Country Scorecard - Countries at a glance

Economology - Short-term measures

In the previous chapter I wrote about the economic advantage of ecology. However, not all are convinced or even prefer to have only short-term profits. And these people are a big problem for an ecology-friendly economy. There exists an easy concept for them: Make ecology-friendly business more attractive via political measures.

A good example for public incentives is Germany, where the Green Party governs in coalition with the Social Democrats. They took several measures to give the economy incentives to do business more ecologically.
For instance, they support the emissions-trade within the EU and intercede for the abolition of duty-free petrol for airplanes within the EU.
They made a law to turn off nuclear power plants. As compensation they sponsor renewable power sources. The Renewable Power Law grants fix reimbursement rates for energy production with wind-power, waterpower, bio-substances and geothermal energy. In a country with approximately 4,500,000 unemployed, this sector created about 100,000 jobs. The wind-energy-sector alone employs more people than the capital intensive nuclear power economy (30,000). Besides, in a world with an increasing demand of energy this law increases the export chances. In addition, the German government supports petrol-alternatives such as natural-gas-cars.
A quite controversial law was the introduction of deposits on cans, which should more or less banned from the supermarkets. One can contains approximately 30 grammes of tinplate and 3 grammes of aluminium. There exist also some which are made of aluminium only (approximately 17 grammes). The production of a can causes 10 times the waste of its dead weight and needs 53.000 kWh current. Additionally 10 kilo-grams of dust, 6.5 kilograms of sulphur dioxide (main-initiator of acid rain) and CFCs, which contribute largely to the green-house effect, are emitted into the air. The major part of the cans cannot be recycled. All in all two thirds end up in depositing areas.
Furthermore the German government wants to promote public means of transport as well. For they introduced the eco-tax (a taxation of petrol), public means of transport only have to pay half the tax.
The increase of railway investments, truck-tolls and mileage allowances for bus, train and bike are as well further steps into the right direction.

However, all these measures are not enough. There are lots of governments around the world which do not care about environment at all.

Thus the world could end as in this cartoon:

(Graph not available in online-edition)

Therefore it is even more important that everybody tries to make a better world.
The next chapter includes some polls, how people think about the environmental issue.

The paper can also be ordered as pdf-file for just 5€, just contact me.

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