COMFORT ZONE

Thanks to the Russian´s agression, the West is waking up.

“Whenever we heat, we consume energy. Whenever we heat with fossil fuels, we produce CO2.”

Whenever we switch on an air condition or we stoke a fireplace, we do a little damage to the atmosphere. Whenever a nomad in the Sahel warms himself at night by a campfire, it is not good for our planet.

In traditional slash-and-burn agriculture in the Amazon region of Brazil, the farmers damage the earth in two ways: they produce CO2 through the fire and they reduce the number of trees that convert the CO2 into oxygen.

Knowledge of how harmful fire is was already available to people since the 1960s with a heritage population of 6,100 million people at that time.

Already in the Jungle Book we learned about the importance of fire at Mogli´s rainforest.

The West and the fire were two related themes that were further developed commercially after WW2.

“A warm campfire, a hot cup of coffee and a good smoke” were the epitome of freedom made in America.

In the 6o-s Americans sat even during winter in short trousers in air-conditioned bungalows and drove with large V8 sedans from Vegas to L.A.

Since then, almost everything has changed: The cowboys´ horses were replaced later on by cars and the firearms by computers. The cabs in Manhattan are no longer what they used to be.

Today we fill up with unleaded fuel, cars have catalysators and particulate filters and now electric vehicles are being introduced all over Europe.

However, we can’t get rid of the impression that it’s a little too late and that we can’t save the world by adding more and more vehicles without scrapping the old ones. There are simply too many vehicles clogging up our cities and causing traffic jams on the highway.

Too many raw materials are needed to supply all the cables for the new cars and to replace the fleet. Meanwhile, our old diesels continue to roll in North Africa, in South America and also in Eastern Europe.

Add to that the fact that Putin’s aggression is opening our eyes and it highlights the following issues:

• Electricity, the energy source that comes across as a prophet, is only clean if it is generated from the sun, wind, water or nuclear power.

• All other forms of electricity are of fossil origen, and even electricity converted from gas, that is sometimes used to supply the power peaks, has been in short supply since March because the Russians have turned off the tap and prefer to flare the gas rather than send it to Western Europe by pipeline.

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• In addition, we cannot meet the ambitious emission requirements simply because we have had several million more inhabitants in Western Europe since 2015. The migration waves from Syria, Afghanistan, Albania, the East in general and now from Ukraine shift the hypothetical assumptions of the energy consumption only in one direction: upwards.

• Today we count 8.010 Million habitants worldwide. And every human being produces CO2, every and all arrivers consume electricity when cooking, showering, heating and participating in traffic in cold Germany.

Voters are wondering –  “Did we take on too much to manage it all at the same time?”

  “We can cope with that!” („Wir schaffen das!“ ) was the slogan in 2016 – a phrase that probably was provocative for the Kremlin. Or was it simply an election campaign slogan?

• In retrospect, an entire economic model based on cheap energy from Russia and at the same time based on producing goods in Asia at the lowest possible cost and selling these things at market prices in the first world becomes more and more unsustainable.

Looking into the near future it seems we need to redefine ourselves: border controls at Europe´s East frontiers will be unavoidable. Habits like roller skating during the weekend in Milan or flying to a five-hour meeting from Madrid to Istanbul will become obsolete, at a time that is more similar to the cold war seventies then to the first twenty years of this century.

If we really want to save the planet, we will have to make less miles, change our habits and maintain constant the number of the countries´ inhabitants.

General car sharing models in Europe’s cities could replace the private car, self-driving vehicles could solve parking garage problems and reduce construction costs and concrete consumption. Citizens and industry alike are rightly calling for robust rules and permanently valid current parameters for future legislatures in order to be able to make the right decisions. This applies to urban development as well as to private decisions when choosing/acquiring a means of transportation.

“Whenever we heat, we consume energy. Whenever we heat with fossil fuels, we produce CO2.”

Madrid, August 2022