too big to fail, but also too big to ignore.

Swiss geothermal quakes hit the NY Times

A few days ago, the New York Times reported on the earthquakes that occurred in Basel, Switzerland a few years ago around a geothermal site. A few "minor" earthquakes (between 3 and 3.5 on the Richter scale) and more than 3,000 earthquakes smaller than 3 on the Richter scale occurred when water was pumped into the boreholes. Now, new projects are popping up in California, so the New York Times apparently felt compelled to report on the events in Switzerland.

A number of petty things are wrong in the article, which makes me wonder if the New York Times doesn't have anyone who speaks German or knows basic cultural facts. "Shafer Lane" is Schäferweg, and the English for Münster is "minster," so "Münster Cathedral" is like saying "Church Cathedral." In addition, Basel is not a "city of medieval cathedrals"; a cathedral is the seat of a bishop, and back in the Middle Ages there was only one denomination, so most towns did not have a cathedral, and those that did had only one.

And then there are a few things more central to the topic at issue. For instance, it is not true that the event was "soon forgotten by nearly everyone outside Switzerland." As the article writes later, "Geothermal Explorers’ insurance company ultimately paid more than $8 million in mostly minor damage claims to the owners of thousands of houses in Switzerland and in neighboring Germany and France." The article does not, however, point out that a similar event took place some 30 minutes north of Basel in the German town of Staufen (just south of me). Lots of similar projects are planned. The event in Basel is still quite a hot topic in this part of Germany and neighboring France.

While I basically agree with the skepticism expressed in the New York Times, the article does not cite proponents of geothermal who claim that these minor quakes -- as bad as they are -- relieve stress underground, thereby preventing a major quake which could flatten a city. I don't know enough about this to make a call, but the engineers are certainly taking on a lot of responsibility here.

In closing, it should also be pointed out that oil and gas extraction has been the cause of some major earthquakes and similar disasters, though generally not close to a major city. But that will not appease the residents of this small German town near a coal mine, who suffer from earthquakes as severe than those in Basel.

For those of you who can read German, I reported on the events in Switzerland back when they happened here, here, and here.

Germany copies US TV

For some decades now, German television has been attempting to copy some of the best ideas from US television -- with mixed success. Late-night talk shows are perhaps the most obvious example, with Germany's Harald Schmidt being undoubtedly the most popular such talk show host. After starting off with really stupid sexist jokes, Schmidt eventually did a wonderful job of finding a German groove for the originally American format. Over the years, he continued to play with the format he once called "Hate Night Talk" and ended up at one point with a French woman alongside him who did not speak great German and therefore made everybody laugh all the more because she repeatedly did not get the joke -- and then made you laugh even more when she came up with something really witty herself. It was a truly European moment, as was the show he did entirely in French (he does not speak French well at all -- he speaks about as well as I do, but that's a different story...). And if you watch the video and realize that no one is laughing, it's because the audience didn't speak French. He went on for an hour anyway -- kudos!

But today, I am writing about the dismal attempt to copy the Daily Show. Germany now has a heute show, and it is absolutely awful. It could not be anything but awful since, to the extent that it is copying the Daily Show, it has absolutely nothing to talk about.

The Daily Show was a beacon of hope for me after the reelection of George W. Bush in 2004. The show can now be streamed in its entirety online, but in 2005 you could only get 30 minutes a week over here on CNN. Watching the show proved to me that there was still an America out there that had its thinking cap on.

But while Der Spiegel says that the Daily Show "mercilessly make fun of Obama's election campaign," in fact Jon Stewart is revered for his criticism of Bush/Cheney at a time when mainstream news media were not asking hard questions. Now that Obama is in office, he still has quite a bit to talk about, such as the idiocy at Fox news, the videotapes of Cheney that keep popping up, Obama putting people in charge of fixing problems they caused, etc.

The problem for Germany's heute show is that there is little to make fun of over here. In comparison to the US, most German politicians are fairly eloquent people who are generally smarter than the general public. And there is nothing in Germany that comes anywhere close either to MSNBC or Fox News. Everything over here seems trapped back in the days of Walter Cronkite, when you still had faith that news moderators were not card-carrying members of any party -- and would certainly never parrot what politicians say or make their own personalities more important than the message.

