In 1972, the Club of Rome published the study "The Limits to Growth", and in 1977 US President Carter commissioned the environmental study "Global 2000". A number of serious ecological movements emerged. In the 1970s, Austria's Chancellor Kreisky recognized this and showed how to take the sovereign of every democracy, the electorate, seriously. On November 5, 1978, a majority rejected in a referendum the commissioning of the Zwentendorf nuclear power plant and also the use of nuclear energy in Austria. The referendum gained legal force, even though Kreisky himself was a supporter of nuclear power. In the National Election in 1979, Kreisky achieved the largest absolute majority in the history of the democratic Republic of Austria. Kreisky's successors then forgot that ecology, but also peace and corruption, were important issues. So green movements gained political power. In Austria, the Greens can also be thanked for the fact that major cases of corruption, as Kirchschläger criticized early on, were uncovered. We have to thank Rolf Holub, who was the leader of the team that did the work in the investigative committee about the financial debacle of the Carinthian State Bank Hypo and saved the country from ruin, and also Gabriela Moser with her work. For Austria's Greens it was important to have a clean slate for themselves. That has changed now, as it started with the expulsion of the young Greens from the party. Other young people joined now Austria's Greens and damaged the image of the green movement consequently with rumors and intrigues spread on social networks. And Austria's Federal President, as a former Green and head of Austria's Green, is still protecting this barrage of intrigue. As always, the German Greens rage war when they are in government; that was the case with Fischer, and there is no difference now to Habeck and Baerbock. Habeck also praises Ukraine's nuclear power plants. And Baerbock is visibly proud that Grandpa Waldemar was active in the German Wehrmacht's war of extermination in Eastern Europe during the Second World War.

Herbert Gantschacher is Author, Director and Producer