Resistance is Not Futile
by Christine Lepisto, Berlin on 05. 6.06
Here’s one for the "I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore" category. Fed up with the current round of energy price increases, a growing number of German consumers have decided not to pay and, so far, the courts are supporting them. Simply put, paragraph 315 of the German Federal Legal Code prohibits one-sided, inappropriate rate-hikes and the burden of proof is on the supplier. The irony is, even if the current rate hikes are appropriate (which they don’t appear to be), if they were built upon previously inappropriate rates (and the fact that energy in Germany was considerably more expensive than neighboring countries points to this), then the consumer wins. This is particularly relevant when one considers the cozy past relationships between German politicians and the energy concerns (the most blatant being ex-Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s sweet deal, announced only a few weeks after losing the most recent election, to head up the multi-billion partially federally subsidized Baltic Sea pipeline Consortium.)
Consumers dictating prices might strike terror in the heart of every self-respecting capitalist, however, keep this in mind. Businesses, such as this copper refiner [German link], are building their own power plants--using money they’d rather invest in their core business--because it is cheaper than buying energy from one of the four major suppliers. And while many treehuggers may share my fantasy about living off-grid with biomass breadovens, solar lights and windpowered laptop battery chargers, the reality is that most cannot realize this. I recommend German TreeHuggers download the form protest letter and get in the protest game! Then use the money you saved on your energy bill for your D-I-Y Solar.
Via ::Energie Verbraucher [German])
Photo: Peter Finch in Network via American Rhetoric
Hehe, I like the deafening silence in the comments section on this one. Guess nobody is really all that surprised (I'm not).
The biggest reason for the high energy prices is that the government privatised the energy companies in a market situation without competition. Anyone with a high school level knwoledge of economics can tell you that this leads to high prices.
A bit strange that this knowledge seems to be absent with the free market proponents.
By the way, high energy prices can be a good thing for the environment. For example: in Europe the cars use much less petrol thanks to the higher petrol prices. However, the extra profits should be spent on support for energy efficiency measures, especially for the lower income classes. This is currently not the case, the exorbant profits go to the pockets of the stock owners.
Would someone explain to me why this is a good thing?
Energy prices are rarely representative of the externalities involved in generation and distribution. Of course, high utility rates rarely direct funds towards remediation or restoration, which is unfortunate. But high rates at least reflect the reality of an energy-limited system and encourage conservation.
The Germans certainly have been doing better than most in meeting their Kyoto quidelines and their energy environment tax (the okosteuer) has led to less energy use (even if the procedes were used almost exclusively to fill other budget shortfalls and not invested in environmental friendly activities). But the fact is the mega energie companies have made windfall profits (after killing or buying the smaller competition after winning the price war right after privitisation) and haven't put hardly anything back into clean production or conservation. I think this protest forces some transparency and I would rather see more environmentally friendly manufacturering in Europe than another unregulated coal power plant in China or India, the inevitable location of new production because energy prices in Europe are so inflated.
But then again, being unemployed will really help the environment.