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Beautiful forest!

Do you still remember your school days? The biology class? What is photosynthesis?

It is the physical-chemical process that takes place in every plant and some bacteria, namely the conversion of water (H2O) and carbon dioxide (CO2) to glucose (C6H1206) and oxygen (O2) under the influence of sunlight. Without this process, which applies to all plants and thus also trees on this earth, there would be no oxygen in the atmosphere and thus no life on earth.

That is why we urgently need green meadows and forests for our life. And if you reverse this process, i.e. burn wood, for example, the process takes place in reverse, so to speak, i.e. carbon dioxide is produced, among other things. Carbon dioxide is one of the causes that triggered the climate change. In addition, when wood is burned, fine dust emissions are produced, which are particularly harmful to the lungs and just as harmful as those produced by road traffic and industry. Furthermore, in addition to the toxic carbon monoxide, the gases methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide are also produced, with methane and nitrous oxide contributing 25 and 298 times more to global warming than the same amount of carbon dioxide.

The Federal Environment Agency therefore finds the promotion of pellet heating, as envisaged in the new Building Energy Act (GEG), not particularly desirable (according to information in the Stuttgarter Zeitung of early September'23). It is concluded that it is not positive for our ecological balance. The forests, they say, are far too important for our ecosystem.

About 1.1 million households in Germany use any kind of wood in the form of logs, wood pellets or wood chips for heating in boilers. Furthermore, there are 11.2 million households in which so-called single-room fireplaces, for example fireplaces or tiled stoves, are installed, which could be detrimental to improving our climate balance.

Add to this the forest fires here in Germany as well as in Greece, Italy, Spain and especially in Canada, which have already had a considerable impact on the environment and continue to do so. Unfortunately, the timber industry, e.g. in Brazil, does not like to hear this, where huge amounts of forest land are still being converted into pasture land for cattle breeding, or in Romania, for example, where huge areas of forest are being cut down to produce cheap furniture.

With all the understanding for the use of natural resources, one unfortunately forgets that a forest may be quickly cleared, but it takes decades until it grows back again or no thought is even given to reforestation.

A sad example are countries with bare mountains, especially in the whole Mediterranean area, e.g. Greece, where the coveted cedar and oak wood was needed for the huge fleets in the Middle Ages and no one thought about what consequences this would have for posterity. The fertile soil was washed away, leaving only rocks.

For thousands of years, mankind has committed unconscionable overexploitation of the treasures of our nature. The climate balance could only be described as balanced if a corresponding amount of wood could grow back in time. But this has not happened at all in the last two millennia, especially in the last century.

Germany is also a sad example of how forests have been sacrificed to increasing agriculture. Just think of the original Black Forest or the impenetrable forests in northern Germany that served our ancestors as protection against the Roman military.

Environmental awareness has been steadily reduced in our thinking and the cutting down of forests is perceived as a completely natural process. We have sung about the beautiful forest in poems and songs, but the subject of reforestation to protect the environment has not been an issue for us in the last 2,000 years.

Only the clear change in our climate, the increasing global warming have abruptly jolted us out of our reverie. The clearly visible changes in the environment, the melting of the glaciers in the Alps or at the North and South Poles, the flood disasters, etc. were necessary to wake up humanity and take note of the overexploitation of nature and try to put a stop to it.

The inventions of nuclear power and the use of the wind and solar industries were beneficial inventions that were unfortunately unnecessarily slowed down and hindered in their effect by hysterical political decisions (e.g. ending the use of nuclear power) or the egoism of some fellow citizens (that wind turbines would disfigure the landscape). Not to mention the many regulations, so that, for example, it takes six years to get an approval for a wind turbine!

Unfortunately, the political decision-makers in our government have not been any smarter than the voters either, and have now caused us to engage in an extreme race against time to prevent or at least contain even greater damage to our country's energy supply for industry and households. Any law that sustainably reduces global warming is good, but the new Building Energy Act which is driven by ideologies, is inherently bad.

If you ban lignite and hard coal, wood and pellets have to be banned too!

Every newly planted tree needs approx. 40-50 years to form the wood mass that makes felling profitable!

