First and most importantly: I'm writing this article for family and friends with the goal of not constantly having to be the "annoying climate activist".
My aim is to gather as many climate facts as possible in one place and explain why a radical change in politics and how we live together matters so much to me.
This whole issue is genuinely complex and extensive, which is why I'm trying to split it into 3 articles:
- The Current State (this article)
- What's coming (in a timeframe we will definitely still experience, and that forms the core of Ophelia/Aurora's lives)
- What we must do (strictly the scientific/economic consensus and the minimum required to minimise the impacts)
The abstract concept of so-called climate change (more accurately: climate catastrophe) is familiar to everyone by now, and we've all heard the rough outline: sea levels are rising, it's getting hotter, and the probability of extreme weather events is increasing.
But unfortunately that's not the complete picture, and in my opinion it doesn't make the real consequences clear enough.
In this first piece I want to talk about the impacts we're already feeling in Germany today, and also look at what we're seeing around the world right now as a glimpse of Germany's future. These are all measurable things, and the vast majority were scientifically predicted exactly this way. Unfortunately, usually for a few years further in the future. Because one thing has become painfully clear: almost all projections were significantly too optimistic.
Impacts in Germany
The closest to home are the consequences in our own country. A brief summary in bullet points:
- Heat deaths have doubled
- First lakes have already dried up; others affected by blue-green algae
- Economic damage in the billions
- Crop failures
- Water shortages
- Zoonoses
- Forest die-off
Heat Deaths
Since 1955, the number of heat-related deaths has risen by 120%. In the four-year period 2014-2018, that was approximately 12,000. A large share of this growth happened in the decade between 2004 and 2014. For comparison: that's 1.5 times more deaths than in all German road traffic, though it's not entirely fair to compare directly, since traffic itself contributes to those heat deaths.
Dried-up Lakes & Blue-Green Algae
In Brandenburg, the first lakes have already dried up entirely. Where a lake once was, there's now (still) fertile meadow. Across Germany, many more lakes are affected or will dry up within the next 20 years, only to be periodically flooded by heavy rainfall.
The lakes that haven't dried up are already increasingly affected by cyanobacteria in summer. I still remember my childhood swimming in the gravel pit lake at Oppum. These days, warnings about gravel pit lakes are increasingly common due to algae.
To be honest: the climate crisis isn't the only cause of the algae problem. Intensive agriculture plays a role too. But that topic is complex enough to deserve its own article.
Economic Damage
Actually a crucial topic. Not because I personally find economics particularly exciting, but because you constantly read and hear arguments about who will pay for it all, and because the political mainstream (primarily CDU/SPD) tries to frame climate action as something to be "balanced" with the economy.
I find that deeply dishonest, since politics has long been advised by both scientists and economists that climate protection IS economic protection. The only thing that would suffer is short-term quarterly results. In the long run climate action is cheaper, completely ignoring lives and quality of life.
In Concrete Numbers
The fact that we're not only failing to invest in climate protection but that the CDU and in particular Altmaier actively obstructed climate action, makes it no easier. An industry with 80,000 jobs in renewable energy, where Germany was once a global pioneer, has practically nothing left. When even Die Welt, a newspaper that has recycled climate misinformation from the AFDP-adjacent "EIKE Institut", notices, things are truly dire.
Crop Failures
It may have been an anomaly, but last year (2020) crop losses were between 30 and 50 percent. Almost entirely caused by drought. A factor that will definitely intensify. This year (2021) everything is extremely wet, so plants/trees/etc., already weakened, are now fighting rot from the other direction.
So far these conditions have been softened by the fact that we already throw away enormous amounts of food and could import. But our main vegetable/fruit import countries, Spain and the Netherlands, will struggle even more than us, with heat (Spain) and flooding (Netherlands). The Netherlands is already below sea level, currently staying above water only because pumps run continuously.
Water Shortages
Last year in Nieder-Beerbach we experienced it very directly ourselves: two weeks of mandatory water conservation. In Lower Saxony, the fire brigade had to distribute water in some areas because the tanks were simply empty.
