Dead, missing, flooded villages, collapsed houses: In western Germany, people are struggling with the consequences of heavy rains: Maybrit Illner’s topic on ZDF.
Berlin – “The prioritization of the economy is pissing me off”, states the author and presenter Eckart von Hirschhausen in the current broadcast by Maybrit Illner (ZDF). He speaks to many people from the soul. Because if you have not understood the consequences of climate change for us, given the images from North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate, you have to bury your head in the sand.
Just like NRW Prime Minister and Chancellor candidate Armin Laschet from the CDU, who is connected at the beginning of the program from Stolberg and who, although he is in the dirt with his own feet, still believes that climate protection must be practicable for the economy. So yes, environmental protection, but please only if it does not endanger our growth. Perhaps Laschet should follow Eckart von Hirschhausen’s advice, who recommends anyone who believes the economy is more important than health to count their money while holding their breath. “Mother Earth is sick,” said Hirschhausen on Maybrit Illner (ZDF). And “this is no esoteric nonsense.” Unfortunately, however, the political will to save them is lacking.
Maybrit Illner (ZDF): You have to turn on the turbo
Economist Claudia Kempfert sees it exactly the same way. “Technically all of this is possible,” she said, but in the past it was “due to the political will”. Therefore, when it comes to renewable energies, the expansion of rail traffic, the turnaround in traffic and electric traffic, “turbo” must be put in place.
The SPD member of the Bundestag Karl Lauterbach is much more pessimistic. The expansion path Germany is on the way will not be enough to switch 100 percent to renewable energies within the next fifteen years. Even parts of the government, “especially Peter Altmaier, would no longer believe in it and would think about such” phantasms “as the import of renewable energies.
Maybrit Illner (ZDF): Andreas Jung contradicts
Andreas Jung, climate expert at the CDU, has to object immediately. His party is very much in favor of renewable energies having to be expanded, yes, they have to be “unleashed”. It is just a shame that the CDU party program does not state how this unleashing should actually take place.
But the Spiegel journalist Christiane Hoffmann doubts one way or another that the majority of the citizens are ready for this unleashed. “The moment the Greens said that we would make fuel 16 cents more expensive, they dropped two points in the polls,” she reminds the talk show guests.
| Maybrit Illner (ZDF) – The guests on July 15, 2021 | |
| Armin Laschet (CDU) | Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, candidate for chancellor and party chairman |
| Eckart von Hirschhausen | Doctor, moderator, supporter of “Scientists for Future” |
| Karl Lauterbach | Physician and health economist, member of the Bundestag SPD |
| Claudia Kemfert | Head of the “Energy, Transport and Environment” department at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) and professor at the Leuphana University of Lüneburg |
| Andreas Jung | Climate expert of the Union parliamentary group, Deputy Chairman of the Union parliamentary group |
| Christiane Hoffmann | Author in the Spiegel office in the capital |
| Katja Horneffer | Meteorologist, ZDF weather editor |
But what are 16 cents for fuel compared to the consequences of climate change that Canada, North America and western Germany are just beginning to feel?
What will we say to our grandchildren when they stand before us twenty years from now and ask us why our economy was more important to us than saving the world?
To the broadcast
Maybritt Illner – the political talk on ZDF. Topic: “Flood of rain and heat records – defenseless in the climate crisis?”, From Thursday, July 15, 2021, at 10:15 pm on ZDF. The broadcast in the media library.
We run into the catastrophe with our eyesight. And instead of first making a diagnosis, as Hirschhausen says so beautifully in the show, as with every sick person, and then starting therapy, we don’t dare to tell the truth about the climate crisis.
Because the truth would reveal that the only effective therapy is complete economic and social change. (Bettina Schuler)
