A good read by Charles Johnson in City Journal:

In Germany, Weltschmerz is the sadness one feels when comparing the way the world is to the way it ought to be. German environmentalists must be suffering a profound case of it as not-in-my-backyard protests derail industry- and government-planned alternative-energy projects. Germany’s Renewable Energy Sources Act (Erneuerbare Energien Gesetz, or EEG) was supposed to help the German Ministry for the Environment achieve its goal of renewables producing 30 percent of the country’s electricity by 2020. Instead, the EEG has met with widespread opposition.
Crucial to the EEG is a “feed-in” scheme, hailed by greens the world over, which encourages ordinary German households to become energy producers. Under the EEG, any German has the right to feed unlimited electricity — from home-based windmills or solar panels, for example — into the country’s grid. Government-run utilities are then required to buy this energy from the households at a government-determined price. That price, which includes a profit for the households, is locked in under a 20-year contract. In theory, every individual could run a power plant, and every backyard could produce clean, renewable energy.
But in reality, every individual also has a neighbor who doesn’t want a power plant next door. With the help of social-networking websites, Germans — Europe’s most litigious people — have been using the country’s arcane ballot initiatives to delay or shut down their neighbors’ planned energy investments.

The rest here.