There are few issues that will occupy politicians and society more in the medium and long term than climate change. The protection of air and oceans, the preservation of our natural resources and the integrity of creation are everyone's concern. They are challenges for science and politics alike. However, they follow very different logics. While science is committed to finding the truth, politics is about making decisions while taking interests into account. So if you wish to develop, disseminate and implement solutions to one of the most pressing problems of our time, you need to understand both logics, the scientific and the political. The Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung was therefore particularly fortunate to be able to recruit one of our country's most outstanding academics as the KAS-Fellow 2023. Antje Boetius, Director of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research and Professor of Geomicrobiology at the University of Bremen, has accompanied, shaped and challenged the work of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung for a year. As an independent mind, she has praised, criticized and helped shape the foundation's work from the outside. She has contributed many new, unexpected and extremely valuable impulses to the foundation's political education work. And she has supported the KAS in formulating new political answers and emphasizing the importance of science for a democratic society. The aim of this report is to trace and record the extraordinarily exciting and insightful year with Antje Boetius. But not only that. The report also takes you on a somewhat unusual journey for an institution of political education. A journey to glacier formation in the Arctic region, to methane-eating microorganisms in the deep sea, to new ways of avoiding CO2 and to insights into how nature and humans are interconnected and how all of this is directly linked to the future of politics and society in Germany and worldwide.
Read the entire report here as PDF. Please note, to date the report is only available in German.
