At some point on this trip I sit with the psychologist. More precisely at Stephan Grünewald, which researches the soul situation of the Germans at his Cologne Rheingold Institute. Grünewald and its employees have already talked to their compatriots about many crises, about the pandemic and war in Ukraine, but also about the climate crisis, which I started. Here I hope to have an answer to the question: Why doesn’t climate change shed us as it should? Every crisis, explains Grünewald, followed by their own “soul logic”. In pandemic, for example, this was an exponential logic: the excitement increased as quickly as the pathogens. The climate crisis, on the other hand, the result of a linear logic: in such a so many years, the temperature increases to the same and so many degrees, and this linearity, says Grünewald, says we have an effect and thus calming. When he and his employees come to the climate in their depth interviews, the test subjects lean back in a relaxed manner. They then do not tell of the fear of an inhospitable planet, but about mild March evenings. Stephan Grünewald near his institute in Kölnandreas Nefzgergrünewald observation fits the strange mood in the country. Scientists warn and warn of the devastating consequences of global warming, but fewer and fewer people seem to be interested. Five years ago, students all over the country demonstrated for an ambitious climate policy. A pandemic, a war and a heating law later ranks a climate wall unqual party with the chancellor party, and the unsettled politics only takes the topic with pointed fingers. In the minds of crisis -plagued Germans, there is simply no more space for the climate? And how does politics have to tackle the topic so that the voters don’t turn away screaming? I want to find out on a three -day trip through Germany, the flood area and the Autoland, to scientists, politicians and normal people. On the way I am as best I can because you can already find out on the track: transformation – that’s nothing that is fun. Activate external content, it starts, due to residence, in Dinkelsbühl, a small town in Middle Franconia. And off we go with the heat pump. In the medieval old town, I meet Gerhard Zitzmann, who has been working as an energy consultant for many years and does not like to stop at an age at which others can rest. When gas prices exploded and the heating law excited the country, Zitzmann rang the phone much more often than usual. The listener sometimes knew pensioners who did not know how to afford it. Gerhard Zitzmann in the old town of Dinkelsbühlandreas Nefzgerdie uncertainty Zitzmann still feels today. When asked for advice, he often recommends a heat pump: theoretically emission-free, space-saving, regardless of the rising oil and gas prices. However, he often meets false reservations. That such a heat pump never pays off or that it only works in insulated houses. Zitzmann thinks that it has a lot to do with how the debate about the heating law extinguished. With the campaigns and many falsehoods, but also with the poor communication of the government. And Zitzmann gives me an experience. Very few people are concerned with the environment, he says, they wanted what is cheapest or what the state subsidizes the most. At the green conscience of the people, that becomes clear when I stopped at my first stop, so politics cannot set. But then what? From Dinkelsbühl I continue to Würzburg. First of all forty minutes in their own combustion engine to a cheap train station, because no train has been going in Dinkelsbühl since 1985. However, the regional train fails, so on in the car, in my thoughts at another franc: Markus Söder. He already knows why in some areas with the commuter flat rate more hearts than with the Germany ticket – and teasing against everything Greens are well received. There was once a train station. Andreas Nefzgermartin Heilig, whom I finally visited in the town hall, couldn’t harm: The Würzburgers will choose him as the first green mayor of Bavaria shortly after our conversation. The fact that he was a greener did not always stand on his posters what he stands for was also clear to everyone. As Germany’s first mayor of the climate, the charismatic fast speaker has explained to the Würzburgers in the past five years how their city should be climate -neutral. In Würzburg, the climate was earlier than elsewhere. This has to do with the special location of the city in a boiler on the Main. The old town, where there is only a little green, is one of the warmest spots in Germany. There are no phenomena from the forecasts of any researchers dangerously hot days and nights. Heilig’s task as a mayor of the climate was also to protect citizens from such extreme weather. That did not always go smoothly, for example the thing with the trees in the old town. Sacred more wanted it because they look like air conditioning systems. Parking spaces should give way to this. This was holy in the center