mastodon 4.7.2⭕ Earth system scientist; in Germany, EU - here not in official capacity. 💫
Verification link: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3398-8575
Here are four stumbling blocks I encountered in the city of Magdeburg just a few days ago.
Set into the pavement, they are a memorial to four members of one family. Three were deported and murdered, one met with an unknown fate.
Magdeburg is the capital of Saxony-Anhalt - the eastern German state where nearly half of voters today voted for an openly hard-right party with a nationalist, authoritarian programme.
Just to be clear what people in Saxony-Anhalt voted for: in a parliamentary budget debate today, far right MP W. Wiehle reconfirmed their denial of facts and science.
"The transformation [to climate neutrality] is built on anything but scientific proofs", he proclaimed in total denial of decades of science.
He called policies aimed at limiting climate heating an "historically unprecedented betrayal of the future".
Stressed, way too many people voted against their own safe future.
Rare rain begins to wet the sandy soils of #Brandenburg.
A generation that formulated our early substantial alarms about what we're doing to our planet, our habitat, is leaving us behind. I just learned, via @petergleick@fediscience.org , that Bob Dickinson has passed, a towering scientist on climate and its interactions with other elements of Earth.
In the obituary Peter linked
https://fromtheprow.agu.org/robert-e-dickinson-obituary/
this sentence: "Dr. Dickinson often spoke of his collaborations with community as being the most critical part of his work."
I can personally confirm that:
1/2
There will be elections in Berlin this Sunday. The city's #noafd illiberal hard right has posters that confirm their denial of basic physics. "Affordable energy instead of climate delusion", they post - the party that thinks climate heating is a hoax and promotes closer ties to Russia and its energy - supposedly "in the national interest". Yeah, right. Oh, and nuclear energy. That's going to be fast, cheap and flexible ... errrmm. But clean domestic renewables - noooo! 🤔🙊
On this day, cosmologist-theologian Hildegard von Bingen died, in 1179. Here's her shrine, as I saw it last Christmas in the parish church of Eibingen on the Rhine, built on the location she'd placed her 2nd monastery - after her first, on the other side of the Rhine, in present-day Bingen, became crowded - the one she had in turn founded after she broke away, much to the dismay of the monks there, from the monastery she'd spent most of her life in, above the Nahe river in Disibodenberg.
It once was liberation to end the brutal hardships of manual labor in sectors where this was possible - like in this former brick-making factory I visited here in #Brandenburg last weekend. It now sits as a reminder.
But in a world where facts no longer don't matter much to too many people, where propaganda and slop are pushing aside the concreteness, reliability and sensuousness of the real world, self-determined manual work can be an antidote that reconnects us.
Skill, craft, wood, brick.
A friend produced this: an ad hoc choir sings "Grandma" by Marlo Großhardt (in German). "For all who fear the presence of Nazis in parliaments and wish to resist far right populism and defamation".
A railway station bookstore has Götz Aly's great book on "How could this have happened?", "Germany 1933 to 1945". It examines how a little everyday commonsense politics "for the people" was enough to buy the acquiescence of most of the population. On the basis of which crimes of unspeakable propositions were committed, leaving tens of millions of humans murdered and killed, and cities in ruins everywhere.
Will similar books be published in a few decades on how it could have happened again?
🤔 Really?
From tomorrow, a new "Special Stamp" will be available for postage ✉️ in Germany - on the topic of "Adaptation to Climate Change".
One pays 40 cts on top to "support projects".
Notice the problem 👀 😯!
A) our world looks nothing like the fantasy on the stamp - and politics are making it worse
B) funding this essential adaptation is a primary task of the state, not for "projects" paid for by well-meaning citizens
Will this foster awareness?
With this approach, I doubt even that ...
Should you be interested in understanding the seismic disruption German politics is likely heading towards in early September, when nearly half of voters in a beautiful, vibrant eastern German state full of potential are projected to vote for an extremist far-right nationalist party promising to disrupt the political mainstream, pushing neonazi thought patterns into the mainstream of politics - then read this unflinching piece in The Guardian for information:
https://nolinkpreview.com/www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/19/germanys-firewall-was-meant-to-hold-the-far-right-at-bay-it-may-have-done-the-reverse
The first of my local fuel stations has replaced half of its pumps with 300 kw fast chargers.
It remains outrageous that you can't just pay a uniform price straight-up but are expected to negotiate memberships, schemes and special promotions.
Still. It's a sign of change.
We still laugh about things AI produces ... 😂
I think we'll stop laughing soon.
After polluting the physical, ecological world, we are now polluting the metaphysical world.
The good life: a good book, a coffee, and a train that is almost on time.
The book is a really interesting series of interviews with people who worked in Alvar Aalto's studio from the 1950ies to the 70ies. It reveals what it was really like - the creative process, tensions, drinking, joking - that created such groundbreaking architecture. How good Europe would look if more had been adopted! But art can't be copied. Aalto regarded architecture as an applied art in service of social objectives.
🇫🇮 "Taidetta luodaan vapaudessa. Vapaus on itse otettava. Kukaan, kukaan ei tule sinulle tarjoamaan vapauttaa."
🇬🇧 "Art is made in freedom. You yourself have to take hold of this freedom. Nobody, nobody is going to come to offer you freedom."