On German talk shows, there are practically no interruptions at all. But don't take my word for it -- take a look at this video (if you don't speak German, you will still be able to see that people are listening to what the other person is saying) of quite a heated debate on Maybrit Illner's show. If you can understand German, you will quickly see that the speakers have quite a lot of disdain for each other, but it's still a far cry from the kind of nonsense Jon Stewart famously criticized on Crossfire. (Crossfire was off the air shortly afterwards - kudos, Jon).

Stewart was basically asking the two moderators on Crossfire to help keep US politicians honest instead of conducting shouting matches on television. But German newscasters need no such instructions from German comics. When the CDU came up with a poster with mugshots of then-Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, all of the newscasters on the nightly news here reported the event only as a major embarrassment for the CDU, and the poster was taken out of circulation the next day.

Other German talk shows are just as free of interruptions as the one above. Take a look at videos of Anne Will's show (here's one) or Sabine Christiansen's (example of an "interruption" at 7:30, where one conservative person tells the anti-globalisationist that she is "full of it"). That's as bad as it gets here. No McLaughlin Group on German TV.

There is absolutely no need for a German Daily Show, which is why the heute show is doomed to fail if it does not find some other groove to work in.

But that is perhaps a trivial matter. The more important point here is that this comparison reveals just how abysmal reporting is in the US, and how easy it would be to get up to the German standard. No freak shows here.

ZMF Gala "Yes, we can"

As a follow-up to my recent post on "yes, we can"-related sitings, I now see that Freiburg's local music festival ends on July 12 with a gala concert (including Take 6) entitled "Yes, we can." Based on the information at the website, there seems to be no motivation whatsoever for this appellation.

It only goes to show that people over here are nuts about Obama.

Goodnight, Irena

The world's latest organization, the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena), got its official seat and director-general in the past week. To the dismay of many of my colleagues, the seat went to the United Arab Emirates; the position of director-general, to Frenchwoman Hélène Pelosse.

I won't go into why the world needs yet another org; that would be another blog post. But I would like to clear the air on a few things.

First, the election of Pelosse was not a "major coup for the French government," nor was it a "further snub" for Germany. Rather, the German government was complicit in the entire affair. Germany did not even nominate anyone as D-G. Instead (my sources on the ground tell me), an agreement was reached behind closed doors: Germany would support Pelosse, and the French would support Bonn as the seat. Tit for tat between Germany and France, the way EU politics has always worked. Most interestingly, Germany did not nominate Hermann Scheer, the founder of Irena. Leading German politicians apparently felt that having HQ in Germany was more important than having a German as D-G.

Unfortunately, the behind-doors dealings got nasty. One person spoke out against the UEA as the seat on the basis of human rights issues -- and received feedback from customers saying, "Shut up, or you'll lose our business." So we know that Irena will be like every other international organization.

Some are concerned that a French D-G will undermine Irena because the French are the world's major promoter of nuclear. Pelosse has also apparently done little to support renewables. Her appointment is thus mainly political.

Pelosse has said she does not intend to bring nuclear into Irena through the "low-carbon" door. Now, she gets her chance to prove it.

And while the UAE, like Pelossi, have little to show for themselves in renewables, how long have many of us waited for the oil-producing Arab world to discover solar and wind, which they have lots of? The UEA has pledged $136 million to Irena. Ok, so they bought the org -- let's see how they use the funds, and let's work to see that they use it well.

So while all of this may seem like utter defeat to many of my colleagues, I urge everyone to keep up the good work. Had Scheer become D-G in Bonn, we might have expected too much and contributed too little. That won't happen now, will it?

Billboards in Berlin

Just a quick note for anyone wondering how popular Obama is over here. He could probably beat any European politician for any office. Were he to run against Merkel or Sarkosy as head of Germany or France, they might as well not even show up.

These pictures were taken with my cell phone on the road, so excuse the poor quality.