Status: 23.11.2021 11:42 a.m.
Young people in Germany will suffer from heat waves, floods and other weather extremes far more often than their parents. An international team of researchers has calculated the frequencies specifically.
The 18-year-old student Yara Prasse is worried about her future climate. And rightly so: there is a high probability that she will experience thirteen extreme heat waves in her life, three times more than the generations of her parents and grandparents. Luciano Klamt from Eichwalde in Brandenburg, 15 years old, will statistically even experience at least 14 extreme heat waves.
This is the result of a generation study by an international team of researchers around climate scientist Wim Thiery from Brussels and mathematician Katja Frieler from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. In the specific calculation that concerns the two young people, the scientists assumed that the earth will warm by 2.4 degrees this century, which is currently not unlikely.
But they also have for all other temperature scenarios Model calculations submitted. For the first time, the researchers have broken down the results of their model, originally intended for global climate impacts, into individual regions. The editorial team has the numbers for Germany rbb24–Research exclusive before.
Have another child in this world?
For the high school graduate Yara, who is also the student representative in Berlin, these prospects mean that she is concerned about whether she wants to have another child in such a world. She already has catastrophe images in her head: “Storm, destruction, floods, forest fires.” Yara feels that she will “wander” from disaster to disaster in her life. She is always worried about the bad news from around the world.
Corona has not improved this basic feeling. And their own perceptions from the past summers in Berlin do not mitigate their worries. “I can’t handle heat very well at all, I find it super exhausting,” she says. The hot summers of the past few years with temperatures well above 30 degrees made the changes in her life clear to her: “I didn’t have the feeling that we are a country, a city that can experience such extreme summers at all, and that it is normal at all is. That didn’t cross my mind either. “
Artificial snow in the Alpbachtal
The Brandenburg school representative Luciano Klamt is also experiencing climate change first hand. His family comes from Bavaria, skiing in the Tyrolean Alpbachtal is a family tradition. In the meantime there is more and more artificial snow: “When I go down the slope and there are green trees and sometimes green meadows around me and then I drive on a white strip of snow, it doesn’t look right,” says Luciano. “It’s not nice snow either, it’s way too warm and it’s no longer fun.”
He also gets “queasy” when he thinks about the natural disasters caused by climate change: “For example the floods that we had in Germany this year. But also when sea levels rise so that some countries or islands are flooded. But also storms and so on. ” Luciano would rather adopt a child later than have his own.
Second-hand fashion and cycling
Yara and Luciano try to draw conclusions from these perceptions. Yara is a vegetarian, goes to the climate demonstrations and buys her fashion on the second-hand market. Luciano is involved with the Greens, almost only rides his bicycle and public transport and has basically decided not to fly as long as it is only possible with fossil fuels. They are aware that one cannot live completely free of contradictions. Both are representatives of a generation for whom the implementation of the resolutions of the climate conference that recently came to an end in Glasgow will shape their lives.
Katja Frieler from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research calculates that if it is not possible to limit climate change to below two degrees, the living conditions of Yara and Luciano will deteriorate significantly. According to this, the young people in Germany will experience up to four times more heat waves than their previous generations, depending on how far climate change will progress.
Climate change affects young people around the world
This means, for example, that a child born today will experience around 19 heat waves in its life if the global temperature rises by 2.4 degrees. Floods, forest fires, hurricanes, droughts and bad harvests also result in increased risks. Compared to the living conditions of people in the pre-industrial age, a child born in Europe today is even more likely to be exposed to around 25 times the risk of heat waves – if man-made climate change is not stopped.
With the model calculation, the scientists for the first time built a bridge between climate science and demography and mathematically calculated the consequences of climate change for different generations. There are still statistical inaccuracies because not all climate scenarios were available at all times for every demographic factor and approximate calculations then had to be made. It is becoming clear, however, that climate change will affect young people all over the world, much harder in the global south than in Europe.
Study provides climate protectionists with concrete arguments
The calculations now provide the young generation with concrete argumentation material – not only in the political debate, but possibly also in further legal disputes about climate protection measures, which are being more and more fought out in the constitutional courts of the world.
The Potsdam scientist Frieler is very aware of this: “I think the Fridays for Future movement has achieved a great deal. The political situation would be different if there weren’t any protests. I think that’s pretty important. And actually it doesn’t just affect the children. Actually, adults should also take to the streets for this. “
The resolutions of the climate conference in Glasgow do not want to condemn neither the scientist nor the students Yara and Luciano in a fluff. Now it depends on the quick implementation. “We still have a lot of difficulties in being taken seriously by politicians,” says Yara. That makes her angry. Just like the failures of previous generations “that they left everything to us as it is now, and that we now have to go on with the extreme problem. It arouses fear and amazement in me.”
Luciano does not reproach everyone in the parents ‘and grandparents’ generation, but the people “who still sit there and say: ‘That is not true at all.’ And who still don’t want to do anything. I would blame them “. Because, in his opinion, each and every individual can definitely make a difference: “If enough people decide to take the train, then airlines say it is no longer worth flying between Berlin and Munich five times a day. That is not the only way that should be followed, but it is also a way of making a difference. ”
Climate protection lowers the disaster risk
the Calculations of the international research team agree with him. They show that specific climate protection measures have a positive effect. The figures make it clear that if global warming is limited, the risk of a catastrophe drops significantly and the life prospects of the younger generation improve. If the temperature rise were limited to 1.5 degrees, the prospects for good agricultural yields would even improve in Europe – the crop failure factor would be 0.7. “We have to remain hopeful,” said Frieler, “and it is not as if this task cannot be accomplished.”