Forest fires, heat note, climate refugees
The Ukraine War, the increasing energy prices and the increasing heat have made it possible: Germany finally accelerates the energy transition.
Bundestag and Federal Council decided to expand renewable energies faster. Greens, SPD, FDP, the left and the Union parties support this acceleration in unity that has not yet been. Only the AfD is still on the brake.
Since the climate crisis is not just a German problem, Chancellor Scholz is trying to found an international climate club that is a pioneer in climate protection by the end of the year and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock calls climate protection on the Pacific island of Palau threatened by the downfall.
It takes first steps towards a climate foreign policy. No world region is already suffering from the climate crisis as much as the Pacific states, but their share of global greenhouse gas emissions is low, Baerbock said to the inhabitants in Palau. “This is a blatant injustice.” Already today due to the increase in sea level in many Pacific Islands, people have to leave their homeland as climate refugees.
A year ago, Germany had to painfully experience that climate change not only affects island states through the floods in Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia. The flood cost 184 people and caused damage of over 40 billion euros. From 2018 to 2020 we had three consecutive drought years. Five percent of the German forest area was lost, there were billions in agriculture and 19,000 heat note in Germany in these three drought years.
Scientists assume that the climate in Germany will heat up by 1.6 degrees by 2050 compared to the beginning of the century. Most summer get warmer and drier than before. The EU Commission has calculated that 90,000 people will cost life every year by 2050. The risk of fire is increasing, new disease carriers like the fly mosquito migrate. And up to 30 percent of animal and plant species could die out. Del around the next 30 years will be about as strong as in the past 9,000 years (Süddeutsche Zeitung, 08.07.22).
Therefore, the historical decisions of the Bundestag will have to follow many other resolutions to accelerate the energy transition in the past few days if we want our children and grandchildren to be spared at least the worst. We can no longer stop climate change itself. And the Paris goal, according to which it cannot be warmer than 1.5 degrees compared to pre-industrial times, can hardly be reached. Hirzel Verlag | Franz Alt / Ulrich von Weizsäcker “The Planet is looted” © Hirzel Verlag
It is already burning in many parts of our earth. We are currently heading for “Drei Grad mehr” (three degrees more) – according to the realistic title of a book that has just been published by Klaus Wiegandt (ed.). This means that it gets six degrees hotter on land if we continue as before. With devastating consequences for all humanity and for all life. But we don’t have to continue as before. There are always alternatives.
Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker and I show you in our new book „Der Planet ist geplündert – Was wir jetzt tun müssen“.
