Clean Energy for a Better Life

Leading a successful climate-neutral life presupposes that the overwhelming majority of my readers, the overwhelming majority of my fellow human beings, will understand what I am writing. Achieving this takes time, since it requires a clear head, an open mind and the ability to think about the future, to put ourselves in the shoes of future generations, to become future-proof, to draw conclusions from the present and to be prepared, if necessary, to change, adapt and develop our lifestyle.

May I give you a small example? My great-grandparents had a waste bin in their kitchen into which they threw all their rubbish. At the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century, this wasn’t called ‘rubbish’ anymore, but ‘compost’, and it consisted of potato peelings and food scraps. As they kept a pig at home, this animal was fed all the food scraps once a day, so that ‘rubbish’ acquired a different meaning back then; it was food scraps, something very natural, and it was recycled. It entered the cycle of raw materials. Once a year, my great-grandparents would slaughter the pig and make black pudding and pork chops from it.

Whenever necessary, they would take a basket or a shopping bag and go and buy whatever was missing from the kitchen. They took containers for flour, wheat and many other liquid, loose or solid foods, such as milk, lemonade, butter, peas, beans and so on. My great-grandmother would go to the baker’s to buy bread and cakes, to the butcher’s to buy sausages and ham, and to the market to buy the vegetables and fruit that her family couldn’t grow at home: for example, bananas and citrus fruits. Incidentally, she used lemons and vinegar to make her very own toilet cleaner.

Nothing was packed or wrapped in plastic, because plastic was not yet so advanced and crude oil was the raw material needed to provide the chemicals that were used to make plastic in the first place. Since then, time has begun to move much faster in our modern society. Many things have been invented, such as the motor car, the aeroplane and many other new products. Previously, people had given no thought to the question of what to do with a car that no longer works, or with the scrap resulting from these inventions: computers, mobile phones, printers, and so on.

At some point, the television was invented; people switched on the light in the evening instead of lighting a candle; and, for all these things, people now needed electricity – in other words, energy that had to be bought. Cars guzzle petrol or diesel; in aeroplanes, it’s called kerosene.

Energy supply is the key to tackling all our problems: we need to make the transition to 100% renewable energy and ensure greater efficiency in its use. This will result in an indispensable boost to our energy security and sustainability, while simultaneously leading to greater economic fairness.

Cars with petrol engines, lorries with diesel engines and aeroplanes with jet engines all propel themselves by burning these fuels, emitting vast quantities of exhaust fumes into the air; in other words, they pollute and heat up the delicate atmosphere of our planet Earth by producing ever greater quantities of CO₂. We have known this for quite some time, and we also know that we must stop doing this, for otherwise we will end up like a frog that has been caught sitting in a saucepan of water when someone lights the gas or switches on the electric stove beneath it. The frog gradually begins to feel a little warmer as the water heats up. At some point, quite late in the day, the frog will realise that the water is becoming far too hot for it, and it will then kick the bucket; in other words, it will die of heatstroke. This absurd thought experiment with a frog in a saucepan on the stove demonstrates that the rise in temperature may take some time, but that the frog’s death will occur quite quickly. The frog’s death symbolises the death of humanity, the end of all life on our planet, which will inevitably happen if we do not stop burning energy immediately: coal, gas, petrol or diesel, and so on. But then how will our cars run? How will our planes fly? What will we put our milk, yoghurt and apple juice in, if not containers made of plastic, Tetra Pak or whatever else…? The problem with waste is getting completely out of hand. We produce goods and only realise afterwards that most of them aren’t reusable and can’t be recycled. Meanwhile, raw materials are becoming scarcer and landfill sites are growing ever larger and more numerous, and one fine day, all of this will come to an end too.

Things just carry on as they are. Hardly anything changes. The Earth keeps turning, and we humans live trapped in our foolish and comfortable habits. This is what I mean: if we define something as unsustainable, we must stop it, change it and develop it further. Above all, we must simply put an end to harmful practices. There is a solution that Greenpeace has been working on, and, in collaboration with scientists, this environmental organisation has developed a plan for how Portugal and Spain – together or separately – can become climate-neutral. The solution is an interesting one because it promises to save the frog in the boiling pot within 15 years, that is, by 2040. The aim is to be able to manage, work and live in a climate-neutral way ten years earlier than planned, whilst using cheaper, always-available and sustainable energy resources.

One thing is clear in any case: the 80-year-old American warlord Donald Trump is a has-been. He is a man of the past, and his simplistic philosophy of bombing the Strait of Hormuz between Iran and Oman to clear the way for the transport of crude oil, gas and fertiliser – or even blocking it himself – is not only both foolish and brazen, but it also violates international law and makes no sense. Greenpeace, however, has its own idea in regard to this matter, which I will report on in more detail next week. For now, the real issue is freeing ourselves from the shackles of crude oil and becoming independent. Energy independence leads to a more peaceful life, because there is no longer any need for war. We humans can focus on what really matters in life: loving our fellow human beings and protecting the foundations of our existence.