In his closing statement at last week\u2019s presidential debate, Donald Trump made a blink-and-you-miss-it comment that earned a pointed response from the German government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou believe in things like we’re not going to frack, we\u2019re not going to take fossil fuel, we\u2019re not going to do things that are going to make this country strong, whether you like it or not,\u201d he said<\/a> to his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. \u201cGermany tried that and within one year they were back to building normal energy plants.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n For German audiences or anyone who has followed Germany\u2019s decades-long push to move away from fossil fuels and nuclear power, Trump\u2019s comments made little sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They also showed the peculiar place Germany holds in global energy discourse, as an example that can be used to argue for or against just about anything. Germany has had enough successes and failures that one observer can say, for example, that the country has been a model for deploying renewable energy, while someone else could focus on how some of the same policies have provoked public backlash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n