Sun and wind provide peace and freedom
The USA will supply Europe with an additional 15 billion cubic meters of liquefied natural gas in 2022, President Biden has just promised. Russian oil imports can already be halved by summer 2022, Climate Minister Habeck has announced, adding. “In the case of gas, we can become largely independent by mid-2024.”
So a lot of movement in German and European energy policy. But dependencies remain all the time. Sometimes on the USA, sometimes on Arab potentates. But when will we finally be completely independent of other countries with 100 percent renewable energies? And how can that be achieved?
Half of Europe is still dependent on Putin’s fossil fuels. And with it we fill his war chest in his fight against Ukraine. How can this be reconciled with our vows of “solidarity with Ukraine”? These days I remember again that the great solar pioneer Hermann Scheer predicted more than 30 years ago: Germany, Europe and the world can be 100 percent renewable by 2035 at the latest. But who listened to him?
The sun alone sends us 15,000 times more energy than the 7.9 billion people currently consume. Then there is wind energy, hydropower, bioenergy, and geothermal and ocean or current energy. In other words, the entire symphony of renewables.
Solidarity with Ukraine really?
In order to quickly become independent of Putin’s fossil energy, we should remember what U.S. President Roosevelt demanded of the U.S. economy and U.S. citizens in wartime 1942 to defeat Hitler: a top tax rate of 94%, a speed limit to save gas, to eat less meat to defeat Hitler’s tyranny and to live in freedom. Saving energy and energy sanity for freedom was the slogan 80 years ago in the USA.
“Why the heck” but dares today’s German government “not even a speed limit?” asks the Fridays for Future frontwoman Luisa Neubauer rightly and demands the complete boycott of Russian energy sources (taz of 25.03.2022).
That this is quickly possible is proven in this country by regions such as the Hunsrück or East Frisia, which already produce three times more green electricity than they consume themselves, or by the Stadtwerke München, which has already switched to 95% green electricity.
Hannah Ahrendt taught us that the purpose of politics is peace and freedom. However, these noble goals can only be achieved through a rapid switch to renewable energies. In the years of industrialization, there were always wars over fossil raw materials. The alternative is peace through the sun. No potentate can ever wage war over the sun. Renewable energies are the prerequisite for a peaceful world and democratic resilience.
The solution to the energy problem is in the sky.
Source
FRANZ ALT 2022 | Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
