By KlimaNachrichten

Reader’s letter from Otto Glinzer on the blog article from 2.6.2024:

Dear Editors,

In his review in the Nebelspalter, Axel Reichmuth lists the arguments of the sociologist Jens Becker, which support his conclusion that under the current conditions all efforts to ward off the “existential threat” of climate change will fail. According to Becker, the culprits are

– capitalism, which (allegedly) leads to ever greater consumption of resources (the “limits to growth” send their regards), even if the growth is
(supposedly) climate-friendly, environmentally friendly and sustainable – the unreasonable people who prefer to live well today, do not think much of renunciation of consumption and do not take seriously dangers that will only threaten
in the distant future – the greedy fossil energy industry
– the people of the 3rd world (the “global south”), who also want to live in prosperity and are
correspondingly hungry for energy– politicians dependent on democratic elections, who must not offend their clientele

Axel Reichmuth summarizes the statements optimistically: “The market economy system is simply too successful for people to be prepared for a rigid war and renunciation economy because of the alleged disadvantages of global warming. They suspect that climate protection is likely to do more harm than good to the world at the end of the day.”

From a pessimistic point of view, however, it is striking that Jens Becker completely ignores a solution to the problems through non-fossil and non-CO2-emitting ways of reliable energy generation – e.g. existing nuclear energy or future nuclear fusion – and instead uses the argument that “Big Oil” has been designed for decades to “prevent, delay, dilute or evade” effective climate protection. Instead, he writes: What is necessary is an “emergency stop”, but this is not in sight.

What could such a “full stop” considered necessary look like? Taking into account the arguments put forward by Jens Becker, in the face of the “existential threat” to the world, it is apparently necessary to abolish the harmful systems of capitalism and democracy and instead introduce a socialist dictatorship of the intelligent, who know the real threats to humanity, know what is good (and what is too much) for the people, and educate and guide them accordingly.

However, systems of this kind have always led to catastrophe in the history of mankind so far, since the “sensible” cannot even know what is good for each individual human being, moreover lose all knowledge about costs and prices through the elimination of the market and offer creative citizens or companies no incentives for innovations and inventions.

Best regards,
Otto Glinzer