The Germans are not yet openly angry. That would be out of character in a people who have, since the second world war, been eager to atone for the past and be good European partners. In one recent poll, 34% of Germans even said they empathised with the wrath of the southern Europeans. But the mood is shifting. The southerners may see Germany as forcing excessive austerity on them and showing insufficient solidarity, but Germans have a different view.
First, they feel they have already shown solidarity. Almost a quarter of a century after the fall of the Berlin Wall they still pay a solidarity tax to eastern Germany. Some also transfer taxes to weaker German states such as Bremen. Many conclude that, once in place, solidarity ceases being voluntary and instead becomes a yoke. They also bear much of the risk of euro bail-outs, even though a study released this week by the European Central Bank showed that the average German household has less wealth than the average Spanish, Italian and Cypriot one (though this is partly because German households tend to contain fewer adults and are more likely to be in rented accommodation).
Second, they argue that Germany recognised a decade ago that it was not competitive and undertook painful reforms that are now paying off. The crisis countries should follow suit. And third, Germans think the euro crisis was largely caused by rule-breaking (even by Germany itself), which must not be repeated. As one diplomat puts it, “solidarity is important, but it should follow rules. It is not just ad hoc giving.”
Europe
The Germans are losing patience
The World is Running out of Topsoil
A rough calculation of current rates of soil degradation suggests we have about 60 years of topsoil left. Some 40% of soil used for agriculture around the world is classed as either degraded or seriously degraded – the latter means that 70% of the topsoil, the layer allowing plants to grow, is gone. Because of various farming methods that strip the soil of carbon and make it less robust as well as weaker in nutrients, soil is being lost at between 10 and 40 times the rate at which it can be naturally replenished. Even the well-maintained farming land in Europe, which may look idyllic, is being lost at unsustainable rates.
Five of the world’s most livable cities
Not a lot of these cities are designed around the automobile. Here is what makes Vienna such a great place to live.
Austria’s most populous city – Vienna – has won the title of the world’s best city for quality of life since 2009. It is also one of eight European cities to make the top 10 list, showing the region’s dominance in the survey.
Vienna is the cultural, economic, and political center of the country. It has the highest per capita GDP among all Austrian cities at over $55,000. Vienna’s ability to transform old infrastructure into modern dwellings won the city the 2010 United Nations urban planning award for improving the living conditions of its residents. Under a multimillion-dollar program, the city refurbished more than 5,000 buildings with nearly 250,000 apartments. Vienna is also the world’s No. 1 destination for conferences, drawing five million tourists a year — equivalent to three tourists for every resident.
Defending Switzerland
In case you wonder how Switzerland has kept itself from being invaded over the years, here is how.
McPhee points to small moments of "fake stonework, concealing the artillery behind [them]," that dot Switzerland’s Alpine geology, little doors that will pop open to reveal internal cannons that will then blast the country’s roads to smithereens. Later, passing under a mountain bridge, McPhee notices "small steel doors in one pier" hinting that the bridge "was ready to blow. It had been superceded, however, by an even higher bridge, which leaped through the sky above—a part of the new road to Simplon. In an extreme emergency, the midspan of the new bridge would no doubt drop on the old one."
It’s a strange kind of national infrastructure, one that is at its most rigorously functional—one that truly fulfills its promises—when in a state of cascading self-imposed collapse.
I could easily over-quote my way to the end of my internet service here, but it’s a story worth reading. There are, for instance, hidden bomb shelters everywhere in an extraordinary application of dual-use construction. "All over Switzerland," according to McPhee, "in relatively spacious and quiet towns, are sophisticated underground parking garages with automatic machines that offer tickets like tongues and imply a level of commerce that is somewhere else. In a nuclear emergency, huge doors would slide closed with the town’s population inside."Describing titanic underground fortresses—"networks of tunnels, caverns, bunkers, and surface installations, each spread through many tens of square miles"—McPhee briefly relates the story of a military reconnaissance mission on which he was able to tag along, involving a hydroelectric power station built inside a mountain, accessible by ladders and stairs; the battalion tasked with climbing down into it thus learns "that if a company of soldiers had to do it they could climb the mountain on the inside."
In any case, the book‘s vision of the Alps as a massively constructed—or, at least, geotechnically augmented and militarily amplified—terrain is quite heady, including the very idea that, in seeking to protect itself from outside invaders, Switzerland is prepared to dynamite, shell, bulldoze, and seal itself into a kind of self-protective oblivion, hiding out in artificially expanded rocky passes and concrete super-basements as all roads and bridges into and out of the country are instantly transformed into landslides and dust.
