The climate defender of the hearts was quickly identified.

Katharina Balcet shared the unrestricted sympathy of the 100 or so listeners who gathered on Tuesday evening for the so-called climate defenders' conference in the VIP box of the Bundesliga soccer club Mainz 05.

The 15-year-old climate ambassador from "Plant the Planet" had so cheerfully and optimistically promoted the goal of the youth-organized environmental initiative of planting "a thousand billion trees" that the listeners had probably already downloaded the corresponding app and spent a few euros had donated before the schoolgirl from the Black Forest had finished her explanations.

Daniel Meuren

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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In the fight against climate change, youthful engagement, whether personified by Greta Thunberg or others, remains an irreplaceable driver of societal change.

At least as important, however, is that politics and business are involved.

Against the background of the Ukraine crisis, which is leading to an energy crisis, the discussion round came at an almost perfect time with the call for a move towards renewable and EU-generated energies.

Mainz 05 had invited as, in their own words, the first climate-neutral club in the Bundesliga for years.

According to Commercial Director Jan Lehmann, the club wants to do justice to its social responsibility with this commitment.

With campaigns around game days, the "zero-funers" put their reach at the service of the cause,

05 fan from the Chancellery

On Tuesday, the self-proclaimed climate defenders took on the sole role of host, while Katharina Balcet and the discussants such as Melanie Maas-Brunner, who is also responsible for sustainability issues on the BASF board, went on the offensive, at least verbally.

"For us as a chemical company, when it came to climate neutrality, the focus was long on manufacturing products for our customers in such a way that we contribute to their climate neutrality," said Maas-Brunner.

“But we are now increasingly looking at ourselves: At BASF, we alone use a good one percent of the oil consumed in Germany and three percent of the gas produced, while on the other hand we produce one percent of all carbon dioxide.

We have a responsibility to focus more on renewable energies and to work more sustainably.” She very much hopes that

This appeal was addressed to Jörg Kukies, who sat next to her in the group.

The confidante of Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who switched to politics from Goldmann Sachs four years ago and has been State Secretary in the Chancellery with responsibility for economic development since the formation of the government, attended the appointment in Mainz despite the tense situation caused by the Ukraine crisis, not least because he was born in Mainz Mainz and has been a self-confessed 05 fan for decades.

"Politics must create incentives for climate neutrality in business, but also in private life," he said.

However, he also referred to the opportunities that innovation could open up in this area of ​​the economy.

“Investments in sustainability will initially be reflected in the price.

But in the long run, the return can be greater.

Commerzbank economist Ralph Solveen meanwhile put his finger in the wound.

It is still difficult to enforce a universally accepted price for environmentally harmful behavior on the part of market participants.

As long as this does not happen, it is difficult to enforce global action.

In the end, it was up to BASF's Maas-Brunner to draw the line with a good dose of belief in progress to "Plant the Planet" in her closing remarks.

"When I look ten years ahead, I really hope that we as a chemical industry will no longer leave the 1000 billion trees alone to process carbon dioxide, but that we will finally be able to manufacture products from it and bind carbon dioxide.

In the language of football, she is looking for the tall central defender who is able to prevent the most dangerous attacker on the world climate from scoring.