Hermann Scheer (1944-2010) : German Lawmaker, Leading Advocate for Solar Energy and “Hero for the Green Century” in One of His Final Interviews

StoryOctober 15, 2010Watch Full Show

Vous pourrez voir l´intégralité de l´interview dans ce lien ci desus, je vous mets toutefois quelques passages.

Guests

• Hermann Scheer

  interviewed in September 2010, just weeks before his death at the age of sixty-six. Scheer had been member of the German parliament for three decades and was the president of EUROSOLAR, the European Association for Renewable Energy, and the general chair of the World Council for Renewable Energy. His books on solar energy include The Solar Economy : Renewable Energy for a Sustainable Global Future and Energy Autonomy : The Economic, Social and Technological Case for Renewable Energy.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN : Hermann Scheer. He is a pioneering German politician and economist who helped make Germany a renewable energy powerhouse. Hermann Scheer died last night in Berlin at the age of sixty-six.

Scheer had been member of the German Parliament for three decades and was the president of EUROSOLAR, the European Association for Renewable Energy. He was also the general chair of the World Council for Renewable Energy. His books on solar energy include The Solar Economy : Renewable Energy for a Sustainable Global Future and Energy Autonomy : The Economic, Social and Technological Case for Renewable Energy.

In 1999, Hermann Scheer won the Right Livelihood Award for his, quote, well, “indefatigable” — tireless — “work for the promotion of solar energy worldwide.” When he receieved the award, he described solar energy as “the energy of the people.” Jakob von Uexkull, the founder of the Right Livelihood Award, said today, quote, “Hermann Scheer has been the world’s most powerful advocate for renewable energy during the last two decades. His personal commitment and his incomparable campaigning spirit will continue to encourage many policy-makers, experts and citizens around the world to fight for a world without fossil fuel or nuclear.

TIME magazine named Hermann Scheer “Hero for the Green Century.”

HERMANN SCHEER : The tragedy of our present civilization is that it became dependent on marginal energy sources. The marginal energy sources are fossil sources, fossil resources and nuclear, based on the raw material uranium. The gigantic energy potential is the renewable energy potential always all coming from the sun, including its derivates, like wind and the photosynthetic-produced — photosynthetically produced materials, organic materials, plants, hydro-base. And the sun offers to our globe, in eight minutes, as much energy as the annual consumption of fossil and atomic energy is. That means to doubt — the doubtings if there would be enough renewable energy for the replacement of nuclear and fossil energies, this argument is ridiculous. There is by far enough.

And therefore we are in a situation running into a conventional energy trap in two directions at the same time. First, we are in a process of the coming depletion of conventional energies, faster than many people imagine — or want to believe. And the second limit is an ecological limit, because the negative effects of conventional energies, of nuclear as well as fossil energies in different ways, overstress the ecosphere. That means the life conditions. And it is an open question, and it is not necessary to give an answer to that. It is an open question which limit of the conventional energy systems is closer to our time. Even if there would be much more potential, much more conventional energy reserves, it would not help, because we would arrive at the ecological limit, and we are practically at the bottom crossing this ecological limit. Therefore, we can only recognize, and we must recognize, we have to replace the conventional energies consumption not only in the future at a specific time, we have to recognize it in the run of the next twenty to twenty-five years. This is the main challenge of civilization, to do that.

AMY GOODMAN : How do you do it ?

HERMANN SCHEER : The big mistake in the energy debate is that most people think, because they believe that there is a monopoly and the expertise for all energy activities in the hand of the existing energy players. Many people, including governments, including many scientists, who get their orders for studies from them, they believe and think that the present energy suppliers, the present energy trusts, the companies, they should organize the transformation. And this is a big mistake — a big mistake — because this part of the society is the only one who has an interest to postpone it. The only one. All others, all the others, have an interest to speed it up. But as long government think that it should be left to the energy companies, we will lose the race against time.