Is there still hope for us?
“Karl Marx saw it coming – AI capitalism threatens our jobs – and our democracy”, read the headline in *Der SPIEGEL* on 7 August 2026.
But that is not the only piece of dire news these days. Just one week later, SPIEGEL suggests that climate change will turn into a climate catastrophe this summer: “It is as though we have now fully gone through the five-stage model developed by bereavement researcher Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and have reached the final stage: acceptance – the acceptance of the inevitable.”
Indeed, this summer of 2026 brings into stark, tangible reality what climate scientists have been warning about for decades: global wildfires, record-low water levels in rivers, lakes and streams, record-breaking heat on land and in the oceans, and around 12,000 heat-related deaths in Germany alone in the first half of 2026.
Some tipping points have already been reached.
Yet the German Federal Government, with Friedrich Merz as Chancellor and Katherina Reiche as Minister for Economic Affairs, has already capitulated unconditionally to this catastrophe. They declare that we must “learn to live with the consequences of climate change”.
The Federal Government has ambitious climate protection targets. It has cobbled together water strategies, action plans and funding programmes. Yet it is taking hardly any action. And now, of all times, it is even slowing down the energy transition – just when it is crucial to speed it up. Once again, *Der Spiegel* on this tragedy: “The worst thing about this summer is not the drought itself. It is the paralysing complacency with which it is being accepted.”
A country is standing by and watching as the very foundations of its existence die: clean air, clean water, fertile soil. Can we still be saved?
There are role models: Pakistan has increased the number of its solar installations twenty-eight-fold over the last three years; impoverished Ethiopia is the first country in the world to ban combustion-engine cars; and the city of Copenhagen has resolved to be climate-neutral by 2030 and is acting accordingly. Greece is already independent of lignite today because its government relies 100 per cent on renewable energy. Iceland, Costa Rica and Uruguay already generate over 95 per cent of their electricity from renewable sources.
The future is renewable everywhere – in Germany, in Europe and throughout the world: “Solar and wind power are the cheapest forms of electricity worldwide; electric cars are already two to three times more efficient than combustion-engine cars; heat pumps generate three to four times more heat per kilowatt-hour used than gas heating systems; and the storage revolution transfers solar power cost-effectively into the evening,” as calculated by the renowned energy researcher Patrick Graichen.
Yes, there is still time to save ourselves. What on earth are we still waiting for? If the government is asleep at the wheel, alert citizens must organise the transition.
- The Heat of the Future | Around 40 degrees during the day and around 30 degrees at night – that is the future of heat if we continue to treat climate protection as recklessly and carelessly as we do at present.
- Heat threatens the drinking water supply | The heatwave is pushing the drinking water supply to its limits throughout Germany.