But: An old tree produces about 1,000 kg of oxygen per year (enough for 10 people), and can filter up to 1,000 kg of dust, bacteria and fungal spores from the air! Therefore, "afforestation" of cities and communities is also important.

It‘s a pity that not all people know that!

Wolfgang Endrich

Letöltések

Endrich News October 2023 EN

September 2023 >>

„WE CAN DO IT“

The saying and the author are well known. The reason was the stream of refugees who suddenly came to Germany to find work and live in peace under the protection of a democratic state.

We know that this integration has not worked out until today and has failed, for example, because of the resistance of population groups that have strictly rejected mixing with refugees from Afghanistan, from Africa, for racist and other reasons. One of the most nonsensical arguments is that they take jobs away from Germans.

Funny, foreigners are very welcome in Bundesliga soccer clubs. At the same time, we have 2 million unfilled jobs today and no idea who to fill them with.

We have an aging population, the "baby boomers" are retiring, retirement at 64 is possible. There is a large exodus from the labor market. Who should / can fill these jobs? And then there is the idea of a four-day week? Where are the workers supposed to come from?

The opponents of immigration have no solution for this. Perhaps they also don't know that this could also become a very big problem for them, because companies that want to expand will inevitably have to relocate their manufacturing operations abroad, and this threatens layoffs in Germany in the long term, especially in the lower income brackets.

This means that companies are cutting staff and the prosperity of our country is declining. In addition, there is inflation, which was deliberately triggered by the Bundesbank and especially by the European Central Bank under Mr. Draghi in order to bring lending rates to zero and thus to cheaply finance the debt of the southern European countries (Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal). Fortunately, this has already succeeded in Greece.

Now, lending rates have begun to rise (at the beginning of August 23 the key interest rates were already at 4.25%) and has stifled the construction industry again and forced many home builders to give up their dreams of owning a home to give up for the time being.

Two years ago, German voters made a decision that ultimately led to a traffic light government. Ministerial posts were determined according to proportional representation and not according to expertise. Just think of the former defense minister.

I wonder if you no longer need experience to be a politician. Every master craftsman has to prove six years of training in his trade, and in the "Ländle" you are not certified as having the necessary maturity and expertise until your 40th birthday.

Some politicians now want to change the electoral law and allow 16-year-olds to vote, some of whom may never have read a newspaper, whose political knowledge is certainly not sound. I am not sure that all young people at 16 know that there is a Basic Law and a three-tier division of powers in the legislative, executive and judiciary!

Some of the salary increases in recent months have reached exorbitant levels, certainly with good reason, because employees and workers have lost considerable purchasing power as a result of inflation, but this will then be reflected conversely in unavoidable price increases and cannot be compensated for in the short term by rationalization measures of any kind.

We all know that we still have an energy gap and have managed to get through the winter reasonably well due to the mild weather. But energy prices have increased enormously and will certainly eat up the higher income.

Our traffic light government wants to appease and promises subsidies. There are massive problems with counter-financing and it is actually not feasible at all because we no longer know who is in need or not as a result of a lack of digitalization in our administration.

Now the tax offices could certainly provide these figures if every German citizen had only one number - the tax number - and computers could be used to determine in minutes who is or is not included in the circle of the needy. To return briefly to the lack of energy: We have energy surpluses due to the wind farms in the North Sea, but we have to export them because we cannot transmit the electric current to the processing industry there due to the lack of lines to the south.

Nuclear power plants were completely closed for ideological reasons, even though we had the safest in the world and all the countries around us - starting with France, through Poland, Belgium, Switzerland, Holland, Hungary, etc. - are currently building new nuclear power plants.

Among other things, because they do not want to bury the nuclear waste at a depth of 4,000 meters in a radiationproof manner. The question may be asked: Where do our neighboring countries put their nuclear waste? How about the moon?

For many years there has been great opposition to wind turbines for sometimes flimsy reasons. Then, when in some cases the population of the communities was given a share in the yield of the wind turbines, there was only unanimous approval.

So why not do the same for power lines, which urgently need to be built to the south?

