Category: Climate Change

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Orientation without Certainty: On the Capacity to Act in our Unclear World

This essay develops the argument of my keynote “Die neue Unübersichtlichkeit” at the CARS 2.0 Transformations-Gipfel on 8 October 2026.

Stuttgart’s industrial future depends on whether the region can put its accumulated capabilities to work under conditions that no longer resemble those in which they developed. Automotive and mechanical engineering remain substantial assets. But the markets, technologies and political relationships that made them successful are changing together. The task is to preserve the capacity to develop and produce complex systems while changing the applications, organisational arrangements and dependencies through which that capacity becomes economically useful.… Read more

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Sustainability, Security, and Strategic Autonomy

tl;dr: Sustainability is vital for Europe’s strategic autonomy, resilience, and geopolitical leadership, addressing climate change as a core security issue.

Climate change is no longer only an environmental issue—it is increasingly recognized as a central factor influencing international security. As global temperatures rise, competition over critical resources such as water, food, and land intensifies, leading to heightened risks of conflict and political instability. Natural disasters, exacerbated by climate change, have triggered mass migrations, creating social tensions that can threaten regional and global stability.… Read more

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Hacking growth!

Photo by Elizabeth Gottwald on Unsplash

tl;dr Recapture the concept of growth by reformulating it as ecological growth, containing expansion and contraction, and a clear focus on ecosystem regeneration

A very long time ago, in the autumn of 2022, Liz Truss was briefly Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. One of her big policy announcements was her desire to ignite the forces of growth – by means of government debt and tax cuts, for example in the form of tax-free banker bonuses.… Read more

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Earth must come first

Earth Day was on 22 April and while searching for a bit of background and resources for this day, I came across the Earth Overshoot Day 2021 contest where you can guess, on what date the impacts of human activities will have exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet’s biosphere this year. Next to the realization that some countries like e.g. Austria did already have their national Earth Overshoot Day (it was 7 April 2021), this got me thinking about the need for speed when it comes to reducing humanity’s footprint on the Earth’s biosphere and ecosystems.… Read more

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How We Win To Save The Climate

tl;dr: Covid-19 shows us that we can change. Now let’s make it work for saving the climate.

We all make new experiences these days. And that “we” is an estimated 1.7 billion strong, around 20 percent of the global population. We spatially distance ourselves and adapt our everyday practices in a grand social experiment on a scale unimaginable only a month ago. Some of these changes might revert back once the Covid-19 pandemic is over, depending on how long it lasts and how long we have to participate in this experiment.… Read more