IIASA Director General contributes to Tagesspiegel reflection on exile, memory, and the future of the planet

As part of an editorial project accompanying a new light installation at Berlin’s historic Anhalter Bahnhof, Tagesspiegel invited artists, writers, and scholars to reflect on the statement “I don’t have another land.” The installation marks a site from which thousands of persecuted people fled or were deported during the Nazi era, and the newspaper’s collection of commentaries examines how the phrase resonates across histories of displacement, identity, and belonging.

Among the contributors is Schellnhuber, who situates the phrase within the broader context of global environmental decline. He says that the devastating societal ruptures of the past compel us to recognize a new and parallel danger today: the accelerating destruction of the planetary conditions that make human civilization possible. 

Schellnhuber notes that the “industrial disruption of the living conditions of humanity” is advancing relentlessly, driven by “hate or greed or, most likely, a combination of both.”

Yet he ends on a hopeful note, suggesting that humanity’s better qualities may still prevail: “Perhaps love and modesty are, in the end, the stronger pair of human traits and can even restrain climate change.”

His contribution situates the climate crisis not only as an environmental emergency but also as a profound moral and civilizational challenge — one that demands reflection, responsibility, and collective action.

Read the full Tagesspiegel article (in German).