Editorial

European Biotechnology Science&Industry Guide

© BIOCOM AG, Berlin 2022

European Biotechnology Science & Industry Guide 2022 (Vol. 12)

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Editorial

The first climate war – and biotechnology as the key to the future

In the battle noise of the first major war in Europe this millennium, the second assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was almost drowned out in the media. The Swedish scientist Johan Rockström put it in a nutshell: “The catastrophic consequences of climate change are coming faster than predicted, they are coming more frequently, and they are more serious than predicted.” In other words, the climate catastrophe is here! Instead of focusing all resources on keeping our biosphere habitable, we are now looking at a military conflict that seems out of time. “We don’t have time for that anymore”, say justifiably all those who feel a responsibility for the future. But the Russian dictator, who seems to be stuck in the very early 20th century, is not one of them.

Yet the war in Ukraine is closely linked to climate change. It has dawned on people in the rich industrialised countries, at least since the first report, “The Limits to Growth” 50 years ago, that our wasteful lifestyle based on the consumption of our planet’s natural resources can no longer be upheld. Global warming caused by greenhouse gases means that we must leave the fossil age behind as soon as possible. It is (unfortunately) human nature that such a major upheaval will not always be peaceful.

And that brings us to Russia. The state is tiny in a global comparison, if you take the number of inhabitants and economic power as a yardstick. The huge country lives almost exclusively from the export of its fossil raw materials. This “business model” is very likely to fail in the very near future. Thus, Russia’s backward-looking dictator believes that it is high time to use the economic and military power he still has now to expand the empire, which will soon no longer have the opportunity to do so. Incidentally, the last European dictator to declare invading and plundering other countries as a “business model” was Adolf Hitler.

Of course, Putin will not stop the course of time. Instead of wreaking havoc, it is urgent to transform our entire economy so that it fits into the natural cycles of our planet. Nothing is better suited for this than biotechnology. It is high time to tackle the biologisation of industry worldwide. Young, well-educated people must take on this task. The solutions that industrial biotechnology already offers today will be on display at INDUSTRIA BIOTEC on 7 October in Berlin. Andreas Mietzsch European Biotechnology Network, Brussels

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