of a larger plan for traffic: public transport should be expanded, as well as cycling and footpaths, parking garages and underground garages should be created, but areas for trees are free elsewhere. There was resistance among the population because a large parking lot on the Main should be for a fee. Citizens’ decision came, Holy lost. Today he says: “That was my heating law.” Martin Heilig in the Rathausandreas Nefzgermartin Heilig has drawn his teachings from it: communicating, explaining, finding compromises. The administration is currently working on a mobility concept for 2040. In the end, the residents of the old town, where every second household has no car, should be as happy as those in the suburbs who want to park in the center. Heilig had a representative survey carried out, he organized more than a dozen events for citizens and obtained the opinion of bicycle club, ADAC and IHK at an early stage. “That is a lot of effort,” he says. “But it is important.” Included by Heilig’s optimism that politics can tackle the topic without fear of voters, I get on the train to Frankfurt. Arrived at the campus there, Dennis Eversberg quickly ensures disillusionment. The professor of environmental sociology has investigated how the Germans think about the climate, and he says: “We have to assume that a very large part of the population cannot be obtained for determined climate policy, at least not overnight.” Dennis Eversberg on the Frankfurt Campusandreas Nefzgerversberg and his team interviewed several thousand people and identified three groups. The two poles form the “eco-social” and the “defensive-reactive spectrum”, which Eversberg each assigns a quarter of those surveyed. In the first group there are many educated cities, but also people from completely different milieus – they share the conviction that we have to change our way of life if we want to leave the planet in a habitable state. The second group consists more of people at the bottom of society, including many AfD voters; Climate policy appears here as something that leaves you-and that creates anger. Between these two poles, the “conservative-increase-oriented spectrum”, a good third of the respondents. They are people from the middle of the wealth and the upper class, more in the private sector and more in the country and at home. Basically, one is already for climate policy here. In the crises of the past few years, however, it has been shown that it must not hurt. If in doubt, this spectrum of the second car is more important than the ecological footprint, a humming economy is more important than environmental standards.
If you ask Eversberg about political mistakes that have led to the defense attitude, then he does not talk about the heating law. But about Angela Merkel and her way of doing politics. “The big mistake was to tell people: climate protection presents us with huge challenges, but we manage this for you, nothing has to change in your way of life,” says Eversberg. “This promise is what people are suing now.” After the conversation, I wonder whether Merz also notice, at least as far as the climate is concerned. If the Chancellor says something, then mostly that the Germans will heat differently and move around if the CO2 prices continue to rise. How he wants to prevent the arms from becoming even poorer and the angry gives even angry, and he leaves the approximate, and he prefers to leave people alone with the topic. When I broke up in Dinkelsbühl, he kept his first government declaration in the Bundestag. He only briefly touched the climate – when it came to not overwhelming the companies. Forced break: the car wants to be invited. Andrea nefzger’s tornness between the fear of the planet and the fear for prosperity I want to continue to investigate. In Frankfurt I stop by briefly in the editorial team and continue with an electric car from the vehicle pool to the Ahr Valley and to Stuttgart. The battery is actually too small for such a trip, which is why the pain of the transformation is more than they should. In Ahrweiler, a truck parks one of the few charging stations. In Idstein, my app guides me to a pillar that doesn’t work. The pillar fails at a rest area on the Hockenheimring while taking a break. The plan to be at the end of the late shift at the goal of the Mercedes plant in Untertürkheim goes wrong. Instead, I will visit Mercedes employees the next morning the Mercedes Museum. The press office does not want me to address people, but you get emotions here. Already the building on the factory site: a monument. On the top floor, the Daimler engine slide turns on a platform, the first four-wheeled automobile in the world, invented by Gottlieb Daimler in 1886. From there it goes down through the decades of car, on the sloping path between the exhibition rooms, photos show moments of contemporary history, Elvis Presley and Andy Warhol, the invention of the aircraft and the moon landing. The message: The