It’s getting hotter
Glaciers worldwide are melting three times faster than climate researchers predicted 20 years ago. In Europe, too, temperatures have reached new highs. The summer of 2022 was the hottest since weather records began, i.e. since 1870, according to the Copernicus climate observation service.
The consequences: Less and less snow and dramatic glacier melt in the Alps, forest fires like not seen in 15 years, extreme heat in southern European cities, water shortage also in Central Europe. In Andermatt, there has never been so little snow in the last 30 years as in the winter of 2022/2023. Even the artificial snow is melting. The summer of 2022 was 1.4 degrees warmer than the average of the last 30 years. The climate in Europe was 2.2 degrees warmer than in the pre-industrial period from 1850 to 1900.
This heat has negative impacts on human and animal health, agriculture, river navigation, and the energy industry. In Greenland, temperatures in September were eight degrees higher than normal. This caused unprecedented melting of glaciers.
In Italy, water reservoirs are already as empty as they usually are in the middle of the year. Spain is groaning under an unprecedented water shortage. The country will suffer billions in losses due to fewer vegetable exports than usual.
And in Germany?
The traffic lights are arguing, the young activists are getting stuck in, and the citizens are despairing of the heat turnaround that was miscommunicated by Economics and Climate Minister Habeck. The German government’s Council of Experts chides the government for doing too little to protect the climate. The FDP transport minister is torpedoing the transport turnaround and the chancellor is anything but the climate chancellor announced during the election campaign.
It took the traffic light government three months to make it clear that there will be large government subsidies for heating replacements. And even that is being argued about. FDP leader Christian Lindner voted in favor of it as a member of the government, only to oppose it again immediately afterwards.
The question arises: who is actually breaking the law here? (TAZ). The “climate stickers” (BILD), who want to shut down Berlin with sit-in blockades and draw attention to the traffic turnaround, or politicians who break their own laws?
Only one thing is certain: There can be no energy turnaround without a turnaround in transportation and without a turnaround in heating.
Source
Franz Alt 2023 / Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
