Attac Summer Academy & Energy
Attac is a network-style mixture between an organised NGO and a chaotic social movement. Attac was founded in 1998 in France and has members all over Europe, most of them in France and Germany. For five days, attac activists and interested outsiders from all over Germany met in Karlsruhe to educate each other about topics related to globalisation. Which is basically everything. From global finances and poverty to human rights abuses to nature destruction to the prejudices against migrants, you find someone for every topic at attac. Mostly middle class academics, but also people who are more hands-on.
Sleeping in tents, we had to cope with the constant clamminess of rainy camping, but I was well prepared this time.
I joined a workshop about ressources and energy and learned a lot about nuclear energy and renewable energy sources. I learned that all that talking about solar and wind energy solving all our energy problems are crap and that there's no way we can keep up nowaday's lifestyle. If every person on this earth consumed 1,5 kilowatts, things would be alright. But Europeans use 6 kilowatts and North-Americans 11!! People in the poorer countries hardly use any anything, but China is catching up.
The whole situation is crazily dangerous and still the car industry is trying to blind us by saying researchers will one day develop a car that runs with water. Still they're telling us how advanced solar and wind energy are.
They're trying to tell us that research and technology are capable of solving these problems. They're not. It's us who will have to spend some time thinking about our lifestyles.
Not only regarding energy, though. Globalisation touches every second of our daily life. Which chocolates we eat and where we buy our milk has great influence on the lives of thousands of people.
Everyone in this world knows that there is something wrong. At Attac, people try to find out what it is and how we can change it.
On the last day, we held a small demonstration against the privatisation of the German train network. England is currently suffering from the problems following their network's privatisation; why are we making the same mistake!?