Nowhere do the climateers enjoy so much ascendancy over politics and the media as in Germany, and nowhere have they faced so many setbacks and humiliations

Despite all appearances, climate ideology appears to be in the early stages of irreversible, long-term decay.

The airplane problems of the German Foreign Minister had a boring but revealing coda this week:

Liberal Finance Minister Christian Lindner, to address widening concerns about German deindustrialisation and ameliorate the recession, drafted something called the Growth Opportunities Act. This largely symbolic legislative proposal, worth 6 billion Euros, was supposed “to improve the liquidity of companies and to incentivise them to undertake permanent investments and dare to have the entrepreneurial courage of innovation.” Robert Habeck, the Green Minister of Economic Affairs, was eager to support the legislation, following the embarrassment of his catastrophic Gebäudeenergiegesetz and popular impressions that he’s ruining the German economy. Yet his party comrade, the Green Family Minister Lisa Paus, went rogue and blocked it in the cabinet, demanding more funding for child social services as a condition of her support. The coalition, which had gone into the August holidays resolved to avoid its constant infighting and present a more unified front, is once again showing signs of serious disarray.

The episode hardly matters, except for what it tells us about the Greens: The technocratic, climateer arm of the party, which Habeck represents, has suffered nothing but defeat and embarrassment since the energy crisis. Their cataclysmic proposals are perceived as the dalliances of elite ideologues out of touch with the poor and the disadvantaged. This has opened an important fissure in the party, with a more traditional social welfare arm – represented in this case by Paus – eager to exploit Habeck’s weakness to push for their own agenda. It’s not hard to imagine a near future universe, in which the Greens largely abandon climate policies, in favour of traditional social entitlement programmes on the one hand, and the Atlanticist posturing of people like Annalena Baerbock on the other: Democracy for Ukraine, money for poor children, rainbow flags on every corner, and let the European Union figure out how to de-warm the earth.