Energythinking

What Chernobyl Day has to tell us: Youth gives hope - 33 years after the reactor disaster

26.04.2019

What Chernobyl Day has to tell us: Youth gives hope - 33 years after the reactor disaster

Yes, we older people know what we did on that April 26, 1986, but after that we all did too little to save the world. It took a second nuclear disaster, the one at Fukushima 25 years later, for nuclear power to finally be banned, at least in Germany.

When we older people talked about "alternative energies" in the 1980s, we mainly meant solar technology for generating hot water. An IFO institute headed by the unspeakable Prof. Sinn was already trying to torpedo the energy transition back then: Its so-called scientists conceded that green energy had a potential of no more than four percent. We now talk about "renewable energies": unlimited, natural sources that generate heat or electricity without wasting resources. On Easter Sunday, the sun and wind produced more electricity in Germany than was consumed. So we know how far off the mark the Munich-based IFO "top researchers" were with their forecast back then. Nevertheless, they are still allowed to spread lies today, for example when it comes to the sustainability of electric cars.

Speaking of sustainability. At the latest since the world's powers that be decided at the Rio de Janeiro climate conference in 1992 to cut resource consumption and reduce pollutant emissions with "Agenda 21", we have been aware of this: To enable humanity to continue living, we must reduce the burning of oil, coal and gas to zero as quickly as possible.

www.nachhaltigkeit.info/artikel/agenda_21_744.htm

Every year since then, there has been a new climate conference. The successors to the political leaders of 1992 decide anew: "We must do something quickly." And then nothing happens for another year. Until the next summit. All of these decision-makers are older people like us.

But now the younger ones are taking the reins. The 16-year-old Swedish schoolgirl Greta Thunberg

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greta_Thunberg

decided a few months ago: "I'm going on strike every Friday for climate protection." More and more young people around the world are now following her every week. Scientists are joining the Greta strike.

www.scientists4future.org/

And the politicians are alarmed. Because parents and grandparents are finally realizing that they have to take to the streets to enable their offspring to continue living on this planet. Incidentally, they are also doing so today, Friday, April 26, 2019, 33 years after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Only diehards, climate deniers and backward-looking, egotistical politicians will probably never understand that humanity cannot survive without climate protection. Or as a Pulitzer Prize winner put it back in the 1980s: "The earth does not need humanity. But humanity needs the earth."

PS: Incidentally, the annual climate summit speakers are precisely the professionals to whom the young "Fridays For Future" activists should leave the action. At least, if today's re-elected FDP chairman Christian Lindner, who only talks, has his way.

Energieteam Gammel

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