the Trevi Fountain in Rome is perhaps most likely burned into the collective memory of Anita Ekberg, through her wet nighttime dance in Federico Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita” (1960). Anyone interested in the work of art quickly realizes that the master builder Nicola Salvi wanted to depict forces of nature that threaten human work. Well chosen as a symbolic place for the world’s most powerful heads of state and government, who dutifully threw coins over their shoulders into the fountain at their G20 meeting, because they should bring good luck.
However, the same leaders remained guilty of concrete decisions to limit global warming and traveled empty-handed to the two-week climate conference in Glasgow. Environmental policy fell through. It is almost logical that the Roman host Mario Draghi took up the Greta Thunberg expression “blah blah blah” in his résumé. “Blah blah blah” is the ugliest sound of failure.
The best witness to the Roman flop is US President Joe Biden. There is a reason for people to be disappointed, he says, “I found that disappointing myself.” With both hands, tremolo in his voice, he points to those who are guilty in his view: Above all, one must consider “what China does not do, what Russia does not do and what Saudi Arabia does not do”. Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, the united climate sinners, were only connected to the G20 summit by video.
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One should never give up hope, and of course we would all still plant an apple tree today, even if the world were to end tomorrow. The sudden alliance in trade policy that EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Joe Biden celebrated in Rome on the sidelines seem to prove that patience is rewarded. European exports of steel and aluminum should be duty-free again in the future, if they are within an agreed range, it is said to bring about a rapprochement. Of course, the Americans remain tough protectionists even under Biden, for example with their tightened “Buy American” clauses. They see the latest tariff deal as a move to get good old Europe on their side in the world power struggle against China. US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo should not be misunderstood: they will ensure that “all steel that reaches the USA via Europe is produced entirely in Europe”.
Because the Handelsblatt is also in love with the success of the energy and climate turnaround and not with political apathy, we have called the “Green Innovation Week” for this week parallel to Glasgow. Among other things, we are dedicated to the topic in two live streams. On November 3rd, that is on Wednesday, the scientist Maja Göpel will answer your questions, dear readers, and on November 5th we will talk to economic actors involved in the green restructuring.
Journalistically, in today’s issue we start with a report on overdue reforms of the European circular economy: “The 800-billion-chance”. We are still not very productive in this area: Of the 100 billion tons of raw materials such as gas, oil or metals that Homo sapiens extracts from the ground every year, only 8.6 percent are reused.
There are the first positive examples for Germany: Aldi and Lidl collect their rubbish themselves, and BMW presented a car model at the IAA that is made of recycled material. The garbage truck is of course not called that, but “i Vision Circular”. The old poet of Alfred Lord Tennyson applies: “If you stand with both feet on the ground, you cannot move forward.”
All over the world, including in our newspaper, Bill Gates launched the idea that carbon dioxide-free nuclear power might be quite helpful in the fight against CO2 emissions. Our energy expert Jürgen Flauger writes in the leading article that all those who are now out of cover in large numbers ten years after Fukushima are subject to an “illusion”: “Conventional nuclear power in Germany no longer has a future. Period. And that’s a good thing. ”His arguments for“ Nuclear power? Never again! “Look like this:
- After decades of disputes, the nuclear conflict was finally resolved in a compromise: “The nuclear companies themselves are no longer interested in a revision.” Eon, RWE, Vattenfall and EnBW may have long resisted turning away from the atom, but now they are completely committed the energy transition.
- The decision to phase out nuclear power in particular has accelerated the energy transition enormously. Today, 48 percent of electricity comes from renewable sources.
- The nuclear exit cannot be revised, since almost everything important (except for the location for the final storage of the various nuclear waste) has been clarified – and the energy companies are paying billions into a fund that assumes liability for long-term consequences.
One can also see the matter in such a way that none of the top managers active today wants to go down in history as a “fossil of the energy transition”. This battle was fought and lost by the Altsassen.
At first she had sounded the alarm, as if bankruptcy was imminent – to finally take out the drama. It’s about the new Berlin airport, that malformation out in Brandenburg that posthumously turns the mothballed Tegel Airport into a traffic event. Airport manager Aletta von Massenbach spoke in the “Tagesspiegel” on Saturday of a tense situation that you need money quickly. The liquidity will only last until the first quarter of 2022. The strategy: cash, cash, cash. After all, a billion euros in losses were incurred in 2020, and there was no rain of money in 2021 either.
“We cannot do the debt servicing ourselves for a long time.” This is what Massenbach said: The 3B-Gesellschafter Bund, Berlin, Brandenburg are supposed to loosen up a further 2.4 billion euros by 2026. On Sunday, the manager at rbb switched to the harmony wave: With the shareholders, a way was found that should be a way out. You work on it “constructively” and you can manage it. Runway to ruin? We’d rather let Aldous Huxley have the floor: “Nothing protects us from illusions as thoroughly as a look in the mirror.”
(Photo: picture alliance / SvenSimon)
And then there is Georg Stumpf Junior, 49, a wealthy investor and real estate crack from Vienna, who built the Millennium Tower there. In Germany, the billionaire is known for his hesitation and hesitation at the Stuttgart plant manufacturer Exyte (formerly M + W Zander), who specializes in clean rooms for the manufacture of semiconductors and battery cells. A planned IPO had to be canceled twice, which is about as exciting as the company name. Cancel culture is not a business model. Exyte CEO Wolfgang Büchele is now giving an interview in the Handelsblatt that can hardly be assessed as different from the start of the third attempt: “We are now absolutely marketable.”
The ex-boss of Linde explains that after 2018 it had been proven that the strategy and the figures were correct. The turnover rose from 2.5 billion to 4.1 billion euros, the pre-tax profit is 213 million. The 62-year-old, whose contract has just been extended, also comments on the owner: “Mr. Stumpf doesn’t have to go public, and we deliver our results. The owner certainly has certain values. If he can realize that, he will take the step. “
I wish you a successful day that, because it is All Saints’ Day, many will spend in casual clothes away from the office.
Greetings you warmly
you
Hans-Jürgen Jakobs
Senior editor
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