Icon: enlarge
Decentralized power supply: A Ghanaian farmer places a solar panel on the roof of his house
Photo: Thomas Imo / photothek / imago images
"Growth goals should specify what should grow and what for."
Simon Kuznets, the inventor of the gross national product (1962)
In connection with climate change, the frog has so far been more of a metaphor for the failure of humanity.
According to a popular legend, if a frog is placed in water that is slowly brought to a boil, it will remain seated.
That's not true at all - real frogs will hop away at some point.
A second frog metaphor points in the other direction - towards a hopeful, constructive view of our future.
The metaphor can be found in the English term »leapfrogging«, in German only inadequately translated as »leapfrog«.
Leapfrogging means: a stage of development that has taken place in other parts of the world, mostly in industrialized nations, is left out in other parts of the world, mostly emerging and developing countries.
Just skipped.
It works, it has been proven beyond doubt
The best-known example is the mobile Internet, which in many African countries and India is the first and only access to the digital world for many people.
Mobile phones instead of computers as the gateway to the digital world have another advantage: they consume much less energy.
A central goal of European foreign and development policy should be to promote leapfrogging in the area that is even more important for the future of mankind: energy supply.
But that also means resolutely opposing the desires of the fossil industries globally.
So far, for example, there are very few coal-fired power plants in Africa.
It has to stay that way.
The plans of the Chinese government to build coal-fired power plants in many Asian and some African countries should be urgently and resolutely opposed by the EU and the USA, which will soon be competent again.
The same applies to corresponding projects of western corporations.
A big leap towards intelligent energy supply
Nowhere else is the population growing as fast as on the African continent, and at the same time nowhere are there so many people who still have to get by without electricity.
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), 600 million people in Africa still had no access to electricity in 2019, most of them south of the Sahara.
For many more, power supply is a matter of luck: there are constant power outages that cause gigantic economic damage.
Those who can afford it can use a diesel generator, which damages the climate and is extremely expensive.
Christian Stöcker, arrow to the right
Photo: SPIEGEL ONLINE
Born 1973, is a cognitive psychologist and has been a professor at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (HAW) since autumn 2016.
There he is responsible for the "Digital Communication" course.
Before that, he headed the Netzwelt department at SPIEGEL ONLINE.
With a big leap into a clean future
If the growing economies there cover their energy needs with coal, oil and gas in the future, this will further accelerate the climate crisis.
But there is a way out: the African states could and should skip the age of fossil fuels.
Like a frog making a big leap.
In many African cities and villages there have long been so-called mini or micro grids, small to medium-sized photovoltaic installations including storage systems that supply individual houses or entire districts with electricity that is just enough for a few lamps, a refrigerator and a TV set - and to charge cell phones.
Anyone who cannot afford their own system can have one installed and then pay for the electricity with their cell phone, kilowatt hour for kilowatt hour.
You can also operate cell phone masts that have actually been connected to diesel generators in many places in Africa.
Decentralized, local energy supply with mini and micro grids does not create such problems as gigantic hydropower projects like the "New Renaissance" dam in Ethiopia.
One of the largest providers of such solutions is the African company M-Kopa, which now supplies over 900,000 households with energy.
The tone with which such companies advertise their services differs dramatically from the pronouncements of the energy supply giants of the industrialized world: "We help low-income consumers to purchase high-quality and affordable energy solutions," says M-Kopa's website.
This would make customers "independent".
Electricity plus television in the package
The decentralized solar power supply has another advantage: It makes connection to a power grid superfluous, which is immensely expensive in many African countries.
more on the subject
Icon: Spiegel PlusIcon: Spiegel PlusClimate crisis: The show of strengthBy Julia Amalia Heyer, Peter Müller, Jan Puhl and Gerald Traufetter
The British company Azuri offers similar services, but sells TV sets and satellite antennas at the same time, with a monthly installment plan at the end of which the buyers own the solar system and TV.
“Now I am connected to the whole world,” a Kenyan farmer proudly told the BBC.
And the whole thing is not only worthwhile for a refrigerator and a television set: "A growing number of energy-intensive companies such as mines have started to set up solar modules to replace diesel generators," reported the Economist in 2017. This has another advantage: The IEA estimates that this can cut a company's energy costs in half.
Germany also has a share in this
These models are also promoted by the dramatically falling prices for solar cells and wind power systems for many years.
Incidentally, mankind also owes this to the so much criticized so-called energy transition in Germany.
But somehow nobody in Berlin really wants to show off this hope-giving success.
Perhaps because you are systematically dismantling your own solar and wind energy, while coal companies continue to be pampered.
The states of Africa could and should skip the age of fossil fuels.
Like a frog making a big leap.
In the last few weeks and months I have given a number of lectures on the topics of exponential growth, climate crisis and future strategies for humanity.
I am almost always asked what can be done here in the western industrialized nations.
Whether it is not necessary to end economic growth as quickly as possible.
These questions are often linked to a reference to population growth in Africa and India.
First of all, it is important that there is no more population explosion.
The world population will probably even begin to shrink from the middle of the century.
But population growth, especially in economically weaker countries, will continue for several decades.
display
Christian Stocker
We are the experiment: Our world is changing so breathtakingly that we stagger from crisis to crisis.
We have to learn to manage this tremendous acceleration.
Publisher: Karl Blessing Verlag
Number of pages: 384
Publisher: Karl Blessing Verlag
Number of pages: 384
Buy for € 22.00
Price query time
11/22/2020 7:03 p.m.
No guarantee
Icon: Info
Order at AmazonIcon: amazon
Order from ThaliaIcon: thalia
Product reviews are purely editorial and independent.
Via the so-called affiliate links above, we usually receive a commission from the dealer when making a purchase.
More information here
We need growth, but something else
Therefore, the answer to the above questions is bundled here (a detailed version is in my book): We cannot, we must by no means strive to end economic growth globally.
That would not only be unfair to all those people who still have no access to electricity, clean drinking water and other amenities that we take for granted.
It would also be fatal, because we need growth, just in a different direction.
The mini and micro grids of Africa are just one example of many: if the rapidly growing nations of this planet avoid our mistakes, if they direct their energy supply directly to much cheaper, clean, emission, nitrogen oxide and particulate matter-free energy sources, they cannot just avoid accelerating the climate catastrophe.
Then states in Africa and elsewhere could become models for the rest of the world.
Icon: The mirror
