Pacific Standard May-June 2013 Cover

Benefits of Bowling Alone

May 7, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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Thanks to Robert Putnam, we tend to think amassing social capital is a good thing to do. Thanks to Sean Safford, we know that too much of a good thing can do a world of harm. Can a community have too much trust? Europe's geographic mobility problem: According to documents seen by the Financial Times, the E.U. is working on plans to combat the problem by extending the period during which economic migrants can receive unemployment benefits from their home country from three months to six months. This, it is hoped, will make it easier for citizens to move around the bloc in search of work, a ... Read More

More like this: Burgh Diaspora
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Germany Unplugs Nuclear Power, Doesn’t Plug in Anything Else

April 2, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment

Two years after deciding to phase out nuclear power, Germany's government just reported that it is still producing more energy than it needs. Europe's largest economy has suffered no shortfalls in electricity supply and quadrupled its energy exports to neighbors compared to 2010—before the phase-out. That's according to Germany's state statistical service. Before the drawdown, German nuclear plants represented 20-25 percent of the country's electricity supply. Solar and wind alternatives, meanwhile, are not yet online in sufficient force to take up the shortfall. The lights, however, have ... Read More

More like this: The 101
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Today in Saving Print: The Green Bay Packers Model

October 2, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
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Via The Guardian: A German newspaper, Die Tageszeitung, has figured out how to navigate the collapse of newspapering's 20th century business model -- by selling shares of itself to its readers. The paper has no owner, and shareholders don't get control over daily operations but can suggest policy. The plan resembles models from sports, where co-ops own successful teams like the NFL's Green Bay Packers and soccer's Futbol Club Barcelona. Fans can own a share of the team, and vote on a board and a chief administrator, but can't meddle in picking the coach or managing the ... Read More

More like this: The 101
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Will Japan Follow Germany’s Path to Green Energy?

April 6, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

Japan is shutting down the last of its nuclear power plants. While the closure is slated to be temporary, popular opinion has shifted, and no one is certain when or if the reactor will be brought back online. Prior to the Fukushima earthquake and tsunami, Japan counted on nuclear generation for 30 percent of its electrical needs.  After the disaster, they turned off 53 nuclear plants, with the last one scheduled to go offline this month. Miranda Schreurs, professor of comparative politics and director of the Environmental Policy Research Centre at the Freie Universitat Berlin, says Japan ... Read More

More like this: By The Way ..., Environment
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Pirate Party Docks at Berlin’s Parliament

January 31, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

The recent U.S. shutdown of the Hong Kong-based file-hosting service Megaupload has led other file sharing sites to tighten their content sharing practices, for fear of facing criminal charges. Seven of Megaupload’s executives were charged with copyright violations, racketeering, and money laundering, while CEO Kim Dotcom, a German-Finnish citizen, was arrested along with four others and could face up to 55 years in prison. Hackers have retaliated, leading some, like the ubiquitous “Anonymous,” to claim credit for attacking the Justice Department's website. But while pirating ... Read More

More like this: Politics
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Greece, North Africa Promote Their Solar Projects

September 28, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

If you listen to solar advocates in Europe, the upheavals on this side of the globe — revolutions in North Africa, debt misery in Greece — have only brightened the prospects for solar power. German plans to phase out nuclear power have put at least one large nation in the market for new sources of power, and two would-be providers have sworn that global crises won't hurt their ambitions. On the contrary — they'll help! (Just watch out for those other solar salesmen.) First there's Greece. Germany's perennial project to both aid Greece and save the euro might include a deal to buy ... Read More

More like this: Environment, European Dispatch
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Russian Gas and the Cost of Germany’s Energy Revolution

September 14, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Last week, in front of a crowd of journalists in Vyborg, Russia, Vladimir Putin sat at a desk and inaugurated a major new gas pipeline to Germany with a banal, 21st-century gesture: He clicked something on a computer screen. The Nord Stream pipeline is Russia's first direct gas link to Europe, and, by next year, it should bring enough gas to the EU to generate the energy "of 11 nuclear power plants," Putin boasted. It was a reference to German energy policy, but Angela Merkel wouldn't have smiled. When the Fukushima disaster pushed her to make the quick decision this summer to shutter ... Read More

More like this: Environment, European Dispatch
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The Greening of Angela Merkel

August 31, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Before Japan's Fukushima disaster, in any German debate on nuclear power, Chancellor Angela Merkel played the role of a cautious and conservative mother hen. We may not like it, she said, but nuclear energy is easy on the climate, and a national shift to solar and wind power would need a long and sturdy "bridge technology." A trained physicist, she seemed to speak from professional prudence. After Fukushima, she changed her mind with dizzying speed. The results are well known: German nuclear plants will go dark by 2022, and the nation will steer a hard course for renewable power by working ... Read More

More like this: Environment, European Dispatch, September-October 2011
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High-Speed Rail’s Weak Link Is Security

May 4, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

One of Germany's busiest high-speed rail routes is the link between Hamburg and Berlin. I've been using it for months. On the days when I need to be in Hamburg, I roll out of bed around dawn, shuffle through Berlin before traffic starts and find a seat on the train just in time to scowl out the window over a cup of mediocre coffee. Ninety minutes later I'm in Hamburg. The trip takes three hours by car. When Deutsche Bahn renovated the 160-mile stretch in 2004 to allow the current speeds, it wiped out the market for business flights, just as a good high-speed rail corridor in California ... Read More

More like this: European Dispatch, Politics
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Slashing Solar Subsidies, and Lighting Way for China

January 26, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Germany's famous solar subsidies — which I wrote about ("Germany's Fine Failure") a year and a half ago — have come under steady pressure from Berlin since Angela Merkel’s government shifted rightward in an election at the end of 2009. For the second year in a row, Germany has trimmed the public incentives that helped make this damp and overcast nation the largest solar panel market in the world. At first it sounds like a cruel idea, particularly since Merkel and her allies have also reversed the nation's historic phase-out of nuclear power. But in fact it's a sign of health. The ... Read More

More like this: Environment, European Dispatch, Science & Environment
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