Due to our geographically fortunate position, it will remain a matter of days to weeks and be locally limited in the medium-term future, but the impacts will still be severe and are already prompting warnings from water utilities and researchers.
Forest Die-off
In addition to drinking water shortages, about 1/3 of our forests are currently dying. Drought alone is often enough, and where that doesn't finish them off, "pests" help deal the final blow.
The consequences aren't just "less green" or losing more CO2 sinks: they include rapidly declining biodiversity, soil damage (such as landslides), and more severe weather phenomena that are no longer blocked or weakened by forests.
An area of originally around 12 million hectares has already lost 300,000 hectares in the last 20 years, and that doesn't even count the coal-power forests. To be specific: only around 21% of our trees are still healthy.
Zoonoses
COVID-19 was not the first zoonosis and will not be the last. What was once a matter of centuries without human influence will happen more frequently. My generation will live through at least one more zoonosis like COVID, and for my daughters it will become a matter of habit.
The Federal Agency for Civic Education itself goes into detail on their pages, but as so often the priorities remain shaped by what RWE or the domestic steel and auto industry wants.
While we're still fighting SARS-CoV-2, more pathogens of various kinds are already on their way to us. Not only are our efforts on climate/human protection somewhere between inadequate and failing: as a species we kick ourselves again by primarily breeding multi-resistant pathogens through our meat and livestock industry.
Global Impacts
When we talk about climate change, we often talk about so-called tipping points. We've identified around 16 of them so far. A tipping point is a threshold beyond which a process sets in motion that we cannot reverse. After that point, it just runs, and in most cases with self-reinforcing effect.
Permafrost
One of the tipping points we've already reached is that permafrost is thawing worldwide. This releases large amounts of methane, which naturally accelerates warming further. Methane is actually the most lastingly damaging element, but thawing permafrost brings many more problems.
For example, the online version of GEO magazine reports on several studies about further bacteria, viruses, and more hidden there. Most of it will be harmless, but even harmless 15,000-year-old pathogens can hit our immune systems extremely hard, just as happened during the colonisation of the Americas, when European settlers brought their diseases and wiped out entire tribes, not because the diseases were so dangerous in themselves, but because the immune systems of the Native Americans were entirely unprepared.
Rainforest
The rainforest has been misleadingly called the green lung of the earth. Unfortunately, this year we reached the point where the rainforest is releasing more greenhouse gases than it absorbs. That is devastating, and in this case almost 100% attributable to meat consumption.
To say it clearly: we've reached the point where the rainforest is NO LONGER the green lung. In simple terms, we have to rewrite our textbooks; practically, it means we have permanently destroyed one of the planet's most important ecosystems. And for what: highly processed soya?
The irony: people like to point to soya fields and blame vegetarians, while conveniently forgetting that only 6% of global soya ends up in veggie products and the rest is animal feed. The soya from the rainforest doesn't reach German mouths anyway; German products use semi-regional suppliers. And it takes around 12kg of soya to produce 1kg of beef. Pigs and poultry are thankfully considerably more efficient.
"But we can't save the world on our own"
... how do we get others to help?
We don't have to. We mainly just need to stop blocking. In Europe, Germany is THE brake par excellence.
Although we represent just 1% of the world's population, we produce around 2% of greenhouse gases. And that doesn't even include products manufactured in China/Taiwan or services like servers etc. from abroad destined for the German market, which really should be counted against us.
Per capita, Germany is still significantly ahead of China: China is at around 5t CO2, while we're at an average of 11t. Twice as much as the "terrible China". Out of over 200 countries, we're currently in the top 10 for absolute emissions. Do we really want almost 200 other countries to use the same argument? Would we accept "but the others are doing it!" as an argument from our children?
Edit: Finally, here's a wonderful summary by Quarks of the first IPCC report. In total there will be 3 reports and 1 summary. Importantly, the reports are already finished, but won't be published until 2022 because governments are allowed to exercise influence first. A summary of the leak from Part 2 (not due until January 2022) was published by Der Spiegel.
Relevant context: the REASON for this leak is that the scientists are afraid that the report will be watered down by governments.