[philippK]

I disagree that greens did not achieve much. They have completely changed the political discourse in germany.

After 30 years of the greens being in the Bundestag, we now have the largest percentage of renewable energy in europe (>20% of our energy already comes from it), even the most conservative of parties now subscribe to quitting nuclear energy altogether (7 reactors have been shut down already, the rest is to follow until 2021) , we have the strictest environmental laws in europe, and on and on.

I would say the greens have been very successful by any measure.

[cabalamat]

> I disagree that greens did not achieve much. They have completely changed the political discourse in germany.

Yes and that's what the Pirates will do. Some ideas will no longer be expressible in mainstream politics, because it will be political suicide to do so, such as: support for disconnecting people from the internet, prosecuting file sharers, paywalled academic journals, software patents, pervasive internet surveillance, etc.

[insn]

> [...] we now have the largest percentage of renewable energy in europe [...]

Source? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_the_Europe... contradicts this

[philippK]

Well it is certainly true that there are countries in europe that have even more renewable energy than we have.

The other countries in europe that have more renewables than we have are mostly smaller countries that don't have the population or industrial output that germany has.

The numbers in the article you cite are also terribly outdated. Some more up to date numbers can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Germany#St...

As you can see there germany has made BIG advances in the amount of renewable energy produced, as well as its overall share of energy consumed.

My point was: * Germany was 20years ago pretty conservative about energy, relying mainly on coal, gas and nuclear.

Then the green party came into the political landscape and now * We are on the forefront of converting our highly industrous economy completely to renewable energies. No other country in europe has increased the amount of renewabled energy produced by 5x in the last 10 years alone. At this rate, we will be overtaking even the smaller countries that may have more renewables than we have now. * We are the only country of this size and economic gravitas that is fully committed to quiting nuclear. * We have very strict environmental protection laws, with environmental protection even enshrined in the national constitution , more so than in other industrous european countries (yes there's always switzerland or other small countries that are nominally "better" at this but you can not compare their impact or structure with large countries such as germany) See also: http://www.goethe.de/ges/umw/ein/en5099932.htm * Gas is more expensive in germany than elsewhere in europe (again there might be exceptions) because of "ecological taxing" that was proposed by the green party

So, in all what i wanted to say was: Germany has changed a great deal due to the green party in the last decades. Where once we were very conservative about ecological ideas, we are now at the forefront, if not the sole leader, in many of these areas. And that is,to a large degree, thanks to the greens because they have put those issues on the agenda again and again - and that way changed the political discourse at large.

[gurkendoktor]

The Greens are also relatively vocal about Verbraucherschutz ("consumer protection"). I think that's where they could keep scoring even when people stop caring about energy.

[nickik]

Are you sure that you have the larges amount of renewable energy in europe? Austria seams to have more and I think Switzerland too. I cant really find good numbers atm.