The President of the Hessian State Agency for Nature Conservation, Environment and Geology (HLNUG), Thomas Schmid, has spoken out in favor of a significant increase in climate protection efforts. “We can’t turn back the clock, but we can prepare ourselves,” he said on Tuesday. Climate change is already taking place and is bringing increasing challenges to nature and people in many areas of everyday life.
People are currently experiencing an extreme summer of the kind that had happened before in isolated cases. In the course of climate change, however, such hot and dry phases would become increasingly common. “Such a summer will be normal in 30 years,” said Schmid. “Today we find that to be extreme, but if we don’t work very energetically on climate protection, it will be an average year in the middle of this century. In 2100 we will have a climate like it is in Milan or Rijeka today, we have to adapt to that.”
Hesse currently has an average of almost six hot days with more than 30 degrees per year – in the future it could be more than 20. In big cities, there is also the heat island effect, it was said: there will be significantly more hot days there.
“It’s about nothing less than our livelihoods and our future,” said State Secretary for the Environment Oliver Conz. Last week, the state government presented the draft for a climate law.
According to HLNUG information, after two months of below-average rainfall, a drought developed in Hesse, and the dryness increased. According to the information, the water levels and flow rates of the streams and rivers in Hesse have been decreasing overall since May.
