We mix ethanol from wheat and canola into gasoline and shut down farmland and coal mines. All in the name of climate protection. But what was ecologically dear to us in better times, we now have to say goodbye, says Gunnar Schupelius.
We lived in a beautiful time. There was peace that we did not have to defend. The table was set without us thinking about it, nothing was missing.
We worked on an even better future: energy transition, transport transition, heating transition: everything should only change for the better. The time without too much CO2 seemed within reach. Everything seemed possible.
But suddenly everything is different. The war in Ukraine brings us back to hard facts. Suddenly we learn that NATO needs nothing more urgently than a powerful German Panzer Army, which we have almost completely abolished. Only two of the twelve divisions that we made available to the Alliance in 1990 remain.
Suddenly we are urgently looking for alternatives to natural gas, which has so far been taken for granted as the number one energy source. It poured out of the pipes of Russia, almost 60 billion cubic meters per year. Now we want to cool it down to minus 164 degrees in Qatar and take it to Germany in a tanker.
But that’s not all. Many decisions that seemed absolutely necessary from an ecological point of view suddenly look like pure luxury. We drive with “Super E 10” petrol, which is mixed with bio-ethanol to reduce CO2 emissions.
Bio-ethanol is a fuel that we make from wheat, corn, sugar beet and canola. But we need these plants for food when exports from Ukraine and Russia stop.
Rapeseed oil is already sold out in the supermarket, it is no longer on the shelves. But we put it in our tank. It can’t go on like this.
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And while we’re on the subject of nutrition, the focus falls on the EU’s CAP reform (CAP stands for “Common Agricultural Policy”). After that, the farmers should shut down their fields. Four percent of the arable land should no longer be sown or harvested.
This corresponds to a total area of 4.22 million hectares on which 25.7 million tons of wheat can be produced. This amount in turn corresponds to the annual wheat consumption of all of North Africa.
The fields of the EU should be turned into uncultivated land to give wild plants and animals a home. That may make sense, but we have to be able to afford it. Only then can we give up the farmland for nature reserves.
The same is true of opencast mining. The environmental protection lobby has enforced in court that the coal mines at the largest power plant in East Germany in Jänschwalde must be shut down from May because they withdraw water from nearby wetlands.
Here, too, the main thing is the order: First, the supply of the people must be secured, which would collapse without the coal power. Only when this is secured will it be the turn of the wetlands.
We now have to rethink and do without a lot of things that were ecologically dear and dear to us in better times. We can do it?
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