The Australian fire towers should warn us. The measures were announced for 2020, remain or be moved.

alarm from the other end of the world: Bush fires in Australia photo: Reuters

The horror pictures from the blazing Inferno of Australia to generate fear: Not only because people and animals can die and also a modern industrial society is powerless against the force of Nature. But also because we imagined that these fires at the beginning of the twenties of the 21st century.Century have more to do with us than we would like. You show where it leads, if we push the urgent environmental problems on the long Bank.

nature strikes back. She has no battle plan, she takes no revenge. They respond to physical conditions. The hotter and drier it is, the stronger the winds, the forests and fire-prone, the more disastrous the Bush fires. As we have seen in the last few months in the fire storms in California, the Amazon, Siberia, and also in Brandenburg. Already the word from "Pyrozän power" of the round, the "age of fire".

not But this age comes upon us, we are powerless. We conjure up by our burning of coal, Oil and Gas itself. Forest fires can not be avoided. But we can prevent a disaster. If we enforce the rules, to avoid the next calamity.

This is called a policy. And in this preventive environmental policy keeps us in Germany in the year 2020 the mirror. The picture is not pretty: In almost all areas of miss Germany and the EU have their own goals: When it comes to climate, species protection, air and water protection. Great progress, which were announced for 2020, remain off or be pushed to the rear. A balance sheet of broken promises.

Since the fire in Australia smoke signals from the future. There and everywhere, it is important to prevent with clear guidelines of the Disaster – and then this seriously implement it, even against the resistance from politics, lobby groups and industry. This is called politics. This is all the more urgent at the beginning of the twenties: if you Believe the science, decides this decade about whether or not we get the climate change halfway into the handle. But the global CO2 need to be halved emissions by 2030.

This is not to do with the previous policy, this sit out problems: High targets, then do little to implement it. Who defines the solution of environmental problems as a luxury, as it is the Federal governments long have done, is suddenly standing in front of burning questions. And then the fire Department will not help once more.