world is in constant change, but one thing is certain – Mercedes brings prosperity and freedom. The fear that this promise will become fragile if Mercedes, like German industry, loses the connection from sheer change, also feels Clara Schweizer. Or as she says: “There have been easier times to do climate policy.” Swiss, which I meet half an hour’s drive from the museum in Nürtingen, wants to run for the Greens in the Baden-Württemberg state election, in the previous constituency of Winfried Kretschmann. Auto suppliers are also stroking there, and Swiss will have to explain to people how exactly you can stay the Autoland at the same time and promote the turnaround in traffic. But she also says about Nürtingen: “Here I see how much is possible.” Clara Schweizer in Coworkings Space in Nürtingenandreas Nefzerschweizer, 22 years old, is one of those who have been infected by Greta Thunberg. First you and her classmates went to Stuttgart by train to the climate strikes, then organized their own in Nürtingen. Schweizer was voted to the local council, later to the district council, and she built up the “Klima-Taskforce”. There, representatives of Nürtingen city politics, administration, business, science and civil society gather in order to initiate concrete projects. “Instead of complaining to us that too little is going on, we wanted to experience self -efficacy,” says Schweizer.Sie and her fellow campaigners organize bulkbearing for balcony power plants and tinkering on a plan to heat entire row house blocks with large -scale heat pumps. They train citizens of solar consultants and organize groups of people who help each other to insulate their houses. That and a lot more describes Schweizer in a co-working space on the edge of the old town, there is a kicker and only oat milk for coffee today. How do you sell so much Berlin-Kreuzberg in a Swabian middle city? Schweizer says: “If you link the topic to the everyday reality of life of the people, if they draw added value and simply pay off, then pack up.” From the Autoland into the Ahr Valley. Four years ago, more than 130 people lost their lives in one of the floods that are becoming increasingly likely due to climate change. The road to the center of Ahrweiler still leads over a makeshift bridge, and rubble lines the banks of the Ahr. In contrast, most half -timbered houses are restored in the old town. In search of a place where you could get into conversation, I find a unpacked shop on Google Maps. When I arrive there, I stand in front of a Greek restaurant. The offer of the day is written on a blackboard: Schnitzel with fries for ten euros. The road to the center of Ahrweiler is still leading over a makeshift bridge. Andreas Nefzgerja, two years ago it would have been closed, tells me Dennis Sejournet on the phone. On the night when the water came, he was on duty as a train driver and stood in Leverkusen for hours, while the wild Ahr just rushed past his house. After that, says Sejournet, he wanted to do something. In the corner house in the old town, in whose sales room there was a car after the flood, he opened the unpacked shop with his wife and a friend. At the beginning it was great, says Sejournet. But then the war in Ukraine, the energy crisis, inflation, and the shop only visited those who did it out of conviction, and no longer those for whom it was a fashion. When he and his wife moved to the north because of the profession, they closed the shop. With this question in my head I continue to Cologne, to Stephan Grünewald, the psychologist. Grünewald then tells of the “soul logic” of the climate crisis and the constitution of Germans in general. In his depth interviews, Grünewald observes that many people withdraw in private in the face of the threatening crises. Due to their “displacement curtain”, they only let in when it comes to their own life. Transferred to the climate: If your own house is not washed away, then the great scary change remains outside, but there are rising fuel prices and new heating regulations. Grünewald does not want to leave it as pessimistic. Because he also sees “much accumulated motion energy” by retreating to private individuals. The psychologist compares the matter with therapy. In order for this to be successful, suffering is needed. So far, climate change has not been sufficient. However, an promising picture of the goal can also actively act, says Grünewald and now sounds like Clara Schweizer, the former climate activist, or Martin Heilig, the future mayor. He prefers to talk to the Würzburgers about how nice it will be when there is more trees, instead of how bad it will be when the heat increases even further, and he says: “It is only in a good mood.” When I am on my way home, my own mood is challenged again: Shortly before Frankfurt, a burner Porsche is the only suitable ladder pillar. But a little will is also part of it when it all get something.
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