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  The problem with the climate conference starting today: * dancing around to avoid stating the obvious, the simple need for all fossil fuels to end, fast - this time, by focusing on "electrification" * speaking about funding for transitions, loss & damages without making it mandatory or a consequence of legal liability * papering over the huge gap between inspiring declarations & actual policies But it's the show we have. Coalitions of the willing are always possible ......

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  There's a critical detail missing from today's news stories about the UNEP Emissions Gap Report (see 2/2). They all say that under current policies, heating will "rise to 2.8C". But that glosses over that if climate sensitivity should turn out to be high, heating is projected to be 3.4C. And with all uncertainties included, 4.5C are, while unlikely, not completely out of the question. Risk analysis needs to refer to a worst case, not a 2/3 case. 1/2 The report: https://wedo...

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  🇫🇮 "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...

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  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 soc...

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  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.thegua...

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  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". https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iTG75h7aLgg

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  🤔 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 citizen...

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  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.

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  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 publi...

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  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.

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  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...

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  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,...

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  Rare rain begins to wet the sandy soils of #Brandenburg.

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  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 dom...

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  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 i...

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  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 , 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 h...

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  We've normalised right-wing lunacy and it has to stop. It's dangerous. Rather than calling today's hearing in the US with Fauci what it is, a frightening attack on science, media are calling it a "contentious" meeting. They focus on Fauci's defense rather than the unacceptability of highly aggressive, personal attacks on a distinguished scientist. By explaining what the right-wing conspiracies are after, before discussing them, they are part of popularising them. 1/...

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  Will the fossil fuel companies that made billions in profits due to Trump's illegal war now use that money to pay for the enormous wildfire damages caused by their climate-heating fossil fuels? (Rhetorical question.) We're far beyond the planetary boundary for climate change, and it's not that science didn't warn, half a century ago. When will liability for damages be accepted in international law?

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  #Finland is unimaginable without its proud pines. Even #Helsinki's famous #Olympic stadium has one. Built in 1938 for the 1940 Olympics that never happened, it finally hosted the 1952 Olympics - a great feat for a small nation that had just fought back the Soviet Army to retain its independence, though losing important territory in a settlement it was forced to accept. The architects were Yrjö Lindegren and Toivo Jäntti. The stadium's functionalist language is convincing even today.

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  I'm appalled at how normalizing media are reporting about the #noAfD's assault on our political order. Luisa Neubauer is spot on, as always: "The unconstitutional #noAfD wants to hold a totally normal party congress, paint the picture of a party preparing like others for a totally normal election victory. One forgets too easily that the #noAfD is anything but a totally normal party, it is in parts certified right-wing extremist, an elementary danger to our democratic way of life,...

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  The German Environmental Protection Agency @Umweltbundesamt@social.bund.de has published an extensive report it commissioned on the potential role (or not) of nuclear power in achieving climate targets, in view of its feasibility, benefits for climate protection, and costs. The report comes to the clear conclusion that nuclear technology "is not a quick or cost-effective option for significantly reducing the energy system's greenhouse gas emissions". The report is here - in Engl...

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  👀 "Germany and Italy swelter in heatwave as records tumble across Europe", headlines today's The Guardian. 👉 They could've also written: "Europe harvests the consequences of consumer societies' denial on climate" Just a reminder: greenhouse gas emissions make extreme periods (much) longer, stronger, and more frequent.

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  Just a reminder: #climate heating is still only at its beginning. It'll get much stronger, quickly, over the next decades - during the lifetime of most people alive today. Then, everybody will be surprised. But "we told you so!" won't feel very satisfying. Temperatures will change in the mean. That will shift weather patterns, such as the frequency, duration and location of extremes, alter seasons, produce hugely problematic ecological shifts, Earth feedbacks. And yes ... w...

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  📢💣🔥"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. http...

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  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 s...

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  Munich's City Hall yesterday. Because, you know, human rights matter.

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  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 Full report:...

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  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.

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  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.

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  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...