Climate change is a reality. There was no disagreement about that among the experts at the podium of the Allianz Environmental Foundation’s eleventh Benediktbeuern Symposium, held on May 4 and entitled "Palm Trees around the Chiemsee? – Climate Change and its Potential Consequences." The five speakers – from politics, business, science and the media – were quite sure that temperatures will continue to rise, and that the quantity and distribution of precipitation will continue to change.
Even if harmful gases were cut back as far as needed, the reduction will take several decades to produce an effect. Nevertheless, people have to act now. There was also no disagreement on that. "In this regard as in no other, people are all in the same boat," said Karl Geisslinger, rector at the Center for Environment and Culture at the monastery in Benediktbeuern, in his opening remarks.
Climate change a challenge, but also an opportunity
Climate change also offers opportunities
Nevertheless, you seldom heard anyone mention a "climate catastrophe" in Benediktbeuern. After all, climate change involves opportunities as well as challenges. For example, Garmisch climate researcher Wolfgang Seiler expects summer tourism to increase significantly on the northern slopes of the Alps – at the expense of winter sports.
Otto Steinmetz, Dresdner Bank board member and the man in charge of climate issues at the Allianz Group, likewise considers climate change a "business case." He explained that financial service providers are already feeling the adverse effects: 40 percent of all losses insured worldwide are caused by weather. Along with insurers, banks are also affected – for example by the increased difficulty in judging a company's ability to repay a long-term loan – as are asset managers, because of course the stock markets can react very sharply to natural disasters.
Nevertheless, the risks here are likewise accompanied by considerable opportunities. And assuming other people’s risks is one of the core tasks of the financial industry – where it is not possible to cost out insurance policies properly, alternative models like weather derivatives are be a possibility.
Don’t give certificates away – auction them
Steinmetz stated a few clear demands for politicians to act: "Both the communication policy and the trading of emission certificates itself in the European Union must become more transparent. Prices would be less volatile if fewer certificates were issued, and were also expected to preserve their value for a longer time," he explained. "Additionally the allotment of the certificates should be below the demand level in order to achieve CO2 reductions. Logically, companies shouldn’t get certificates for free – they should have to bid for them, thus providing the public sector with financial resources which could be used, for example, to fund research about renewable energies."
It’s hard to gainsay Steinmetz’s belief that climate protection policies can be sustainably successful only if applied globally. There’s equally little to say against Baden-Württemberg Environment Minister Tanja Gönner’s observation that this argument is often used as a way to delay necessary steps indefinitely. Nevertheless, by 2025 Gönner predicts that even though heat waves and natural disasters will be more frequent, and there will be more disputes over drinking water and more pressure from migration, there will also be an effective climate agreement in force worldwide, a substantial increase in the use of renewable energy sources, and environmentally friendlier automobiles and aircraft.
From left: Nico Stehr, Tanja Gönner, Lutz Spandau, Wolfgang Seiler, Otto Steinmetz, Uwe Wesp
Protecting people directly
According to meteorologist Uwe Wesp from public broadcaster ZDF, the media can do little in practical terms to help protect the climate. Apart from broadcasting news reports to warn of the risks involved in climate change, he mentioned how the media have quickly disseminated the German Weather Service’s warnings about extreme weather events, like winter storm "Kyril" in January 2007.
Nico Stehr, a Friedrichshafen expert on cultural studies, picked up on this aspect and reminded the audience that not only do we have to protect the climate from people, we have to protect people from the climate.
The term "heat death," for example, is misleading, even though more people died of heat than from traffic accidents during the record heat wave of the summer of 2003. According to Stehr, the casualties were "victims of social conditions," and could have been protected by simple measures – one example he mentioned was the city of Philadelphia, where people at risk were bussed to air-conditioned shopping malls during a heat wave.
Though a long-term reduction in greenhouse gases is indispensable, he said, policies to take precautions and adapt to climate change are both urgently needed and – because they take effect faster – easier to implement.
Even though the panelists weighted the priority of various measures differently, and there were several different opinions on the chances for palm trees along the shores of Bavaria’s Chiemsee or in Benediktbeuern itself, they all agreed on the scope of the challenge – probably the greatest of this century, as Seiler said. But panicking was out of place, as all agreed with Lutz Spandau, CEO of the Environmental Foundation. He called for a pragmatic, objective debate, and a "can-do" attitude.
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