Green Party: Crisis Shifts German Politics, Maybe for Good

[pampango]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/29/world/europe/29iht-germany29.html?_r=1

Economists have played down the effects that the earthquake and nuclear emergency in Japan will have on global growth. But the elections in the state of Baden-Württemberg on Sunday were transformed by the events there. After a contest that became largely a referendum on atomic energy, voters swept aside the Christian Democratic Union, the party of Chancellor Angela Merkel that had governed the state for 58 years, and set the stage for the first German state government led by the Green Party, longtime opponents of nuclear power.

The vote is all the more astonishing because Baden-Württemberg is a conservative, wealthy state that exemplifies both the post-1945 birth, and the renaissance of Germany’s export-driven economy. Stuttgart, the state capital, is the headquarters of Daimler and Porsche. The medium-sized firms that are the backbone of German export success flourish, while the Black Forest embodies a very German reverence of nature.

The Web site of the Green Party reassured voters Monday that its leaders do not plan to tamper with the region’s economic success, built around big manufacturers like Bosch and mid-sized engineering and machinery companies. At 4.5 percent, Baden-Württemberg has the lowest jobless rate in Germany. “The people voted for us in order for the state to remain as successful as it is,” the Green party said.

“The Greens are a mainstream party through and through, especially in this state,” said Gero Neugebauer, a political scientist at the Otto-Suhr Institute at the Free University of Berlin. That contrasts with other protest parties in Europe, many of which lean rightward, embrace nationalism and mistrust immigrants. The Greens’ national co-chairman, Cem Özdemir, is Turkish.

[jwirr]

1. This thrills me. Many fear that green means some radical ideal that

would forget the needs of the people in favor of nature alone. That is not true. I read "Natural Capitalism" by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins & L. Hunter Lovins and was delighted that they considered the need of the less fortunate in their plans. Of course there are greens who are that radical but I doubt they will ever have a party strong enough to fool enough to get elected unless of course they lie like Walker did in WI.