Mid Term Reports

Every now and then a topic comes around that needs to be voiced. Many of them are situational. Their effects are symptomatic but probably don't las too long for themselves. Wile the text might already be outdated at te time of reading or has to be brought into context with its date, I still think it will also be an interesting read after some years.

No go back in time to mid 2023.

I come from a little rurual region in Germany, called Rhön, a place in the middle of nowhere between Bavaria (well, actually in Bavaria) and Hesse. And yesterday, local elections took place in both States.

The results are pretty much alarming. The right wing party AfD (Alternative for Germany) has gained a lot of votes in both states and has become the second strongest force behind the already pretty populistic, conservative CDU/CSU (Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union, part of the European EPP block).

Now to the interpretations.

The major topic in the election campaign was the refugee situation. It was not the climate crisis. Actually nobody really talked about it. The main theme in the election campaigns of CDU (mid-right), Freie Wähler (right) and AFD (too far right) was to bash the Green Party for their politics.

In the results, I see two trends, one encouraging and the other alarming.

• Number one: Pro Future. Let's say what you would need to prevent the climate crisis to happen would be 100%. The Green Party did not really good in that regard in the last two years. I'd assume they reached 50%. There are many reasons. But it is what it is. The problem is that none of the other parties reach above 20%. We are far away from saving the planet. But at least we see a large stability in the Green Party's numbers despite the head wind they are getting. So there is hope, there's still people (among voters and politicians) who know what needs to be done.
• Number two: Pro Populism. The refugee problem will not go away. And sadly nobody sees that it is directly connected to the climate crisis. The Sahel will be more or less inhabitable within the next 15 years. So people will move. They move towards Europe. Millions of them. We are neither prepared nor do we have the mindset at the moment to deal with these large numbers. So the impact will be drastic. We will try to guard our borders and we will watch while millions of Africans will drown in the Medierranean Sea.
  Populists want to disrupt. And they will get disruption. Lots of it. Looking at the next five or ten years, you can easily imagine the numbers of right wing parties rise and rise while the blocks inbetween (Social Democrats, Conservatives, Liberals) will be ground and crumbled by the topics they can't handle anymore. Disruption will reach us and France like it did in Italy, Britain, Hungary and Poland.

Much too long post already. So I stop for now. The topic however might be worth another look or two.