In Berlin and Brussels, they are constantly producing laws, probably as a manifestation of the raison d'être and occupational therapy of the deputies, which, however, is now forcing medium-sized companies to hire additional employees who have to fulfill the companies' reporting obligations in accordance with the law.

The hopeful words of our Chancellor Scholz, that in the future everything would become better, seems to me under these points of view nevertheless rather doubtful. Voters are becoming increasingly critical and are no longer being lulled into silence!

It would be my heartfelt wish that the politicians in the individual parties would not struggle with their ideologies, but seriously consider how they can quickly and effectively solve the existing problems of our country.And explain more to the voter why one decides how, point out and justify connections.

But this requires economic sense, respect, and not just the right party book, good connections, and ideological blindness.

Wolfgang Endrich

Letöltések

endrich NEWS September 2023 EN

July 2023 >>

June 2023 >>

May 2023 >>

IDEOLOGY OR PRAGMATISM?

On Anne Will's television programme on the evening of 16 April, a group of experts had gathered and fiercely discussed the question of whether it made sense to shut down all nuclear power plants now or to allow them to continue running for safety's sake.

The fact is that the last three nuclear reactors went off the grid at midnight on 16 April. Was this sensible or should they have remained on the grid for safety reasons? After the great seaquake around Japan and the shutdown of the nuclear power plants in Fukushima, this is certainly understandable, but since the loss of gas supplies from Russia, it is an important reason to thoroughly reconsider the entire energy situation in Germany.

Nuclear power plants - yes or no - has always been an irritating topic for many in Germany, dividing Germany into two groups. The opponents of nuclear power discussed the great danger of these plants in the event of an accident, and the accidents in Chernobyl and in Fukushima had to give us food for thought. The issue of final storage has also not been resolved to this day.

On the other hand, German nuclear power plants have been the safest and best maintained power plants in the world - say the experts. Furthermore, several new nuclear power plants are being built around Germany, for example in France, Poland, Turkey, but also in Japan and the USA, which does not reduce the global threat of accidents on our globe. And Russia is playing "scoring goals" with the Zaporizhya power plant in Ukraine according to the motto "one missile will hit the target".

That is why the whole world, not only Germany, urgently needs an energy turnaround to counteract the dramatic climate changes. But MAKE - not just TALK!

The panel on Anne Will was not so sure whether we would succeed in the energy transition without risking disruptions in the energy supply. Unless we continue to accept lignite-fired power generation for many years to come. There are no other alternatives!

One has to ask oneself here whether ideology can really be allowed to triumph over prudence?

The fact is: in the future we will need more electricity for heat pumps, for e-cars, for the economy. And the hope of then getting nuclear power from France via the energy network? After all, many French nuclear power plants needed an urgent overhaul last year and could not have delivered at all. On the contrary, we delivered to France!

And solar plants and wind power stations? With the help of bureaucracy and citizens' objections, it takes up to six years.
Thanks to the liquefied gas deliveries from abroad, we just managed to turn the corner, but mainly because we had a mild winter.

No one knows what the future will look like. But one thing is certain: In Germany, the safest nuclear power plants are being closed and nuclear power is being purchased from France and other countries - is this the solution? From the point of view of danger certainly not, and our Chancellor's wish that the energy turnaround should now be tackled very energetically by expanding solar energy plants and wind power plants could also get caught in the undergrowth of the regulation jungle.

And then?

We have already fallen victim to the wishful thinking of a secure energy supply!

The energy transition must come - there is no doubt about that because climate change does not stop at our wishes, but a power blackout - even if only for hours - would also be a disaster.

But keeping the lignite-fired power plants running is also a disaster! The panel of experts around Anne Will was also sure that there is a residual risk that we have now accepted, which could have been avoided through more pragmatism, at least for Germany. And after that, nevertheless, another residual risk still remains: namely, defective power plants abroad.

And the glaciers will continue to melt for the time being, as will the polar ice. We will also have to get used to dry rivers, lakes and parched fields. Water could then also become a scarce commodity, and not just electrical energy.

Only our children and grandchildren will know what the right path would have been.

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