Stand up and take responsibility!
At the annual conference of the World Cement Association (WCA) in Dubai Jim O’Brian from CSR Consulting, who keeps track of ongoing decarbonization activities of the cement industry, had noticed that the pace of decarbonization is picking up recently. But still we are far behind what is necessary to reach the Paris goals. And terribly, the gruesome assaults of Russia into Ukraine and Hamas into Israel is further distracting us from this most important challenge for mankind. I am not diminishing the cruel importance of fighting those aggressors, nor the fatal death and terrible hardship of thousands of innocent people. But – and many will condemn me for this – the amount of cruelty, violence and dead will be multiple times more if we don’t manage to meet the Paris targets. The ongoing debate in Germany about limiting immigration makes me laugh – if it wasn’t so dire ... The fear of politicians to tell the truth to the people can only be explained by them simply not understanding it – which does not make it any better. If we don’t start acting against climate change now, there will be billions of refugees migrating to northern Europe. And then hell breaks loose. They will not be stopped by any fence in this world just as physics will not be stopped by any politician trying to tell stupid people what they want to hear. It is about time to shift the paradigm from “politics is about what is possible” to “politics is about what is necessary”!
Sincerely yours
Matthias Mersmann
