Berlin has just been treated to a glimpse of what “net zero” looks like when it stops pretending. As temperatures plunged well below freezing, a suspected arson attack on high-voltage cables near the Lichterfelde power plant plunged swathes of the city into darkness. Tens of thousands of residents found themselves shivering in the dark—initially hitting roughly 45,000 households and more than 2,000 businesses.
The cause was not a technical glitch but a deliberate, terroristic act of “climate defence.” German media reported a claim of responsibility from the “Volcano Group” (Vulkangruppe), a far-left network that stated their aim was to punish the “ruling class” for their “greed for energy”. While hospitals and care facilities scrambled to run on backup systems, the reality is stark: In a modern city, sabotaging power in freezing temperatures is not a “protest.” It is a deliberate endangerment of human life—with officials warning it put patients, elderly people, and children at acute risk.
It is easy to dismiss the Vulkangruppe as lunatics. But we must be honest: The logic of these arsonists is not an aberration. It is merely the armed, jagged edge of the very same philosophy that governs the European Union’s energy policy. The arsonists in Berlin want to turn the lights out to “save the planet”. The bureaucrats in Brussels are achieving the exact same result—just more slowly, and with more paperwork.
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