Found another factor of why it all went so wrong:
Ofc, Merkel's adherence to neoclassic and her hesitant personality.
AND false trust in her physics PhD not only indoctrinated newly elected intl. politicians: "Tech will solve climate, no worries", it also befuddled Schellnhuber!
(In the interview snippet from @DIEZEIT Schellnhuber speaks of a few instances when he got quality time with Merkel and they studied graphs and calculations. He describes her physics PhD as overall very beneficial, something akin to a god-sent gift to mankind)
Precisely bc of Merkel's PhD in physics and her interest in some slides, he thought, she was the right person in the right position.
She wasn't.
If a leader apparently sees urgency but moans they can't act, mimimi,
you better go and warn the public: this leader is incapable.
Her own choice of personnel, eg the delayer and denier Altmaier as chief of her chancellor's office, also Minister for the Environment, and now as Minister for Economy and Research was proof enough of her personal unwillingness to #FaceTheClimateEmergency – despite of her PhD.
She let her Minister of the Interior vote against DublinIII in 2013 in EU Council. She'd have had the chancellor's competence to put her foot down. But she chose not to. And continues to support fascists refugee politics on her watch, ever tightening national and EU asylum rules.
Enough proof over her 15yrs for unwillingness and incapability to #FaceTheClimateEmergency Her PhD was not advantageous.
She has no political vision but decadence. Her style is of a sly hesitant bureaucrat which caused several crises –for whose "management"she is then praised 🙄
Merkel's interest in Schellnhuber's slides was disconnected from her reality –but stroked his professional pride? Anyway he was blind to her personality being incompatible to the task.
But he could've warned the public each time chancellor Dr Merkel said: "I can't do anything!"
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@MarvinTBaumann @ClimateDad77 I get your psych. thinking. But. Sit down and sketch a project plan with milestones and deadlines for keeping tech-civilisation afloat. Don't forget culture change toward solidarity: You'll find that only today's decision makers in econ & politics still ⏩
@MarvinTBaumann @ClimateDad77 can change our trajectory on time=in budget. With "today's decision makers" I really mean today's. So it doesn't matter a lot if non-decision-makers get depressed [by the truth]. It's not in their hands anymore, anyway. Covid saw to that. (That's how close we are to deadlines!)⏩
@MarvinTBaumann @ClimateDad77 On the other hand: realizing the truth in the big likelihood of a total crash soon frees up resources for also realizing what can be done today to help crash survivors. It's not the "end of the world" when tech-civilisation ends. People & rural communities can prepare but need⏩
Even renaissance societies relied on extraction, international trade and specialisation.
But rekindled societies after the collapse only have non-useful know-how at first, resulting in caveman-level of useful sophistication
– *and* again rely on fossil and wood fuel for even the most basic tasks.
I agree with Robert Harris' "Second Sleep" where only population outside metropolitan areas survive the famine and violence. How could we today help the survivors to rekindle a *sustainable* organisation?
Which cultures r likely to rekindle societal organisation beyond tribes? IMO non-urban S-America. How to bolster those future attempts today, paper knowledge caches? How to curate that knowledge for its likely usefulness? "When there's no pharma industry: medicine for dummies"...
The soft-sci troubadours sing about degrowth and doughnuts. Ballads of soft "transitions" to utopia. Risk awareness can't grow because these ballads are about a far-away time, not heeding the requirements of today's breeched planetary boundaries/budget.
I spent lotsa time deciphering the climate of the Pliocene or MIS11 and listening to ballads of "transitions" to utopia.
Assuming that this surely was what I need to know.
But neither physicists nor troubadours cover what would have raised my risk-awareness to reality-levels.
Intriguing.
A long drought prevailed AD 500ff in East Mediterranean & Arab Peninsula. Might've been in more regions but these I know of.
The 1st plague epidemic from rat fleas began in Kush/Egypt 541-549 and culled MENA & Europe.
Long droughts cause (death, war and) migration..
Did (the aftermath of) the drought fuel epidemic spread? Likely. Drought weakens states, workers flee, wars ensue, armies carry🪲everywhere.
Did Kush experience drought, too? Was the (onset of the) pandemic even caused by rats' or human behaviour that was influenced by drought?
What human or rat behaviour would trigger rat fleas to jump and infect humans?
I'd imagine you need lots of rats to increase the chances of a few infected fleas to jump. These rats need food and also be brave enough to run around in the immediate vicinity of humans.
Hm.
Intriguing is that Chile's citizens turned out to be the most risk-aware in this international Facebook survey. Of its 19mio citizens, 1094 took part in the survey and 60-70% know they'll be harmed personally by climate change.
This is the level of awareness we need!
The survey was conducted in Mar-Apr 2022, ~6 months after election and 1 month after inauguration of new left govt. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Chil…
I don't know anything of the talking points during their election. The only thing I know is, they now have a cli-sci as new EP secretary.
It might be that election campaigns were based on climate by all candidates and that this has in turn heightened the climate-awareness and the so important risk-awareness so much so that 60-70% rightly assume personal harm from climate change.
2 more awareness-factors could be