Writes Ritva Hellsten on page 181 of her wonderful 2020 novel "Raija", about her sister, Finnish writer Raija Siekkinen, sadly no longer with us, whose brilliant stories have been very close to my heart ever since I first chanced upon them.
Munich's City Hall yesterday.
Because, you know, human rights matter.
This summer, I am teaching a course on socio-ecological transformation, from analysis of the ecological crisis to questions of constitutional legitimacy to strategies.
It fit right in that today - during this week's "Theme Week Science Against #Fascism" at German universities - I offered i.a. engagement with Laurence Britt's 14 characteristics of fascism (2003), and Robert Paxton's 5 Stages of Fascism (1998).
Academia can no longer afford to ignore the illiberal right's attacks on science.
Today is freedom day here in Germany: our gvmt has decided to finally give back to us our birthright to install and use planet- and future-destroying fossil heating systems for as long as we want.
Of course we'll use that freedom to decide we won't, won't we!? Just like we've always chosen climate protection all these years.
Because yes, we firmly stand with our climate targets. Zero emissions, somehow, while we exercise our inalienable right to emissions.
Or something like that.
/irony off/
In its legally mandated evaluation of German climate policy, the Expert Council on Climate (ERK) today again arrives at this conclusion:
"The Expert Council therefore expects that even if the measures of the German Climate Programme were to be fully implemented, none of the legally binding targets to 2040 would be achieved."
Press release:
https://expertenrat-klima.de/fileadmin/ERK/Pressemitteilungen_Meldungen/ERK2026_Pr%C3%BCfbericht-2026_Pressemitteilung.pdf
Along the #Havel river in #Brandenburg, I once again encountered traces of beaver activity - some fresh, some older. Amazingly, these huge old oak trees on water's edge seem to not yet have fully succumbed to the action, as far as I could tell, sprouting new leaves.
Even further inland, along one of the large ditches draining the fenland to keep it arable (causing lots of CO2 emissions btw) had traces of beaver activity in a few places (last picture).
I've never actually seen one.
The talk I gave today, followed by a discussion with leaders, pastors and other actors in the region's Protestant church, was entitled "Climate, Earth and Ecological Civilisation".
It consisted of 4 parts:
1. Planetary boundaries: it's about more than climate; and it's about justice
2. Sufficieny - a strategy of the enough, integrity and mental clarity
3. Ecological democracy: an unfinished project
4. Being church in the Anthropocene: we're to be a force of life, not of death.
Our new report was presented this morning to the Minister for Housing, Urban Development and Building, Verena Hubertz, and the Minister for the Environment, Carsten Schneider, who were both present and applauded these scientific recommendations on more circularity in the renovation of existing buildings.
The location was the famous "Dreispitzpassage" in downtown Berlin, until recently an aging shopping mall that is now being converted into affordable housing, with a focus on re-using materials.
Chaos in Berlin's public transport. Or: How a 60 minute connection turns into a 100 minute problem. This morning, in just these 60 minutes, we've had delays due to a previous delay, due to construction, due to the track being occupied by another train, due to a medical emergency, due to a train having been cancelled, and due to a signal failure. This is the daily experience of patiently suffering Berliners. No wonder students frequently are late to lectures. I might be, too.
Registration is open for our conference!
(for in-person attendance in Berlin)
I'll also give a speech at the end :-)
And there'll be a live stream.
🌍 Planetary Boundaries > Sufficiency > Ecological Democracy 🌏
https://www.umweltrat.de/SharedDocs/Termine/EN/2024_2028/2026_09_Trafo.html
Mingling at the event marking the 40th birthday of Germany's Ministry for the Environment - founded in 1986, after the Chornobyl shock.
Let's see what this gathering of former ministers and all of us associates in one way or another have to say. Or the former chancellor Merkel, who'll be giving a speech?
A celebration of all that was achieved? Or a sober accounting of all that was not, that the industrial machine plowed under, sometimes easily, sometimes after vicious campaigns?
📢💣🔥"Living Within Planetary Boundaries:
Facing Facts, Rethinking Strategies. Building Bridges. A European Sufficiency Conference." 🌍🌏🌎🌿
This is the name of the conference I am helping co-organise with a team, in Berlin, on Oct. 6, 2026 - hosted by SRU, UBA and EEAC.
👉 Finally, our preliminary programme is online!
Download here; and register if you're interested in attending. We've already seen huge interest in the first few hours! Will also be streamed.
https://www.umweltrat.de/SharedDocs/Termine/EN/2024_2028/2026_09_Trafo.html
Interested in ... circularity in the building sector?
🏚️🏠🏡🌿
Tomorrow: 👉 Webinar by the German government's Council on the Environment, SRU (in German) 👈
We will present and discuss our latest recommendations to the government.
Webinar here:
https://64hlf.r.sp1-brevo.net/mk/cl/f/sh/SMK1E8tHeFuBoQGFC4aVVnD21uCp/zYE3zs3dGP0L
Short topical video summary:
https://64hlf.r.sp1-brevo.net/mk/cl/f/sh/SMK1E8tHeG13GZ5CNEjzbcVm0Cn5/M1kFuqItoJwT
Full text of our report here:
https://www.umweltrat.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/DE/04_Stellungnahmen/2024_2028/2026_04_Zirkulaer_bauen_Download.pdf
