The glaciers are melting already for a long time, and as long as the science is warning. Already in the year 2003, we experienced a historic heat of summer, but it was in the year 2019, the climate moved at once to the masses. Why only now? Or: why now? The dry summer of 2018, has probably shaking some, really drive the theme has recorded, however, until months later.

unlike in the case of the Fukushima disaster, there is no clear trigger; and because we cannot, without meaningful explanation, apparently, is now enough for a Swedish girl like a miracle bringer through the conference halls of Europe. Greta Thunberg is a Symbol and crystallization germ of the climate movement, the crucial question is not clear: Why the company is suddenly ready to let of of the climate issue, to move, after she has shown despite all the “inconvenient truths” (Al Gore) for a long time unimpressed by it?

The answer is ultimately simple: it is Not only the climate but also the society has changed. Long, there were other, more directly to the emotions, the end of threats, which have drawn the people in Switzerland, but also elsewhere in the Western world in its spell.

The early 21st century. Century can always be better than an Era of shattered reason, trust, understand. First the financial and then the Eurozone crisis the previously unshakable perceived economic questioning of procedure. The attacks of September 11. September 2001 and the Islamist terrorism in Western Europe carried an almost physical fear to the squares of our cities. The Arab uprisings, the Syrian war and the refugee crisis had on many as harbingers of a new migration of peoples, and all together as an existential threat to Western civilization.

against civilisation basic trust

These crises were so powerful, because they destroyed a false self-certainty, which had spread after the end of the Cold war in the West. At that time, the Western civilization took such a dominant and invulnerable true that two collapsing skyscrapers were questioning everything.

Many of the crises of the early 21st century. Century have eased in the recent past. For the first Time in what felt like an eternity today something to the effect served as a civilising basic trust wide. A trust can also be of a next terrorist attack is not so easy to shake. Finally, has changed the false self-certainty of the 1990s, in the positive knowledge: Western civilization is not so easy in the knees. Crises will always exist, but they are manageable.

It is this newfound confidence has created room for more subtle acting challenges such as climate change, which can be not so easy in a friend-enemy-scheme presses.

Christoph Blocher called the climate movement, recently a fad. He may well be right and still be vastly mistaken. He’s right with the idea that the political tectonics in motion, similar to the fashion in cycles. He is wrong, however, huge, if he believes that political “fads” to be a season again of yesterday.

The members of the 68 movement triggered the Era of the new social movements including the first great environmental movement has continued for almost two decades. The Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher-influenced neo-liberalism then.

Little, however, is that the conservative Era of uncertainty draws to a close after almost two decades. At least the recovered basic trust for much more than a fashionable whim of the Moment.

(editing Tamedia)

Created: 23.04.2019, 06:01 PM