How we save the climate and freedoms

That’s right. Prohibitions or morally difficult appeals do not get us any further. Even so, we all need to change our lifestyles. Not to emit a few kilograms of CO2 less. But to enable innovations that will save our planet.

Scientists, researchers and companies will come up with many clever and new things in the years and decades to come. Electric cars, meat from the laboratory or green hydrogen, all these climate-friendly innovations have to contend with many difficulties: They are unfamiliar, expensive and untested.

Users need these products and services. For an innovation to be successful, it is not enough that it hits the market. It must also be inquired about. Even better: it has to arise on the basis of demand. Then there is the best chance that it will assert itself, grow – and help combat climate change effectively.

Economists talk about push and pull effects. We can all help to make the pull effect for new products as powerful as possible, to “pull them onto the market”. This makes us a good, because effective, climate citizen.

The Elon Musk Principle of Climate Change

Take electric cars, for example: In order for Germany to stop emitting CO2 by 2050, a study by the Agora Energiewende think tank and the Climate Neutrality Foundation will require 14 million electric or plug-in vehicles to be on the road by 2030. That corresponds to more than a fifth of the total current vehicle population.

When it comes to the next car, it should therefore be clear: buy electrically. This is not only good for the climate, it is simply fun. Thanks to the high torque, electric cars accelerate much better than combustion engines. And you have the good feeling of having acquired a future-proof technology – while the resale value of combustion engines is likely to fall rapidly in the next 20 years.

You could call it the Elon Musk principle of climate change: The focus is not on ethical duty, but on enjoying climate-friendly products. The fight against global warming is becoming a nice minor matter.

Tesla boss Musk first introduced an expensive sports car for a wealthy clientele looking for fun and status. Then came the expansion to other, affluent market segments: the luxury sedan Model S and the similarly expensive SUV Model X paved the way for the mid-range models 3 and Y. The next step: a mass-produced model, so far without a name.

The Tesla boss knew exactly that initially only wealthy customers would treat themselves to the green premium. And that they might not fight climate change, but rather hang the Porsches at the traffic lights and provide something to talk about in the golf club. The strategy worked. Tesla has a clientele who are almost fanatical about the brand.

Electric cars and autonomous driving technology are changing driving behavior, as studies show. The fun of speed is limited to the sprint at the traffic lights, on the freeway you prefer to glide relaxed and save battery charge. A relevant number of electric cars make such a speed limit on German autobahns superfluous. The innovation replaces the ban.

Coercion achieves little

That’s a good thing, because the problem of coercion is: it creates counter-reactions, discord – and in the long term can achieve the opposite of the desired goal. The lockdown year 2020 showed how little coercion is. CO2 emissions fell by five to eight percent, depending on the method of counting.

The assembly lines stood still, hardly anyone flew by plane anymore. Even so, CO2 emissions only fell by a few billion tons. And they shot up again since the toughest corona restrictions were lifted. The waiver was based on coercion and was therefore not sustainable.

By 2050, carbon dioxide emissions must drop to zero. There is no other way if global warming is to be prevented: The driver of climate change must be completely banned. The corona pandemic, which despite huge restrictions only brought a few percent CO2 savings temporarily, makes it clear what an ambitious goal this is.

And the pandemic also shows that this can hardly be achieved with renunciation and coercion. The only way to become a climate neutral world is through innovation. Without ideas, inventions and technology we will fail.

Try the veggie burger

Certainly it is not the consumers alone who can make the necessary changes with their consumption decisions. You can only ask what is on offer. The state is called upon to promote new, climate-friendly products and processes with the right incentives.

But innovation also needs support, the “pull” effect of the citizens. Take agriculture, for example, which is a major source of CO2: A joint climate study by the think tanks Stiftung Klimaneutralität and Agora Energiewende shows that, on the way to a climate-neutral Germany, the demand for vegetable or synthetic meat and milk will rise steadily every year, and in 2045 a percentage of 15 percent.

So try the new plant-based chicken sandwich from Burger King or the veggie burger from Rewe! Sure, it’s not just a matter of taste, but also of money. According to an analysis by WWF Germany, even discounted tofu sausages or soy burgers are more than twice as expensive as traditional grilled meat.

That is hardly surprising. Typically, new products are expensive – see Tesla. The pioneering customers pay the most and acquire the status of trendsetter in return. These help build a market. Due to larger production volumes and competition, the price falls over time, so that more and more people can afford synthetic meat, for example.

The climate calculator is frustrating

The Federal Environment Agency offers a calculator on its website with which everyone can calculate their CO2 emissions. You can also optimize your CO2 balance there. Heat the apartment one degree less, switch to a bike or eat regional products, there are many options.

But filling in the “CO2 scenario” is a frustrating thing. You can shiver in your bedroom in winter, cover long distances on your bike and eat as many apples from the farmer around the corner – you stay far from the target budget of one tonne of CO2 per person per year that the Federal Environment Agency has set for 2050.

The calculator is well-intentioned, but it harbors a risk: Consumers become frustrated and fatalistic, thinking: There is no point in changing something anyway. The world is going to end with us. This setting is wrong. Because innovation needs people as a collective.

Economists and sociologists such as Josef Schumpeter and Gabriel Tarde, who wrote the book “The Laws of Imitation”, were already concerned with the spread of innovations in the 19th century. The work of them and many other scientists shows that successful innovation is not a spontaneous, but a social process.

Trailblazers are in demand

The sociologist Everett Rogers developed the “innovation diffusion curve”: innovations then follow similar cycles and laws, with a certain distribution of customer types. 13.5 percent of people are said to be “early adopters” or “early pioneers”.

It’s just a number, not a law. The following rule of thumb applies: the more “change agents” there are who get involved in innovation ahead of time, the faster it will prevail.

The sooner humanity gets involved in new things, the better it is for the climate. The pioneers become role models, others imitate them. Every story about the heat pump in the basement that has replaced the oil heating will make other people sit up and take notice and perhaps act in the same way.

Network effects are also built up and strengthened through early action. For example, anyone who buys an electric car also uses charging stations and promotes their expansion. That in turn will encourage people who are concerned about the range of electric cars to say goodbye to the combustion engine.

In order for this positive cycle to take off, a number of requirements must be met: That people can afford the innovation. And that it keeps what it promises.

Often, however, the concerns only exist in the head, as the electric car shows. Studies by the automobile club ADAC show: Depending on the model, they are already cheaper than combustion engines. The state gives up to 9,000 euros, electric cars are cheap to run and wear less.

But that can only find out who tries it. This intellectual openness is perhaps the greatest asset in the fight against climate change. Because a whole wave of innovations and innovations will and must break out on us.

A critical appreciation with simultaneous willingness to try things out marks the ideal climate citizen. Its opposite is the climate cynic, disciplined by innumerable bans, who literally thinks: After me the flood.

More: Eight books, one appeal: What we can do about climate change