The ZDF summer interview is mostly about nuclear power. Can a nuclear extension plunge the Greens into an identity crisis?
Dusseldorf – Will the nuclear power plants stay connected to the grid longer? Hardly any question has been discussed more intensively in the last few days and was also the main topic in the ZDF summer interview. Because the guest was the co-chair of the Greens, Ricarda Lang, who took a clear edge, but left a back door open.
Shakuntala Banerjee did not welcome the co-chair of the Greens, Ricarda Lang, to the summer interview on ZDF in her home country of Baden-Württemberg or in Berlin, but in Düsseldorf. In front of the conditionally picturesque backdrop of a Rhine bridge, Lang faced the questions and rowed mainly with gestures, but less in terms of content.
ZDF summer interview with Ricarda Lang: is the Akw extension coming?
A good half of the barely 20 minutes of broadcasting time on ZDF was about a question that one could assume could shake the Greens to their core: Will the country’s three remaining nuclear power plants be faced with the supply bottlenecks caused by the Ukraine war stay online longer, right? Shakuntala Banerjee quoted a current Insa survey according to which 70 percent of the population, including a majority of Green voters, support at least a temporary continued operation of the nuclear power plants. The magic word that will probably be used in the end is “temporarily”.
Ricarda Lang repeatedly emphasized “that we have a heat problem, not a power problem” and that the lack of gas cannot be replaced by nuclear power plants running longer. “One shouldn’t use a band-aid that doesn’t fit the wound,” Lang continued in a summery flowery allegory of politicians, but what happens when in winter, instead of overheating with gas, millions of power-guzzling fan heaters are turned on?
Ricarda Lang in the ZDF summer interview: No more talk of the speed limit
FDP leader and undoubtedly unloved Green coalition partner Christian Lindner has repeatedly spoken out in recent days and called for nuclear power plants to continue operating until 2024. In the ZDF summer interview, Lang repeatedly said the sentence with which she was quoted in the news agencies that afternoon: “There will be no return to nuclear power with us.” Together with the word “temporarily” mentioned, one can draw the conclusion from this draw that the Greens will soon also agree to a temporary continued operation of the nuclear power plants, which will, however, be strictly limited in time.
Not the only toad that the Green Basis has to swallow because, as Shakuntala Banerjee listed with relish, the Greens have a lot, a lot maybe too much? have to swallow: There is no longer any talk of a speed limit, the farewell to combustion engines has been softened, the Bundeswehr has been given a whopping special fund of 100 billion euros, and the lifespans of coal-fired power plants have been extended.
Ricarda Lang on ZDF: There is no displeasure with the green base
And now the nuclear power plants? So far, however, there seems to be no resentment at the grassroots level, which can be understood as a sign of growing realism, but also as a fundamental change in a party that once arose out of protest and has long since arrived in the well-supplied middle class. Whether the Greens can govern so easily in all possible coalitions, Banerjee asked spitzt on ZDF? Lang turned the tables and said, especially with regard to the black-green government in North Rhine-Westphalia: “We can achieve green goals in different constellations.”
You could call it pragmatic, and that’s probably how Ricarda Lang wanted the fight for primal green values to be understood. In the ZDF summer interview, she tried to make a virtue out of necessity, to present the possible fall as a strength: “I would also like the other coalition partners to sometimes jump over their own shadows.” It remains to be seen which voters will do so in their party will be worthwhile in the next elections: those whose party backs away from their values, or those whose party stubbornly sticks to their positions, potentially throwing the governing coalition into a crisis. (Michael Meyns)
