Massive Flooding in Northern Europe:

Expanded Infrastructure Is What Protects Us from the Whims of Mother Nature!

by Alexander Hartmann, in Germany

[Print version of this editorial]

July 16—After the catastrophic heavy rainfalls of mid-July, which have killed over a hundred people in the Eifel and the Rhineland and drowned entire villages in veritable flash floods, all sorts of voices—as was to be expected—agreed to say that this catastrophe was due to “man-made climate change.” They are demanding even more energetic measures to curb CO₂ emissions.

The fact is, however, that there have always been floods, droughts and other extreme weather events in earlier centuries—and they will continue to exist in the future, regardless of climate change. The worst flood to date in Central Europe, the so-called Magdalene flood in July 1342, occurred long before the rise in CO₂ levels in the atmosphere. At that time the water was in the cathedrals of Würzburg and Mainz, and the cities on the Rhine, Main, Weser and Elbe rivers were overrun by the floods; and thousands of people perished.

Of course, help must now be provided to the affected people as quickly as possible, and the necessary funds must be made available immediately. The reconstruction of the infrastructure must be used to rebuild the businesses hit by the floods so that the people in the region can get back their jobs and thus their livelihoods. The goal must be that the people affected should be better off after the reconstruction than before the disaster.

Above all, however, we have to draw the right conclusions from the disaster so that we are better prepared for such situations in the future. Whether such natural events, which are always to be expected, turn into catastrophes depends above all on whether people have created the necessary infrastructure in time to enable them to cope with them. We do not need vague “climate protection,” but rather, concrete measures to protect people.

To do this, humans have to intervene in nature, even if the Greens don’t like it. In untouched nature, man is at the mercy of nature; all civilizations are based on man transforming nature to his advantage and becoming more and more independent of its whims.

That is exactly what we have done far too little of in the last few decades, especially under the influence of the green ideology, but also under the influence of the austerity apostles of “balanced budgets,” the prophets of the “free market economy,” the financial speculators, and the Davos billionaires. Instead of building, budgets were cut, and valuable facilities—such as nuclear power plants—were abandoned and destroyed in the name of environmental and climate protection, and replaced by wind and solar power plants, which make our energy supply even more dependent upon the whims of nature.

In fact, one of the worst disasters that can hit us is a widespread and long-lasting failure of the power supply, which in its consequences would by far overshadow the flood disaster of the past week.[fn_1] Nevertheless, after the nuclear power plants, the coal-fired power plants are now also to be shut down, and the expansion of the fluctuating and unreliable “renewables” will be accelerated dramatically.

EU’s New Climate Package

The European Commission under its President Ursula von der Leyen is one of the driving forces behind this policy. It has just presented new climate protection plans, the so-called “climate package.” The main initiative is that CO₂ emissions trading should not only be applied to company emissions, but also to traffic, aviation, buildings, etc.

The federal chairman of the Civil Rights Movement Solidarity Party, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, President of the Schiller Institute, commented on this package on July 15 in her international Schiller Institute internet forum as follows:

[Each EU proposal] is crazier and more impracticable than the last.... If you look at it, it will lead to an excessive bureaucracy with incredible rules.... It will be a complete nightmare. But the bottom line is that it will make everything so much more expensive! It will make production more expensive. It will ruin energy intensive industries. It will make living in a house prohibitively expensive. That is a completely insane suggestion.

For example, the EU Commission wants to stop the sale and production of internal combustion engines by 2035, when only “CO₂-free” new vehicles will be allowed.

Zepp-LaRouche underscored:

That won’t work, because to build this type of alternative energy sources for Europe in the form of solar collectors and wind farms, roughly calculated, would require an additional area at least the size of the territory of Portugal. Where are you going to cut that out? From the cities? From agriculture? From the woods? Where do you want to get this room from? There are insane proposals to build such wind and solar parks in Africa and to transport the electricity to Europe.

This “climate package” of the EU, she stated, could only have been devised by people, “who have no interest in people, who do not care about the development of the developing sector, but who want to continue the colonialist system.”

In particular, she criticized Mark Carney, former head of the Bank of England, and now the UN’s Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance, who had proposed buying CO₂ emission rights from third world countries—provided that they renounce economic development and the expansion of agriculture. In fact, there is already an agreement of this kind between Norway and Gabon, in which Gabon has committed itself to foregoing further economic development of its rainforests—which cover 90% of the country’s area. Gabon is not allowed to develop its own resources, and will even have to reforest agricultural land; for this they will get a ridiculous 150 million euros over ten years! Zepp-LaRouche said,

I find that absolutely disgusting and I hope that the legitimate will of the majority of people in the world will prevail instead, to claim their right to development.

She referred to the hypocrisy of those who accuse other governments of human rights violations but who want to deprive entire continents of the right to development:

If you are always on the verge of dying because you don’t have enough to eat, because you don’t have clean water, then that is, in my opinion, the greatest human rights violation imaginable. There is no freedom, because if you have to fight every day just to survive one more day, then you cannot speak of freedom.

Are You Starving for Climate Protection?

A look at the global food situation shows how reprehensible this policy really is: around 800 million people worldwide are undernourished, and as early as April, the Director of the World Food Program (WFP), David Beasley, warned that the number of people at risk of starvation—not least due to the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic—could rise to 260 million this year.

Only a massive increase in food production, especially in underdeveloped countries, can solve this hunger problem. Nevertheless, as part of its “Farm to Fork” program (announced in May 2020), the EU Commission wants to reduce food production in the name of climate protection, not only in the EU, but also in the supplier countries, and, if possible, even worldwide—which, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, would increase the number of starving people worldwide by up to 185 million people. This would actually be a “man-made” catastrophe: deliberate mass starvation.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche therefore addressed all viewers of her webcast,

I would like to ask you all, don’t be bystanders! That is the danger of a new fascism: eco-dictatorship is a mild word for what these people are up to, and that must be defeated before it can really ruin the whole world and civilization.

The Alternative

Hunger is preventable. Instead of sacrificing people for “climate protection,” we should take part in a great project to overcome poverty, epidemics and hunger in the world. To achieve this, around 1.5 billion new jobs have to be created worldwide, starting with the health sector, in order to supply all people in the world with sufficient food, clean drinking water and electricity. To do this, global industrial production must be doubled in almost all areas—a great opportunity to rebuild and modernize our own national economies and to reconnect with the world’s technological leaders.

China and Russia are moving in this direction with the Belt & Road Initiative (BRI). There is an urgent need for Germany and Europe to participate, instead of pursuing a course of confrontation against Russia and China, which above all harms us and could drive the world into a nuclear conflict. The world needs tractors instead of tanks!

Alexander Hartmann is Editor-in-Chief of the German weekly newspaper Neue Solidarität and state chairman of BüSo in Hessen. He is running in Wiesbaden, for election to the German Bundestag.

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