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commentary Marianne Weno: You are the air!

You are the air ...
03/15/2006
a matter of opinion by Marianne Weno

energy saving is again being discussed. The Minister remarked recently, if we dispense with all stand-by circuits, we could shut down two nuclear power plants. Yes, if ... Most of us do without
just, not even the most superfluous of things. Not on the spritsaufenden SUV, not to the annual air travel halfway around the world, not to sit in the winter on heated terraces. They suppress what they know about climate change, although the effects are getting closer. Reasons are the wrong signals out of politics. Energy systems - pre-thought out and forgotten.

appeared before a quarter-century, the book energy systems designed from the Freiburg Institute for Applied Ecology, in which the authors of scenarios for improved energy efficiency and alternative energy supplies. At that time, 1980, it was mainly about the dependencies to end of oil and nuclear. For the first time the word appeared on the energy saving as the most abundant energy source. Published in 1995, Ernst Ulrich von Weizsacker and two American co-authors factor of four, the more detail described how only through greater energy efficiency, "Doubling Wealth, Halving Resource Use in" would be possible. That all seemed just as convincing as utopian. If what was practically possible, can prevail politically? While in the renewable energy very slowly something is on the move, was the "energy efficiency" largely stuck in their approaches. Although the industry has done much for cost reasons, to reduce their energy consumption, but as expected, the fundamental structural changes in the land of the resistance of the energy industry have failed. Smaller, decentralized power plants fitted with combined heat and power, nor as to the concept of energy conservation in general. Also red-green was pretty powerless.

The logic of repression

Saving energy is not only technology, but also psychology. Without the willingness of citizens to their power to do something for the climate, we will not achieve our savings targets. As long as there is not as embarrassing to drive four-wheel drive to the mailbox and energy waste in general is not proscribed, are also the local governments do not be dissuaded from senseless projects. What answers today someone you ask if he wants to remove part of his Christmas lights? "Then you see a look in the city around." When asked if he could reduce your heating by one degree, it is perhaps reminiscent of the tropical park in the Cargo Lifter-Halle, which is heated to any heat protection regulation in the summer and winter in tropical temperature.

we would be unhappy without ice houses and artificial snow? Remained unfulfilled life dreams if we could not even fast and super cheap to fly to London? Now and then we read in the newspaper, how long it will take to dry up until the Gulf Stream, or what it means when the glaciers disappear. But no one asks us to draw conclusions. We see hurricanes and floods on TV, but we accept a relationship with our behavior? No doubt we have for other scapegoats. Enlightenment is not allowed and is also difficult. We should not make us consume too much.

let up today, politicians like to take pictures at car shows in the biggest slide. The media willingly follow this line. Thus, critical environmental programs on television, as was the globe long set. Nowhere is it appeals to stop the worst waste. The policy speaks of the binding energy save as "sustainability". How about a campaign: "YOU ARE THE AIR?

author: Marianne Weno for Newsletter Foundation nature Berlin
Florentin Krause, Hartmut Bossel, Karl-Friedrich Müller-Reissmann: Energy Change, growth and prosperity without oil and uranium. An alternative report of the Oeko-Institut in Freiburg. S. Fischer, 1980.

Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker, Amory B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins: factor Four Earthscan, 1995