Palmer Speaks

There's an interesting short piece over on the German magazine Focus this morning....commentary by Boris Palmer.  Palmer is the 'Lord Mayor' of Tübingen, Germany and one of the Green Party people that I respect and admire.  As much as he is Green Partyish.....he's a key player in Baden-Wurttemberg politics and often quoted around the southern German state. 

Someone came up and asked Palmer his opinion on Greta Thunberg. 

So Palmer laid it out.  No, there's no destruction of youth going on.  There's now a opportunity-rich world going on with better life chances than any point in the history of mankind.

He even goes on to point out various diseases (smallpox is a great example) that have been wiped out.  Undernourished people?  They still exist....no question, but the numbers are nowhere near where they were a generation ago.

Palmer then lays out the last card....that it can't be a one single-card poker game and only climate discussed.  As he says....no one is going to sign up to dismantle both our economic and social system.  Panic-chatter simply doesn't work to achieve anything.

After reading through the piece, I think he has a point.  Around two weeks ago in Germany, a lot of pro-environmental people were thinking that the Merkel coalition would come up with 400-billion Euro (over four years) to save the environment.  The eventual sum decided upon?  Ten-percent of the expectation (40 billion Euro). 

There was a comment made somewhere in the midst of this (a private citizen, not a journalist), who simply said in their blunt view.....you can't save the world with 40-billion Euro.  I thought about it and kinda wondered how even 400-billion Euro could save the world.  But this all comes back into a circle....just what do you want to do to the economy and social system?

Roughly 12.5-million Germans (out of 82-million) live in some sort of poverty.  Some of the political folks are blunt about this.....it's the most since WW II.  Health-wise, they are doing great and probably can't complain about the German healthcare system.  Education-wise, kids have opportunities.  There's obviously something wrong here with the numbers existing in the way they are.  But if you tinkered with this system and triggered another five-million to fall into this poverty 'pit'....just how secure would the political system be, and how quickly would chaos reign?

It's an interesting discussion, with no end.