After the Fukushima disaster on 11 March 2011, the German government decided to shut down eight nuclear power plants immediately and the remaining nine by 2022, reversing the decision it had taken in 2010 to extend the operating lives of nuclear power plants. This energy turnaround was justified by the inaccurate claim that the Fukushima accident was due to an underestimated residual risk of water-moderated nuclear reactors. In the years that followed, CO2 emissions related to domestic consumption of electrical energy in Germany rose by about 3% and the cost of electricity supply by about 20%. As the sixth largest emitter of carbon dioxide, Germany will produce only about 2% of the global carbon dioxide emissions resulting from energy use in the second decade of the twenty-first century. Therefore, its contribution to a significant reduction of these emissions cannot consist of a ban on energy sources and technologies. Instead, Germany should explore and pursue a path of emission reduction that is technically and economically convincing enough for other countries to be willing and able to follow. The German welcome culture for refugees and migrants, which was proclaimed by Germany’s highest political representatives from 2014 onwards and practiced by exemplary voluntary helpers via all communication channels around the world, involuntarily provides advertising arguments for the smuggling gangs of organized crime and awakens illusions about a paradise Germany among people in the less industrialized countries of the world. This and experiences during the first immigration spike at the breakup of Yugoslavia are reminiscent of the consequences of the “social transistor effect” in Colombia. This beautiful country had long been unable to find a way out of agrarian feudalism into an industrial society that would have alleviated the hardships of its rapidly growing peasant population, due to armed power struggles between large landowning family clans since 1810. Thus came the orgy of violence known as the “Violencia” in the mid-twentieth century. A brief military dictatorship put an end to it, and the two opposing camps of feudal elites made peace. But it came too late. Informed by their lightweight, battery-powered transistor radios about the good life of the narrow middle and upper classes in the big cities, where imported goods from the industrialized countries promised new consumer experiences, the impoverished rural population flocked to the country’s metropolises, swelling their slums, the breeding ground of violence. Social-revolutionary movements launched by intellectuals and small farmers in the wake of the violencia developed into bloody drug and land-grab wars between Marxist guerrillas, paramilitary militias, and the national armed forces. During the 1990s, Colombia was at times the most dangerous country on earth. But now, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, there is hope for an end to violence and an economic development supported by a middle class that appreciates scientific, technical and entrepreneurial competence and is aware of its social responsibility. However, the living conditions of broad sections of the population are unlikely to improve until Colombia’s rich elites stop transferring their capital abroad and invest it in the environmentally friendly industrialization of their homeland.