‘Pimp my Climate’ – Transformative Stories from Overlooked Places

(A provocative and funny series of thought pieces about climate-related turning points; not to be confused with Pimp My Ride - Climate Experts Edition, some high-energy American AC people)

#1: Riesa – a sleeping ‘Giant’?

As a teenager, I used to work in the ‘Natural Gas Arena’ (Erdgasarena). Yes, you read correctly: Natural – Gas – Arena. It took me ten years, and a different language, to realise that my first earnings were associated with all that I work against today. Looking back, maybe the years 2002-2014 deserve to be called the heyday of Germany’s addiction to (artificially) ‘cheap’? Russian gas. Do you remember Angela Merkel? Yup, she and Russia’s dictator (before he clearly revealed himself as such) used to be buddies, like really, really good buddies!

Now, this will not be another contribution bashing Riesa, my bad-rep school town (it has already received a musical ‘homage’ from my super-talented friend KLEO that says it all [in German]). Instead, Riesa might be a prime example of climate-related challenges that Europe now faces.

Riesa, literally ‘Giant’ (Riese) for decades has had an issue with its oversized ego: Once a prosperous, industrial hub in the former communist East Germany, the ‘Deutsches Detroit’ (as I like to call it), is stuck between a rock and a hard place: Known for exactly three things (steel, pasta and nazis), the town of ~30.000 has been run badly for decades.

But instead of creating a vision for (and with) its residents, many Riesaer people seem to prefer looking in the rear-view mirror (‘not all was bad in the GDR’) and projecting their life dissatisfaction onto newcomers – ?from ‘Wessis’ (West Germans) to refugees, the ‘locals’ aren’t always too accepting of those who deviate from the ideals epitomised in their version of picture-perfect Riesa – steel, fossil fuels, whiteness and gender conformity (if not toxic masculinity):

Credits: Monika Truhel Kranz

Now, not all is bad in Riesa either. To my surprise (I visit ~1/year), the stadium is now called ‘WT Energiesysteme Arena’. That’s still far from being sexy but is linked to the energy transition. Wait a second?! Riesa has finally beaten all fossil fools (sic!) and right-wing extremists (oh, poor AfD, you loved the former ‘Stadium of the Saxon people’, didn’t you)??? Well, that was easy. If only the Super Enduro motorbike world championships immortalized above could go fully electric, the world would certainly be saved. Or maybe Riesa has already done so more than 100 years ago, with the world’s first 100-kilovolt power line in 1912 (whatever this means), as this travel vlogger suggests pretty randomly. ?????

In the meantime, we should support places from Rwanda to Romania and – yes – Riesa, with a laser-sharp, hyper-regional focus that speaks their language(s); picks them up right where they are (‘green steel’, anyone?) and creates forward-looking narratives with their people based on their lived experiences (my grandma – R.I.P. – as Riesa’s first female crane driver might be a good choice).

Only then can even the most challenging of all threat-multiplying challenges be tackled: Climate adaptation should be in the DNA of all of Riesa’s residents (new and old) after the river Elbe – one of the longest in the EU – devasted our region not once but twice. Well, knowledge management is still a big issue when you keep calling them Jahrhunderthochwasser (‘floods of the century’), even though they occurred within roughly ten years (2002, 2013) of each other. Is the next climate emergency then not just around the corner?

Climate mitigation: ?With science and technology-grounded schools the town is famous for and even boasting a University of Applied (!) Sciences (!) specialising in environmental technology, Riesa with its pretty ideal climatic conditions should be covered with solar panels, windmills, Teslas and heat pumps – so how come this hasn’t translated into a climate utopia? Well, it didn’t help that a? ‘Just Transition’ is most certainly not what East Germany experienced post-reunification when most structures that smelled like communism (such as the East Block-common ‘Kombinate’) were closed, privatised and flogged off: The name ‘Treuhand’ (in English ironically translating to ‘trust’) still triggers trauma in your average East German, including in my family.

But 1989/90 is one-two generations behind us now: Even Riesa (Riesa!) has seen an influx of young, highly qualified people who have made their homes here over the past ten years and yet are still dismissed as Flüchtlinge (literally ‘little refugees’). May I remind even the most educated reader of this article that Germany, Europe, and the Global North in the face of enormous demographic challenges need every – and I mean every – possible person paying taxes and pensions for our ‘elders’. (Side note: many of them do not deserve this title, judged by their attitude towards all the fantastic, inspiring, multilingual ‘Neue Deutsche’ – and I’m not referring to our much loved 90s music genre but instead, the people that will represent us (inter)nationally way beyond football, such as the ‘Green’ lighthouse Kassem Taher Saleh or my former schoolmate Nam Duy Nguyen).?? ???

Over to you: When you look back years or decades, where do you now see ‘new’ fossils? Exploitative and deeply unhealthy structures that people experience and respond to with exclusion instead of inclusive, future-oriented solutions and decision-making? How many ‘Riesa’s’ can you think of, and in which parts of the world? Which changemakers in these challenging geographies do you know, how can you support them – or could you be one of them, inspiring future generations of progressive leaders yourself?