Hurray, we’re opening!
And when we open, we head for the right direction!
We are all eagerly waiting for a “New Normal”. What does each of us miss the most at the moment? The coffee house? Going to the cinema? The opera? Team sport? Or eat, dance and celebrate life together?
Change is always easier after a crisis than during a phase of continuous development. We have to take the opportunity now, or at least very soon, to actively shape the new normal. And it’s not just about further optimizing our immense prosperity. It is now a matter of building a new foundation for the next generations! A sustainable foundation.
However, which is the direction we should take? Does the “right direction” even exist? From the constructivist perspective, we know that the categories RIGHT and FALSE do not exist. Rather, these categories correspond to certain philosophies or impressions. They correspond more to what has been learned or accustomed and not so much to the objective. They are quite simply said: subjective.
Nevertheless: we all know that it cannot go on like this! We know that almost 8 billion people in this world cannot live like we Europeans, the US Americans or the Japanese or Australians. We know that we have been living at the expense of nature for a good hundred years, to an extent that has long been irreversible. We all know that climate change will be followed by a great loss of biodiversity or that this is taking place already.
We all know … but why don’t we do anything?
Change is a difficult thing and yet we live in a world in which a lot around us is changing at great speed - mostly driven by globalization and digitization. Isn't it just too understandable that we want to preserve a bit of stability, a bit of immutability?
It seemed to me as if we had been attracted to a black hole in the years before Corona and accelerated into a singularity of space and time, into a deep gorge in which time stands still and mass becomes infinite. And out of this accelerating suction there seemed to be no escape. Until a tiny virus suddenly threw us off course and abruptly stopped our acceleration. With all the worry and suffering and need and the lack of understanding and helplessness we can also be a little grateful that we had to pause for more than a year, as the artist Riya Sokol describes so beautifully in her video.
A lot has changed in the past year and a lot will change. I too embarked on a new path in 2020 and gave up a great job as Head of Group Strategy, Innovation & Marketing at Rosenbauer in order to dedicate myself 100% to sustainability for the rest of my (working) life. “When, if not now!” I thought to myself and founded the Institute for Clean Technology (ICT).
Because it’s about setting the course for a new economy and for a new way of production and consumption in the next 10 years — and I also think for a new governance. The international community represented by the UN has been pushing for urgent change for decades, at the latest since 2015 with the SDGs. With the Green Deal, politicians set the framework conditions at EU level. And the government program of the Austrian federal government sets clear climate goals: by 2030 the Austrian electricity mix should only be fed from renewable energy sources and by 2040 Austria should be completely climate-neutral.
So the framework conditions are in place. The financing is still being discussed, but massive funds are already being released: EUR 100 billion per year!
And the political decisions will be followed by legislative implementations. The CO2 tax, which has already existed in some European countries such as Sweden, France, Switzerland and, since January 1st, 2021, also in Germany, is likely to be introduced in Austria from 2022. One can count on a starting value of approx. 20 EUR per t CO2, which, as in the other countries, will gradually increase. It can be assumed that the tax rate will level off at around 100 EUR / t CO2. The emissions regulations for cars with internal combustion engines are becoming so strict that most of the major vehicle manufacturers want to stop developing internal combustion engines by the middle of this decade.
But what we really need is a new, shared narrative! What we need is a shared idea of the world we want to live in! A world that will remain worth living after us and our children. We have to create a world together in our minds and hearts that is worth realizing. A world in which we humans live in harmony with nature. Only then will we find the energy and creativity and the will to change to discover and develop new sustainable ways. What we need is courage and fearless enthusiasm for the future!
What should our brave new world look like?
