When the end justifies the means

Or rather “the end justifies the means”, because this sentence is attributed to the Italian state philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli, who lived in Florence in the 15th century. And in fact there was hardly a thinker in the history of philosophy who analyzed the advantages of lies, intrigues and staged virtue on the part of the rulers with such openness, sincerity and impertinence as he did. Not only the tyrants of all times live by his principles to this day, elected representatives of the people in democracies also use the mechanisms described in his famous work “The Prince” again and again to achieve their goals.

However, how foolishly this happens in practice recently left me speechless, at least for a moment. A few days ago, in the wake of the draft law to ban oil and gas heating initiated by Minister of Economic Affairs Habeck, a member of the German Bundestag praised the effectiveness of heat pumps in old and new houses, even without additional insulation. Photos of an old farmhouse and a terraced house attached on Twitter should support the results, which are said to have been confirmed by an energy consultant. The tweet ended with “Grips instead of climate pollution lobby” and at the same time found the appropriate disparagement for critics of the new law.

Some critical readers were all the more surprised at the technical inconsistencies of the article. And about the photos of the buildings that are now allegedly heated with heat pumps, which didn’t go with the text at all. Because search engines are known to find (almost) everything, it was quickly determined that the representative of the people had simply copied the pictures of the houses from Wikipedia. In the tweet, he had claimed that there were other adjustments to the buildings shown that a good energy consultant would see. He’ll watch it.

Mockery is now pouring out online about the man and his song of praise for the heat pump.

One would like to say that it is not undeserved and could laugh about this whole story from the famous Paulaner Garden. Laugh if the meeting with the lobbyists of the BundesverbandWärme e.V. were not noted in the open appointment calendar of the MdB. It would be laughable if there wasn’t an ideology-driven agenda behind this action, which in its excessive exaggeration endangers our prosperity and social peace that we have built up over decades.

So when a member of the government faction puts such clumsy forgeries online, we have a hunch, no, we know what to think of many other “experts” from the same environment, experts who understand the practical problems, the costs and the financial consequences of the new downplay the law. They all damage the credibility of politics and make a compromise between green vision and built reality more and more difficult.

So what can we do?

For example, reminding our representatives that it is not about the victory of an ideology they subscribe to. It’s about the well-being of the people for whom they work and who work for them (!) and who pay them, every month around € 15,000 plus various additional benefits for each of the 598 members of the Bundestag. That they shouldn’t take us for fools. That they have to perform and work transparently. And that they are honest. We can and must demand all of this. Not more but also not less.

In this sense

Sincerely Yours

Ernst-M. Ehrenkönig / CEO & Managing Partner