Climate activists vs the likely new German chancellor: how fast can we act?

Por Timo Gerres 

The campaign before the general elections in Germany might have been less exciting than expected by many in Europe. The first general election without a sitting chancellor competing for 70 years, three candidates running for office, a green party candidate with chances of winning, and a big question mark about how a new government could be formed. Well, with all that was at stake, the weeks before the election day on the last Sunday in September were as exciting as any of Bob Ross's "Joy of Painting" episodes, perfect for fighting insomnia.

What made the news was the hunger strike of young climate activists from the "Letzte Generation" (the last generation). After a public declaration on the 30th of August, the activists erected a camp close to the Bundestag, the German parliament, and started fasting. They formulated two demands: 

1. A conversation with them and the three chancellor candidates about the murder of the young generation, taking place immediately. 
2. Each of the chancellor candidates shall promise that the new government would immediately enact a citizens' council to discuss direct measures for the climate crisis, among others, a 100% sustainable agricultural sector. 

Two climate activists, Lea Bonasera and Henning Jeschke, continued their strike until the day before the general elections. They decided to end the strike after receiving a call from the social-democratic candidate Olaf Scholz, who offered to participate in a public debate with both activists within four weeks after the elections. In the end, the debate took place last Friday, the 12th of November, and was streamed online. Watching the recording on the evening of the very same day was my start into the weekend. It motivated me to write this short recap about this bad 50-minute-long non-debate where all participants neither addressed the points raised by the opponents nor pinpointed what might be the practical implications for keeping global warming well below 2°C. 

The two positions can be summarised as follows. The climate activists spent almost their entire speaking time, from theiropening statements, rebuts, and until to the closing remarks, on trying to highlight that global warming is not taken seriously enough. We must act now to avoid the climate crisis. Here, the climate crisis is any scenario where global warming reaches near 2°C or exceeds this level. By visually describing the consequences for the people living in the global south and the immense negative societal changes that could be caused by global warming, the climate activists highlighted the need to avoid any tipping points that could accelerate climate change, as identified by climate scientists (Lenton et al., 2019). Referring to the scientific work on tipping points, the activist gave humanity 3-4 more years to make the transition happen. However, other than their calls for "acting now" and moving to a 100% sustainable agricultural sector immediately, their messages fell short on suggesting actions. 

I must agree with Olaf Scholz in his criticism of the activists by highlighting a flaw in their argumentation; if you call for action, please tell us what you want us to do better. Vice versa, the likely new German chancellor's responses fell short in properly addressing the main point raised by the climate activists. Fulfilling all the promises made by national governments so far will not be enough to keep global warming at 1.5°C. Instead, Olaf Scholz used his speaking time to highlight the magnitude of the challenges ahead. He described the huge efforts needed to transform the German industry over the next decades and listed all the steps to be taken by the new German government to reach national carbon neutrality by 2045. Based on my expertise, Olaf Scholz correctly highlighted that the biggest challenge to carbon neutrality is the transformation of the basic material sector. He mentioned that the steel and chemical industry need to change all their production processes toward climate-friendly alternatives. However, the additional renewable energy supply for these processes can hardly originate from domestic electricity generation only. 

This debate left me behind with one question. Is it feasible to speed up the transition towards a net-zero economy so that the severe consequences of the climate crisis, as echoed in each statement of the climate activists, can be avoided? 

The only solution brought forward by Lea Bonasera and Henning Jeschke, a 100% sustainable agriculture, cannot be the holy grail. In Europe, agriculture is only responsible for 10.1% and globally for 16.2% of all CO2e emissions. The most obvious step towards sustainable agriculture is a ban on any chemical fertiliser. These fertilisers are almost entirely made from fossil resources such as natural gas. As such, their production is highly emission-intensive. The use of these synthetic fertilisers causes the formation of atmospheric nitrous oxide (N2O), one of the accelerators of global warming that is much more harmful than carbon dioxide. 

