No fossil fuels. Natural ingredients only.

About 10 years ago, I was an active user of an online platform whose main purpose was to bring together parents to exchange tips and hard-earned knowledge about child-rearing.

As often happens, the platform had outgrown its original purpose and was basically something like today’s Twitter, only even more brutal. After a few years at bg-mamma, you could take on Twitter’s loudest without batting an eye.

At the time, there was a great push among the platform’s users and, I imagine, the wider population, to get rid of “all that chemistry”. “All that chemistry” normally meant pharmaceuticals, imported tomatoes and some consumer products such as deodorants.

Apparently, the world was flush with natural alternatives. Indeed, herbs are sometimes more effective than over-the-counter drugs for certain conditions and Dutch hydroponically grown tomatoes have nothing on even the most neglected garden-grown local variety.

The point, however, was that while proclaiming an end to “all that chemistry” those ladies from bg-mamma forgot something very simple: that herbs, garden-grown tomatoes and deodorant rocks or whatever they’re called are all chemistry, too. They’re just naturally occurring chemistry, which obviously made them so much better than the synthetic varieties.

I was reminded of this recently when I saw the latest report about heat pumps and Germany. I was also reminded that there is no bottom to stupidity when you’ve really decided to make an effort.

Here’s my favourite quote, per the FT:

A spokesperson for Germany’s economy ministry, which is responsible for the unpopular boiler ban, said it was “important” to switch from HFOs to “natural refrigerants” such as propane or carbon dioxide in heat pumps that have a “lower greenhouse gas potential”. But she added that “what matters much more in climate policy terms is to stop using fossil fuels in heating”. 

If you need a minute to process the above or spit your coffee laughing, do feel free.

One would expect that the spokesperson for the economy ministry would have a basic understanding of what she was talking about but, apparently, that would be one unjustified expectation. One of many.