Let's embark on a thought experiment. Banning these fertilisers would significantly lower the global yield of agricultural production. Even if highly productive ecological agriculture were able to produce similar yields as today's industrialised agriculture, it would imply an unprecedented knowledge transfer to all farmers around the world to train them on ecological farming. However, fully sustainable production also implies that all tools and machinery used by all farmers can be operated with a zero-carbon footprint. Any new equipment necessary to farm must additionally be made from climate-friendly basic materials. A 100% sustainable agriculture can neither rely on a tractor consuming fossil fuel nor a new shovel made from conventional steel. Without tools, though, no farmer can work his land. The results of such a high-speed transition towards sustainable agriculture might be paralleled to Mao's great leap forward to industrialised agriculture that left millions to die in starvation, only scaled up to a global level.

The solution offered by the climate activists is a non-solution if the well-being of our global society is the main goal. Perhaps, is it alternatively possible to complete most of the transition within the 3-4 years by other means? I would agree with the statement that we can speed up the transition in many areas, but 3-4 years or even climate neutrality by 2030, as mentioned at one instant during the debate, might be a bit too sporty. 

Let's use the shovel of the farmer as an example. The first best option would be to use a wooden shovel as soon as the steel shovel is broken. Being an easy fix for one shovel, it would become more difficult if we replaced all broken steel shovels with wooden versions, and in the following, replace steel with wood for any possible use case. Just recalling the countless potential use cases for wood in the construction sector, one must ask: where to get all that sustainable wood from? Wood is a finite resource on our planet and takes a lot of time to regrow. Therefore, the availability of sustainable wood is quite limited ¹, as are other sustainable material options for our shovel. In the end, we will have to use steel or another metal, such as aluminium, to make the shovel, but the basic material must stem from a climate-neutral production process. 

Today, we know how to produce most basic materials with a very low or net-zero carbon footprint. Today, though, we have almost no primary production or secondary (recycling) plants to make climate-friendly basic materials. In Europe, there are currently 30 integrated steel plants, 207 cement plants, and 50 steam crackers operated by the petrochemical industry ². Transforming all these plants within very few years is an industrial construction endeavor with tremendous scope. To ensure that their construction is as sustainable as possible, manufacturing all machinery and kilns that make up these climate-friendly plants must stem from low-emission processes, requiring an even higher number of manufacturing industries to transform. Additionally, some of the novel processes, such as hydrogen-based steel making, also rely on installing new infrastructure to provide the electricity needed for producing green hydrogen or producing and transporting green hydrogen to the steel plant.

Long story short, the transformation of basic material production by itself is a highly emission-intensive endeavor. This transformation would have to take place within very few years to make our shovel and literally any physical good used in our society from low-emission materials. I would therefore argue that emissions caused by the accelerated transformation itself will long surpass our available carbon budget if only 3-4 years remain until we reach tipping points towards accelerated global warming. Following this train of thought, the cat is out of the bag. Global warming far beyond 2°C would be our new reality.

Is it really a carbon budget of 3-4 years that remains? Can it be that we have a couple of more years? I do not intend to debunk this assumption at the core of Lea Bonasera's and Henning Jeschke's argumentation. I trust their statement that this short time window is based on scenarios that stem from scientific research. However, scenarios remain scenarios, some more likely than others. So let's hope our carbon budget is a bit bigger and that enough time remains to transition our societies to net-zero as fast as practically possible. 

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¹ For the European context, see here the report by Material Economics (2021) on sustainable biomass potentials in Europe.

² According to the SFI Global Steel and Iron Database, there are 97 steel plants in operation in the EU27+UK of which 30 are integrated primary production plants. According to the SFI Global Cement Database, there are 207 integrated cement plants in operation in the EU27+UK . Within the EU, there are 50 steam crackers in operation to process hydrocarbons into raw materials (Arns, 2018).